The study of reptiles and amphibians is called herpetology. In Ireland, unfortunately, it is a limited field – apart from the occasional sea turtle, we have only one species of native reptile, and just three amphibians. Some might blame, or thank, St. Patrick for banishing snakes and other poisonous creatures […]
For the first eleven years of my life, home was a small farm in England, where we kept pigs and chickens, goats and geese. There have always been dogs and cats, and in Ireland in the 1970s, we had guinea pigs and donkeys as well. But my adult life has […]
Have you ever looked closely at the head of a flatfish? Probably not, unless you are a fisherman or fishmonger. In Ireland, we generally like our fish beheaded; for many people, a fish is just a white fillet, or, in the words of the late, inimitable Keith Floyd, ‘an unidentified […]
Climate change can have a devastating effect on animals that have spent thousands or millions of years adapting to a particular lifestyle. In Ireland, the weather is always changeable – an early spring might encourage birds to nest too soon, only for their chicks to be killed off by snow […]
I once received a postcard from a friend in Greece which showed a fisherman bashing an octopus against a pier wall. Jane Grigson wrote, in her excellent ‘Fish Cookery’, that fishermen in the Mediterranean insist an octopus has to be beaten 99 times before it is fit for the pot. I […]
Animals often have misleading names: a white rhinoceros isn’t white, a black kite isn’t black. The common gull isn’t particularly common and the bald eagle certainly isn’t bald. A bream can be either a freshwater fish in the carp family or a member of two different families of sea fish; […]