Rebel red is thriving in city and county

ONE night recently, as I drove my daughter and her husband west from Cork airport, they spotted a pine marten with its bushy tail and white bib loping into the woodland skirting the Bandon River near Inishannon.

Last week, a brother-in-law who lives in Cork city’s arboreal Montenotte filmed a red squirrel that has been visiting his bird table for months. News of such sightings is heartening for anyone who cherishes the hope that some, at least, of our rarer native species are still hanging on and living in the woods and wild places around us.

It is especially reassuring that, once protected — rather than proscribed — by legislation, animals will protect themselves and, by natural selection, even one another. There is surely a moral here.