CLOUDS of butterflies and a haze of day-flying moths rose from beneath our feet as we walked the Seven Heads in west Cork on the glorious last day of May 2009.

My youngest son, currently teaching in Spain, had the good fortune to be invited to a lammergeyer-watching weekend in the Pyrenees.

WE’VE had bats around our house for years – pipistrelles, the smallest of Irish bats – and on these early summer nights we see them regularly.

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind…” so sang Bob Dylan in the enigmatic verses of his lyric on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, an album released in May, 1963.

LATE April in Ireland and the woods are carpeted in bluebells, a sight to behold.

MANY readers of this column will have holidayed in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands and will know this extraordinary island much better than I.

IT is wonderful how nature adapts and turns opportunity to advantage.

IT IS early April and the train from Budejovice in the Czech Republic to Linz in Austria takes us through a wintry countryside, not a wild flower, weed or blade of new grass yet to be seen.

I REGRET to say that I cannot tell my readers much about Irish bird activity this week other than what I can see in my garden or from the windows of the car parked alongside the bay.

We arrive back in time for the spring and the St Patrick’s Day parade at Courtmacsherry, a very special event indeed, attended by hundreds with great effort put into costumes and bands.