A few weeks ago on this page I mentioned the mysterious slaughter of my hens, writes Dick Warner

I was out with my machete and gardening gloves attacking briars and nettles that were threatening to engulf the young trees and shrubs I had planted in the wilder end of my garden. I call this end of the garden The Wood, which is a little grandiose because it’s too small to be a real wood.

THE window of the study in which I write looks out on a 10-acre meadow. While it’s not quite ‘unimproved grassland’ it’s also not managed intensively and is rich in meadow wild-flowers. 

I was invited to spend a weekend fishing on Lough Mask, based in the charming Co Galway village of Clonbur. I jumped at it because, despite a lifetime spent fishing all over the country, I had never fished for the famous wild brown trout of Mask.

I HAVE a habit, perhaps a rather morbid habit, of stopping to examine birds and animals that have been killed on the roads around my home. 

THE OTHER evening I took a group of about 50 people for a nature walk along the banks of the River Liffey as part of the Newbridge Junefest. 

I AM living in the middle of a murder mystery, writes Dick Warner.

LAST WEEK I was sitting in my canoe bailing out rain water when a large and beautiful insect floated by on the river --- a mayfly. 

THE powers that control the world of ornithology have decreed that we now call them European barn swallows but most Irish people just call them swallows. 

It was a blustery day with short squalls of rain blowing in on the wind. A typical April day that happened to be occurring in May. Looking for a change of scenery, I crossed the county border and drove into the Wicklow mountains. I parked and walked up along the tumbling headwaters of the River Liffey.