The first of May used to be celebrated as the ancient festival of Bealtaine (which gives us the Irish word for May). The weather has been bright and breezy over the last few days, though I’ve been laid low with a bad cold (not swine-realted, thankfully). I put up bird-feeders in the back garden this year and it is a real feeding frenzy outside at the moment. The first crop of sparrows have fledged and they are taking full advantage of the free grub. Since the last week of April, I’ve really noticed the difference in the weather. For one, it is bright when I get up for work at 6 am, and I get the treat of sunrise over Galway Bay as I drive along Salthill Promenade towards the train station. During the week, on a perfectly sunny morning, I spotted two young stags, each witha good set of antlers, on a hillock beside a solitary tree somewhere in Co. Roscommon. It was a perfect composition but I couldn’t take a picture, since I was whizzing by on the train. But the sight cheered me for the whole day.
I was talking to a farmer two weeks who reckoned that the weather was so good that anyone who had cut turf that weekend would be assured of saving it – once a skin forms and hardens on the sods, a bit of rain afterwards wouldn’t do it any harm. The picture above shows turf that probably wasn’t saved – it was photographed on May Day 5 years ago and had already nearly turned to mush from the rain.
The Derek Mooney show [RTE RAdio 1] has set up a webcam in a blue tit nest – click on the picture of the blue tit on the top of the Mooney page to access the live video.