I’M just back from Achill, a wet windy outpost of mountains and cliffs, where it gets dark later than anywhere else in Europe.

IT hasn’t been a good month for big cat tourism. The Indian Supreme Court ruled against visitors entering tiger protection areas, a decision which the conservation charity Care for the Wild International has welcomed.

SILENCE, the movie by Cork-born film-maker Pat Collins, is in the cinemas at present.

THE visit to the Dublin coast of an exotic creature from the Arctic ended in tragedy recently.

If you marry your sister or brother, as the Pharaohs did, your offspring may inherit disorders.

HOUSE sparrows have lived with us since the dawn of civilisation.

OUR civilisation ‘rests’ on the ‘three Rs’.

CORNCRAKES, barn owls, and their likes, are the ‘sick men’ among Irish birds.

LONESOME GEORGE passed away ‘peacefully’ at the Charles Darwin Research Centre in the Galapagos.

THE cuckoo is in trouble.