IT’S said that the English word butterfly was first coined to describe the brimstone, which is butter yellow in colour. At least the males are, the females are more green than yellow.

I SPEND a lot of my time on or around water and because of this I have regular encounters with swans.

THE aspen is, in my opinion, one of our most attractive native trees.

I WAS travelling up the Shannon on my boat the other day. It was a stretch of river I hadn’t been on for a few years and one thing that struck me was the increase in the number of cormorants.

I’M just back from a short break on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. I was staying in a friend’s seaside apartment on the Costa Blanca. That bit of coast is a concrete jungle.

MAY is the high point of the year for the fly fisherman. People with no interest at all in fishing have heard of the mayfly and the excitement it inspires in fish and fishermen when it makes its annual appearance.

ON a fine spring day, there is nothing in the Irish countryside more splendid than a large, wild cherry tree in full blossom. There are two species of native wild cherry.

IT’S quite unusual to see butterflies on the wing in April in this country but I’ve seen quite in recent weeks.

I WENT down to my little wood the other day to check up on the progress of spring. It was sunny and the birds were singing but the ground felt cold and some things were behind schedule.

Dense sprays of blackthorn blossom are lighting up hedgerows around the country at present.