Two herons, two very different moods. The first one had clambered up into the bare branches like it owned the place, scruffy chest plumes blowing about and that sharp yellow eye scanning the park below. The second was posing in profile on the netting above one of the enclosures, side-lit by late sun that caught…

If there’s one thing that was a constant in the old Bishop Lucey Park in Cork it was the pigeons. They swarmed over the old city wall where humans were denied because of a fence around it. Sometimes the wall was thick with them, waiting for a child to come along and scream and laugh…

At the PolskaEire Slavic Festival in Cork yesterday, owls were part of the festival, with kids getting a chance to hold one, much to their delight. The tawny owl, featured prominently in the foreground, is known for its distinctive “twit-twoo” call, which is actually a duet between a male and female—one calls “twit” and the…