Columns - Irish Examiner

Damien Enright

Dung under: Aussie example shows importance of beetles

We in the West are meat-eating, milk-drinking people, but were farmers or ranchers obliged to compensate for the carbon emissions of their herds, they would be bankrupted. 

Mon, 12 Sep, 2016

Royal welcome for resurgent Large Blue population

The weather has improved; the butterflies are flying.

Mon, 05 Sep, 2016

Harvesting almonds the precursor to a heavenly taste

When I was very young, and slabs were cut from my mother’s home-made Christmas cake to be divided into fingers, I’d always get the outside finger, with marzipan not only on top, but running down the length of one side.

Mon, 29 Aug, 2016

Mideast origins for our hunter-gathering genes

With plump, ripe blackberries now in the hedges, I find it hard to cover distance when I go walking. There must be a gatherer, if not a hunter, in my blood. We were, all of us, of course, once hunter-gatherers, writes Damien Enright

Mon, 22 Aug, 2016

Enchanting sight of wild chanterelles

It may be stale news by the time you read this, but following the recent “no butterflies this year” narrative of my last two columns, I have begun to see red admirals and peacocks flitting over the purple (or, sometimes, creamy) buddleia still, happily, in flower. 

Mon, 15 Aug, 2016

Absence of butterflies attributable to hedgerow cutting

Last week, I wrote about butterflies, their notable absence this year, and expressed the hope that by the time you read the column, on the August bank holiday weekend, favourable winds might have brought in the migrant red admirals and painted ladys, while a rise in temperature might have woken up or led to a hatch of small tortoiseshells and other species.

Mon, 08 Aug, 2016

Worrying lack of butterflies landing on my buddleia

Fat purple buddleia burgeoning on the hedges and waste ground, and no butterflies. I found a dead beauty on the floor of a shower unit in a room we rarely use; it was a small tortoiseshell in the vivid colours of a Persian carpet fresh from the loom.

Mon, 01 Aug, 2016

Spreading slurry in the middle of a holiday season stinks

Spreading slurry in the middle of a holiday season stinks, writes Damien Enright

Mon, 25 Jul, 2016

West Cork homes the spellbinding dance of the house martin bird from tropical Africa

The summer evenings here in our West Cork village is full not of “the linnet’s wings” of WB Yeats’s ‘Lake Isle of Innisfree’ but of house martin’s wings. These birds faithfully come all the way from tropical Africa to nest below the fascia boards on sea-facing houses each year.

Mon, 18 Jul, 2016

Plastic bottles are decimating ocean life

BACK TO Ireland to a countryside every bit as lush and lovely as Czech, and a sea as blue as the Med, in the Balearics, if not as warm. 

Mon, 11 Jul, 2016