Committee Member Andrea Reichstein grew up in northern Germany where the White Stork (Ciconia Ciconia) is celebrated as a very special bird. Whilst they don’t breed in Ireland, they do occasionally show up here in small numbers she writes. According to folklore storks brought babies to households in a basket […]
An emergency Bill raised in the Dáil by Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore proposes ‘to amend the Wildlife Act to add sprat to the Fifth Schedule, prohibiting targeted commercial fishing of the species. With depleting stocks of forage fish such as sprat already affecting our wildlife, Fiona Hayes Vincent says […]
There is an enormous ruin a couple of miles outside Bandon, on the Timoleague road. Drivers not speeding or using their phones can’t fail to see it! This was the old Allman cotton mill. When the cotton business failed in 1826, James C. Allman turned to making whiskey. Allman’s was […]
The ever-changing moon was an object of mystery and superstition in Ireland. The old Celtic druids placed great emphasis on the moon and arranged their calendar by it. It was believed that any work or business undertaken when the moon was growing (waxing) would be successful. Work begun when the […]
In 1935, Reza Shah, the self-imposed leader of Persia, renamed his country Iran. It had endured in some shape or form as Persia for over two and a half millennia. To understand modern Iran, it has to be framed by the influence of Reza Pahlavi and his son Mohammad who […]
If “Boldness be my friend” then Swedish native and blow-in to West Cork, Katarina Runske, 60, will surely never be lonely. One of West Cork’s most enduring entrepreneurs, who moved to Durrus from Stockholm as a young, single mother in 1989, Katarina has certainly never been shy of taking a […]