Birds and their flights of fancy

Damien Enright on how borders are non-existent for birds.

NOTHING can be finer than to sit in a sheltered Irish garden in the first days of warm sun, surrounded with green buds and singing birds. It was possible to do this last week. It was also lovely, albeit somewhat sharper, to walk the paths that skirt the bay.

At Timoleague, I saw four cattle egrets roosting at high tide, along with a few hundred godwit, dunlin, oystercatchers and gulls. Among the latter were two relative rarities, Iceland gulls; apparently, they follow fishing boats from their icy home all the way to temperate Ireland. It’s worth the trip for the free grub.