Damien Enright: Larks don’t quite make hay while the sun shines

Skylarks make two or three nesting attempts in the same farmland during their long breeding season

A proud cob swan and a motherly pen shepherd their clutch of 8 cygnets along the busy N71 road at Rosscarberry, Co. Cork. The family survives the 450 yard journey from their reed-bed nest to the sea.

The most arresting video that came through to me on my phone this week was of a pair
of parent swans leading their troop of eight offspring, only twice the size of day-old chicks, along the busy N71 road running alongside Rosscarbery Lagoon in West Cork.

They walked in a line extending more than a metre out from the verge. If one were to be anthropomorphic, and treat them as human beings with feathers, one might say that both cob and pen should have been arrested as irresponsible parents.