TIP OF SHEEP’S HEAD, WEST CORK

IT’S amazing how smaltz songs can contain memorable lines, phrases that never leave one, no matter how saccharine or sentimental.

A TIGHT formation of dunlin rockets down the channel towards me, turns and disappears into thin air. Five seconds later and fifty metres away, they reappear as a sudden blink of light before turning and disappearing again.

Damien Enright reviews a chronicle of an Ireland fast fading.