Columns - Irish Examiner

Richard Collins

The flipside of tagging penguins

READERS will be familiar with ‘white -coat hypertension’, a rise in blood pressure triggered by the sight and smell of the doctor’s surgery.

Mon, 07 Mar, 2011

Bare necessities life for the polar bear

ACCORDING to a report in the Polar Biology journal, a bear swam non-stop for nine days, travelling a distance of 700km through the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska.

Tue, 01 Mar, 2011

We’re having a whale of a time

LIEUTENANT Commander Paddy Harkin, of the LE Niamh, reported that 100 orcas were feeding on mackerel 50km west of Tory on January 27 and 28.

Mon, 21 Feb, 2011

The Spanish farmers who cried wolf

WHO’S afraid of the big bad wolf? Just about everybody, it seems.

Mon, 07 Feb, 2011

Garden of Eden grows again

GOOD news on the environmental front comes from a most unlikely quarter; large areas of Iraq’s Tigris-Euphrates marshlands have been re-flooded.

Mon, 31 Jan, 2011

DEEP in the rainforests of Sarawak lies the largest limestone cave system in the world. There is no road to Gunung Mulu, but this UNESCO World Heritage Site has an air-strip. The journey by river-boat takes ages so most visitors travel by plane.

Mon, 24 Jan, 2011

Cats ’n’ dogs? No, it’s rainingbirds and fish

THOUSANDS of red-winged blackbirds fell from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas, during New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Mon, 17 Jan, 2011

Orangutans fighting for survival

I MET a Wild Man of Borneo last week.

Mon, 10 Jan, 2011

A real whizz in house hunting biz

HOUSE-HUNTING is off most people’s agenda right now; perhaps I shouldn’t mention so painful a topic.

Mon, 03 Jan, 2011

Within a whisker of extinction

I VISITED Newtownmore in the Caringorms, Scotland recently.

Mon, 27 Dec, 2010