WEIRD WEATHER, last week. After seven or so weeks of almost constant sunshine and skies as peerless blue as Andalucia, suddenly the light was grey, the air was dead and a prickly, humid heat enveloped us.

Damien Enright marvels at this year’s fledglings.

THESE DAYS I fill the peanut feeder at the bird table only a quarter full. Otherwise, jackdaw gangs arrive and take turns hacking at the mesh, breaking the nuts into scraps which fall on the grass where team mates gobble them up.

WHILE we had heard daily reports of azure skies over Ireland, on our first morning home from holidays we woke to find dark clouds overhead, as if the gods themselves were troubled.

THE HEADY scent of the hawthorn hangs in the air like perfume in a bordello as we walk up the leafy lane.

WHILE the title of this page promises articles on the outdoors, these articles generally have to be written indoors. For almost the entire month of May 2006, it was certainly far too wet to sit under an umbrella on the lawn, with driving rain swamping the computer keyboard.

EACH YEAR, at about this time, a pair of local magpies and a troop of jackdaws regularly raid the bird table. The jackdaws hang upside down on the peanut feeder, banging away with their beaks.

THE MARTINS at Togher Church near Dunmanway returned from Africa to find their homes newly-painted white to match the new paint job of the church, on the eaves of which they annually raise families.

FROM PURPLE woods to purple plains. Last week, I was in a West Cork wood, marvelling at the almost overnight transformation as, suddenly, all together, the bluebells opened in flower.

EVERY year, towards the end of April, we arrive home of an evening to find hundreds of millipedes, four-centimetre-long creepy-crawlies with a thousand feet, crawling up the side of our house.