Chirruping bullfinch a welcome visitor

LAST WEEK, hawthorn bushes covered in white flowers lined the bye-roads of West Cork, and the woods were bathed in deep purple with very few shafts of sunlight penetrating the thick canopy of the trees. Those beams that broke through spotlighted thick carpets of bluebells and mats of white ramsons on the forest floor.

On the roadsides, long acres of wild garlic, so called, nodded over the tarmac, and every sort and shade of wildflower lit the ditches. It was the blue haze of speedwell here, the delicate white of stitchwort there, with breaks of tall, golden buttercups beyond.

The first foxgloves stood taller still. Digitalis, they’re called in Latin, presumably because their tubular shape reminded Linnaeus, or whoever named them, of fingers, or of finger-stalls which would comfortably house a damaged digit. Even in their infancy this comparison holds good. When the flower tips first peep out of the green sheaths from which they will open they look like fingernails painted pink.