FOR a superb outdoor experience, salted with a bit of history, none will serve better on this Bank Holiday Monday than a coastal walk from picturesque Courtmacsherry village to Coolbawn (aka Blind Strand) on the Seven Heads.

Tourist Information Office birdwatching guides to the Republic of Cyprus and Turkish-Occupied Northern Cyprus (Kibris) are second to none, full of information and beautiful photographs. Each of the two Cypruses want to attract birders, says Damien Enright.

After a fine dinner at our home last week, our guest (and chef for the evening) was (figuratively) in full flight and turned to the squirmy subject of earthworms.

Last week, I wrote about the increasing destruction of habitats in marginal areas, where, in the cause of creating more grassland for more cattle to make more beef and now more milk — bedrock is smashed and removed and the land scraped of all the wild and hardy vegetation that has evolved there since the last Ice Age.

THE chatter of rock-breakers have long since replaced the hoarse cries of corncrakes in marginal farming areas of Ireland, writes Damien Enright

Spring is another country. So different are these bright days from the dark days of a month ago that one might think one has moved to another land.

As a boy, writes Damine Enright, I enjoyed catching crayfish in the River Suir near Thurles, Co Tipperary. River-prawns, I called them. I was in short pants at the time.

This weekend, I will visit one of my sons in historic St Alban’s in Hertfordshire, England. 

These days, the woodland floor is greening over with the shoots of ransoms and bluebells pushing through the leaf mould, writes Damien Enright. The trees are full of bird song and, on bright days, the paths are dappled with sunlight.

MY COLUMN of February 16 discussed the mysterious moss balls photographed on a west Cork strand by M Didier Le Goff, a Breton visitor.