I LIVE in a beautiful part of rural Co Kildare and I love the landscape and the wildlife that surrounds me. But now and again I get a hankering for something different. And I have to admit that Kildare is slightly lacking in high mountains and dramatic seascapes.

SOMEBODY asked me the other day “What’s a ferret?”

I HAVE always been fascinated by fungi and because a reasonably mild, wet autumn provides the best conditions for finding them, I’m gearing myself up to go foraging.

THE other day I heard somebody observing that some deciduous trees were starting to change colour and drop their leaves early this year and suggesting that this was a sign that we were in for a bad winter.

SOME years ago there was a story in my local paper about a goat farm where most of the goats had been savagely attacked and killed during the night.

A FEW days ago I was conducting river walks along the banks of the Barrow as part of the Carlow Floral Festival.

I AM fascinated by the way garden ponds are colonised by wild aquatic plants and animals.

IN the past couple of months there have been some developments in the story of the attempt by greater spotted woodpeckers to re-colonise this country after an absence of several hundred years.

THE other morning I went for a walk along the bank of the Grand Canal in a rural part of Co Kildare. The amount and variety of wildflowers was striking.

THE sight and sound of swifts in the sky, scything through the air and screaming, is an icon of summer.