THE weather has been so sunny in the week since we’ve arrived back from the Canary Islands that we could top up our suntans, had we nothing else to do.

THE advances in nature in Ireland during our 30-day absence are striking but it is that time of year when, almost overnight, buds open and the bush which, yesterday, was bare branches, suddenly wears a shawl of green.

SIX weeks ago, on January 16., an 84-year-old Englishman set out on a raft, built here in La Gomera in the Canary Islands, to drift 2,800 miles across the Atlantic to Eleuthera Island in Bahamas, tracing the route upon which a ship’s 18-foot long jolly boat carried the survivors of the 41 crew of an English cargo vessel sunk by a German ship disguised as a merchantman (but then drawing back the deck-cowlings to reveal cannons and machine guns) during World War 11.

IT ISN’T all blue skies in the Canary Islands.

THRUSHES, blackbirds and small finches patrol the field beyond our garden from dawn to dusk.

I WILL miss life at the feeder when I travel abroad to hide away and finish a book about west Cork.

AFTER a week of deluges the days are brightened with a yellow sun and at night the stars glitter in a clear sky.

BY far the shortest way for me to reach Cork city from my idyllic West Cork redoubt is via the road from Timoleague to Bandon.

THE bird programmes on television are often fascinating with stories of twitchers in obsessive pursuit of rarities or dedicated birders working out how many caterpillars tits eat per day, or how may eggs a cuckoo lays and where.