THE Canary Islands are universally associated with sun, sea and sand but they have many other attractions and the sheer diversity of the islands is striking.

Seen from above, or from the middle distance, there is something apocalyptic about a scattering of palm trees 50 feet tall standing stark in a vast swathe of blackened landscape.

We arrived at night and woke next morning to hear the familiar music of the fish van passing up the valley, soulful Latin American music issuing from speakers on the roof.

LAST week, an old pal reported seeing a pair of buzzards soaring over the woodland near Garretstown, east of Kinsale and, a few days later, I saw a single adult sailing high over the Bandon River.

In Amsterdam, I was gratified to see the streets and tram-tracks thronged with cyclists, young, middle-aged and very old, along with motor-scooter riders, male and female, all wearing no helmets.

Rabbits in the big field behind my house can again be seen since the wheat crop was harvested.

THERE are more birds in the garden these days, or so it seems.

As the beech leaves fall in all their legion colours and float on the garden pond or lie on the bottom like a bright mosaic under the clear water, whirligigs scud about on the surface like little, black, four-legged ice skaters or sometimes rest on slowly-floating leaves that are half submerged.

Standing on the bridge of the Feagle River at Rossa Street in Clonakilty, I was intrigued to see small trout in the swim of the water, and to see a dipper fly upriver from under the bridge and alight on a rock in midstream.

IN her lodgings in India, toads insisted on climbing into her suitcase.