On sunny afternoons in late spring, ealy summer we sit at the back of our house here in West Clare and watch the larg rising from the next field and souring up singing until is disappears - we never see it come down but it reapeats this beautiful performance all day
For a treeless plain on the windswept West coast of Ireland, we are very lucky with bird life here, tits, herons, blackbirds, thrushes finches, robins, swallows, wrens... not forgetting the amusingly idiosyncratic wagtails - and loads and loads of starlings, jackdaws and magpies all in our back (euphemistically described) gaden - the only unwelcome visitor was the sparrow-hawk that snatcehed two small birds on its two visits, but thankfully, never returned.
We were in our local bar one night and people were waxing lyrical about the cuckoos when a man at the end of the bar muttered loudly, "Feckin' menaces - they start up at six in the morning and don't stop till six at night".
Jim Carroll