Ducks quack, geese honk, swans whoop...

I LIVE beside the sea, where the arrival of the seasons is announced on the avian public address system.

Spring is ushered in, shortly after St Patrick’s Day, by the ‘kik-kik-kik’ of sandwich terns who have worked their way up the coast from Africa. In October, the gentle purring of brent geese, just arrived from Arctic Canada, will mean that winter has arrived.

This month, the plaintive whistling of common sandpipers can be heard, a sure sign that autumn isn’t far away. The Séamus Ennis of the wader world doesn’t stay on the coast for long; he’s soon on his way to Africa. Heading south with him, will be swallows and warblers, strange bed-fellows. Only one other Irish wader migrates in such company; the smaller version of the curlew, the whimbrel, also travels to the deep south for the winter.