Picture this: beauty of Cork in photos

BOOKS make ideal Christmas gifts.

This year, there are several with Cork connections. Mike Brown, born in Yorkshire, moved to Cork at the age of 13. In Wild Water, Wild Light: Images of the West Cork Coastline, he takes readers on a pictorial camino from the Old Head to Glengarriff. The award-winning photographer’s subjects range from pebbles to panoramic landscapes. A section devoted to wildlife has pictures of whales, seals and birds. Artefacts are included, but people are not. In early-morning and late-evening scenes, cloudscapes merge with the ocean, the cradle of life. A one-line comment appears with each picture. Nor is anything more required; this mystical evocation of the shoreline has a transcendent quality beyond the power of words.

The coast is the theme of another book from Cork – Jim Wilson and Mark Carmody’s Shore-birds of Ireland. Shore-birds is the American term for waders and Jim Wilson is an expert on the black-tailed godwit. This book, however, doesn’t limit its canvass to these, but features every bird species likely to be encountered along our shores. There are sections on habitats, the lives of birds, and human impacts on the coastline. A chapter is devoted to Iceland, where many of our wintering birds breed. Though not a field identification guide, the detailed descriptions of each species, together with Mark Carmody’s marvellous photographs, should enable even an ornithological-challenged reader to recognise most birds. Another virtue of this excellent book is the wealth of information given in the species accounts. Shore-birds of Ireland is an ideal gift for anyone who lives near, or visits, the coast.