Michael Viney responds to queries and observations on nature.
I have been hand-feeding a robin for the past three years. (I have read somewhere that robins do not live much beyond three years.) Recently she landed on my palm with a fly in her beak that she dropped to the ground, and proceeded to fill her beak with bread crumbs. Then she dropped to the ground, picked up the fly and flew off.
Lou Mullen, Riverstown, Co Louth
Robins are known to live for 10 or 11 years.
Skippering a deep sea angling boat I get to see all sorts of unusual things - whales and dolphins, giant bluefin tuna feeding on sauries, watched by hundreds of gannets and other birds, including on one occasion three woodcock, presumably on their winter migration to Connemara.
John Brittain, Clifden, Co Galway
In the last week of May I saw a transparent jellyfish on Brittas Bay beach. It was 60cm in diameter with short tentacles, some quite thick.
Barbara Browne, Kilmacanogue, Co Wicklow
It was probably Rhizostoma octopus, sometimes called the root-mouth jellyfish.