Eye on Nature: Your notes and queries for Ethna Viney

The humble briar leaf throws up great colour at this time of year.
Larry Dunne
Rosslare Harbour, Co Wexford

In autumn, when the green chlorophyll in leaves dies down, the other colours in the leaf, the yellow and orange tints, the carotenoids, are revealed. The red and purple pigments, the anthocyanins, start to develop in late summer and are fully developed later in autumn, as in the briar leaf.

I'm sending a photo of lichen spreading throughout our garden, mainly under trees or bushes. I don't use pesticides, so how can I get rid of it?
Margaret Breslin
Bunbeg, Co Donegal

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Eyes on nature: Margaret Breslin’s dog lichen

It is dog lichen and a sign that the soil is in poor condition, badly drained, compacted and shaded. You need to aerate the soil, improve the drainage and then feed the soil.

Earlier we watched the fledging of seven great-tit chicks from our nest box. A couple of weeks ago, when I opened the box to clean it out, I found a dead, fully feathered chick in good condition, with no sign of decomposition or infestation.
Eithne Mackell
Blackrock, Co Dublin

The little chick could have died from several different causes – smothered, starved because it was too weak to compete, and so on.

During November readers sent widespread reports and photographs of unseasonable flowering and other activity. Noel Byrne saw jackdaws repairing their nest in Co Offaly; Dyan Smith from Co Clare saw the summer-flowering plants of the Burren in full bloom; Eileen Twomey in Killarney had a strawberry plant blooming in her garden; Kieran Burke in Co Galway had a crab apple in flower; and Mark Shorten in Cork had a blackthorn in bloom.

Ethna Viney welcomes observations and photographs at Thallabawn, Louisburgh, Co Mayo, F28 F978, viney@anu.ie. Please include a postal address