MY WIFE and a lifelong school friend, walking along a west Cork road, saw a bird on the road ahead of them and, as a car approached, saw it take off, carrying another bird in its talons.

GRAIGUENAMANAGH TO ST MULLINS WALK

BRIGHT days at last, and celandines, the first of the spring wild flowers, open their golden petals to the sun.

IT’S all happening in the heronry, and birds are already sitting on eggs.

OTTERS are charming creatures in the way in which, all of a sudden, they poke their heads out of the water and, with whiskers dripping silvery water-drops, regard us with a look of intelligent curiosity in their dark brown eyes.

All the way from the west Cork byroads to the byroads of Clare and Galway we saw balls of twigs in the wayside trees with tunnels of light showing through, neatly arched entrances nearer the base than the roof.

One day last week we woke to sunshine after days of deluges and flooding on West Cork roads and (once again) in the towns of Bandon and Clonakilty.

The otter that rose from the waters of the River Suir at Kilsheelan, Co. Tipperary, made my wife jump.

WE HAVE siskins at our peanut feeder.

WHEN my wife and I crossed Wenceslas Square in the beautiful city of Prague on St Stephen’s Day, there was no snow on the ground, crisp, even or otherwise.