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. 

THE WEATHER here in west Cork is much warmer than the weather we left behind in Barcelona. It was evident from the time we stepped off the plane, in Dublin, and headed for Heuston Station, to entrain for the south.

Last week, a reader wrote, “Sir, I live in West Cork since four months. I come from Brittany.

OMG, it’s followed us!” I said to my wife as, walking down the graceful Carrer d’Aragó in Barcelona, I suddenly saw a grey heron winging its capacious way over the housetops. 

Damien Enright recalls the day four years ago that he saw a hungry heron swallow a rat whole

I was outraged as I read an article entitled “Sprat —worthless dead but priceless alive” by Cork Whale Watch skipper Colin Barnes in The West Cork People, my excellent local community newspaper.