The woods are lovely, dark and deep

I WROTE last week about standing at the foot of an old wood, near Timoleague, one bright morning, watching flights of dunlin over the bay.

The wood is called Cilmanistir, the wood of the monastery; whether it was planted by the monks at the 12th century Cistercian foundation at nearby Abbeymahon, or by the Franciscans in the 13th century monastery at nearby Timoleague, I don’t know. Perhaps St Molaga, the seventh century holy man who founded Timoleague, planted it.

The following evening, passing the same spot in the darkening light, I saw two or three thousand rooks standing in a long, shadowy line in a field on the other side of the bay. Soon after the last, late stragglers had flown in across the empty sky, regiments of the line began to rise and take to the air, sweeping across the bay towards the bare trees above me, carpets of rooks, furling and unfurling, climbing and falling.