I'm sending you a photograph from Lahinch beach, where we found sea stones with white markings. The substance is very hard to the touch.
Austin Slattery
Ennis, Co Clare
They are the calcareous tubes of a serpulid marine worm, probably 'Pomatoceros triqueter', the keel worm. We have clad our chimney breast with them.
I spotted a beetle up in the Dublin Mountains that was trying to move a dead pygmy shrew. It was a powerful little creature, frantically running around and returning to the shrew.
Gary McNamara
Rathcoole, Co Dublin
It was one of the burying, or sexton, beetles trying to move the dead shrew to an area of earth to bury it. It usually takes two beetles to achieve this, to dig a hole under the shrew into which the animal can fall. The female then lays her eggs beside it and buries the lot. Both adult beetles and larvae would feed on the carrion.
My cousin Leo, a keen birdwatcher, was astonished to see a lone corncrake in his back garden on September 2nd. What could have caused it to end up in Drogheda?
Mark McCloskey
Drogheda, Co Louth
The corncrake has been absent from Co Louth for several decades, but BirdWatch Ireland had a report of a pair nesting in a field near Port Beach in 2009. Perhaps they have returned.
I'm sending you a photograph of a red dragonfly or darter taken in a garden in Deansgrange, Co Dublin, well away from river and marsh.
Colum Clarke
Bray, Co Wicklow
There could have been garden ponds nearby.
Ethna Viney welcomes observations and photographs at Thallabawn, Louisburgh, Co Mayo, F28 F978, or by email at viney@anu.ie. Please include a postal address