The fascinating Armoured Ground Crickets are perfect look-alikes for horror-film aliens

Back at home again, we are enjoying west Cork as much as we have ever enjoyed anywhere, probably more so because, although we regularly roam, it is here that we have settled, writes Damien Enright.

The ravens are nesting out on the cliffs at Coomalacha, over a cold, dark sea. Giant swells roll in from the North Atlantic, the swells that, as I write, impede the recovery of the bodies from the rescue helicopter that went down in Blacksod Bay.

The last time we saw the sea was in Namibia, the South Atlantic’s cold Benguela Current battering the Skeleton Coast. Here, at Coomalacha, rain sweeps in curtains over the cliffs where the ravens have built on the same ledge for as long as I’ve been recording them, now 27 years. It’s a passing shower. I shelter behind some furze bushes blossoming in resplendent glory, and the rain quickly lightens. The sea is suddenly blue again, with white surf creeping over the black rock platforms like crinoline.