TEAL are such pretty little ducks — hardly as big as a wood pigeon — it’s sad to think of them stuffed inside a widgeon which is stuffed inside a mallard which is stuffed inside a goose, and the lot then put in the oven and roasted.

IN Galway recently, I looked out the window of a seafront apartment one morning and saw five glossy blackbirds perched on a leafless shrub.

IT would seem a small thing to be concerned about, with the country in the state it’s in, but a beautiful butterfly which has been peacefully sleeping in my workroom for two months has suddenly woken up and now, on this bright, frosty morning, is beating its wings against my window, wanting to get out.

THE inner section of Dun Aengus Dock, in Galway city centre, was often as packed as a giant sardine tin with sprat and mackerel during the last two weeks of October.

AS I set out, intent upon a 40-minute hike to shake the cobwebs off and reduce the corporation, the day seemed set fair – but then, to use, oppositely, the words of Dylan Thomas’s Poem in October, “The weather turned around/ It turned away from the blithe country ...” and the sky was sudden stained as blue as a bruised damson when a squall swept in off the sea.

“LAZY autumn days in all their glory...” was a line of a song I heard as a youth.

WHETHER to genetically modify (GM) food sources or not is one of the most serious decisions mankind has ever had to take.

FOR 40 years I have picked forest mushrooms every autumn and winter, but I have never seen the abundance of perfect Boletus edulis, the king of mushrooms, that I encountered this year. I didn’t find them myself.

IT IS hard to imagine how anyone with a little foresight could ever starve in Slovenia, in south-central Europe, where I spent the last week.

TWO new, outstanding nature books from Gill & Macmillan arrived in the post this week.