A GREY adolescent seal and two pure white adult spoonbills in front of Timoleague Abbey in the falling light of a mid-January Sunday were only two of the delights of west Cork this winter.

THE cold weather has had a big impact on the bird life where I live.

THE TALK in the pub was all about birds and everybody, nature watchers and gunmen alike had sympathy with the Redwings.

WE have a bully at the bird table.

A HAPPY New Year to all.

I WAS told there were crocs, but only after I’d been swimming.

THE first night in this tropical land of The Gambia in West Africa we ate in the company of hundreds of white butterflies.

OUTSIDE my window, the sky is suddenly blue, the sun catches the drops on the clothes-line carousel, gleams like silver on the ivy on the south side of the beeches and sets – as it were – the remaining beech leaves, low on the trees and scattered over the yard, on fire.

THE other morning, walking the scoured sands of Courtmacsherry Bay after the storm, I came upon many full, fat cockles.

Damien Enright on a stunning November spectacle.