THE announcement that Coillte, in conjunction with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, is to develop 4,000 hectares of forestry in north Mayo as a wilderness area for conservation and amenity use is very good news.

A NEW website dealing with Irish wildlife is always welcome and mammals-in-ireland has just come online.

I’M just back from a short break in the Dutch town of Eindhoven.

MY birthday is on Jul 21 and one of the minor ways in which it is celebrated is that I dig the first new potatoes from the garden.

I WAS sitting in the kitchen the other evening when I heard a scrabbling sound coming from a table lamp in the corner.

THE spindle is one of my favourite native trees, though I admit that when it grows in the wild it’s often more of a shrub than a tree.

THE dark European honey bee was likely a wild native insect in Ireland, but wild and feral bees have become extinct here in the past 20 years.

I HAVE a small piece of land.

I HAVE had a couple of interesting emails from readers over the past few days.

THERE are not as many books about birds in Ireland as there are about birds in Britain.