Sherkin Comment journal provides a monitor of the magic of marine life in west Cork’s Roaring Water Bay

EVERY time I go to this island ‘in the sun’ I take print publications from another island with me, the Sherkin Comment, published by the Marine Station on that island in west Cork’s Roaring Water Bay. It can also be downloaded from the internet.

Each of the quarterly issues provides an absorbing read of well-written, superbly-researched articles on the flora and fauna of Ireland, marine and terrestrial, and on nature and climate in the wider world. It informs and educates, and here, in this entirely different environment (although the sea is the same, and some of the creatures in it) it connects me with the outdoor world at home.

In the latest issue, an article by Oscar Merne, the doyen of Irish and European seabird ornithology, now sadly, deceased, reports on curlews worldwide. Curlews have a place in my heart as they do in the heart of anyone who has ever heard their haunting call. Mr Merne wrote especially about the Irish population which he believed might well go the way of the corncrake.