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.

WOULD that the marine biologists working on eradicating Sargassum, an invasive brown weed, at Lough Hyne in west Cork, found a way to eliminate the green weed plaguing shallow bays all over Ireland.

THE Great Southern Trail promises to be one of the finest long-distance waymarked walks in Ireland.

LAST week, through the windows of a TransPennine train in the north of England, I saw sheep grazing the hill slopes.

THIS may come to be known as the sunless summer.

MY youngest grandchild, Luca, aged three, visiting us from Bohemia in the Czech Republic, delights in feeding our adopted heron which stands as tall as himself.