SHANGHAI to Sherkin, a contrast that would make one’s head spin.

A FEW months ago a reader told me a pair of elegant, ringed pigeons had arrived at his farmyard and settled in, roosting in a barn.

LAST weekend I had, nestling in my hand, one of prettiest birds I’ve ever seen, a storm petrel.

LAST week a reader wrote to give me a fascinating account entitled, The Apprenticeship of Swallows, recounting the drama she saw unfold from her apartment window.

I’VE just read that in the US, Hurricane Alex has pushed a huge oil slick towards Grand Isle on the Louisiana coast, already in imminent danger of inundation from BP’s Deepwater Horizon which is pumping between 50,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil a day into the sea.

MORE often than not, this summer, we wake to skies as peerless blue as a hedge sparrow’s egg.

BUTTERCUPS and butterflies – two Speckled Wood butterflies waltz around one another in spirals in the morning sunlight under the beeches across the stream as I step out into the yard.

A READER tells me a pair of racing pigeons, with rings, arrived at his farm four months ago, stayed around the yard and have now hatched two eggs, both parents sitting.

UPON our return from Germany and the Czech Republic we were immediately grateful that we lived in Ireland where the temperature, as we drove west from Cork Airport, was 17.5°C.

AS we drove east from Munich after a comfortable flight from Cork with our national airline and its ever courteous staff, we crossed a range of heavily-wooded hills relieved by golden meadows: the gold being dandelions packed as tightly as pixels in a photograph.