MY visit to the National Aquarium of Ireland, the Galway Atlantaquaria, in October was enlightening and memorable.

MY brother told me that on the beaches near his apartment on the Atlantic coast of southern Spain, where we are staying, interesting shells could be found which are sometimes incorporated in jewellery.

TODAY, when we woke and opened the curtains, the skies over the Straits of Gibraltar were again peerless blue. The sea, azure and sparkling below them, broke on the sand in a white, crinoline frill.

WHEN, as children, my pals and I roamed the bogs, river banks and lake shores of Tipperary, Mayo and Donegal, we regularly came upon curlews’ nests and I’m afraid we may have sometimes filched an egg or two for our collections.

A FLURRY on the surface and a panicked splashing in the water only yards away from my feet as I walked along the beach on the first bright day for weeks: it was a shoal of big mullet caught unawares as they basked in the shallow water warmed by the sun.

I MUST have been the only Courtmacsherry resident not to have seen the flock of 16 glossy ibises that made the bay shore their home from October 4 to October 15.

THE sky was so blue and the sun so warm that my son and his pal took off their shirts to enjoy the weather as they drank raspberry beer outside a bar overlooking the River Vltava in the pretty town of Ceské Budejovice in Lower Bohemia in the Czech Republic.

THROUGH my work-room window, I look out at the mist hanging over the field beyond the beeches and my imaginings of an Indian summer are dissolved in water-vapour so dense the horses are like spectres walking riderless through cannon-smoke, lost in a region between heaven and hell.

A cold winter a-comin’, after a pathetic summer?

AS I left to go looking for parasol mushrooms, I noticed the sedum and the valerian in the garden were teeming with butterflies and I couldn’t resist, as usual, stopping to take some photographs, such glorious creatures they were.