The Beast from the East brought an unexpected gift; a brambling turned up in the mist net in my back-garden.

Some years ago, Tom McDermott created a pond on his farm near Naas in Co Kildare. Up to 120 mallard roost there nowadays, attracted by the grain he puts out for them.

THE corncrake, as everyone knows, is in trouble. Once common, this noisy little relative of the water-hen kept people awake at night with its rhythmic rasping.

PARTRIDGES, as everybody knows, frequent pear trees during Christmas, although no self-respecting one would be seen dead in a tree at other times of the year.

IT’S changing-of-the-guard time on the Dublin coast this month.

Richard Collins on the possibility that the great spotted has bred in Ireland

THE Wild Geese left Ireland to enlist in foreign armies after the wars of the 1690s.

I RINGED four blackcaps in the last month. What’s so remarkable about that you may ask; blackcaps are common birds nowadays.

OUR jays, coal tits and stoats are deemed to be special. The Irish members of these species belong to unique Hibernian races and are not to be found elsewhere in the world.