EYE ON NATURE

In a cottage used for many years as a holiday home in a concealed chimney we found a densely packed pile of dead bees, roughly…

In a cottage used for many years as a holiday home in a concealed chimney we found a densely packed pile of dead bees, roughly 3 feet x 6 inches x 6 inches. They were quite dry, with no sigh of decomposition, honey or honeycomb. Why did they enter the chimney, and why did they not fly out again?

Mary Ryan, Nenagh, Co Tipperary!

A swarm of bees had entered the chimney because it was not in use and presented a perfect place to start a new colony. They must have been there for several years to have reached such strength and volume. They could have died from disease, cold or starvation in a poor honey season. Their honey and comb would have been eaten by mice or some other scavenger.

In the last days of February I saw two birds, which I identified as kestrels, hovering and gliding and circling 100 feet or, more up in the sky. They were making a shrill, high pitched sound which seemed to drop about an octave at the end. My bird book says that their call note is a shrill "kee kee kee" while I imagined that it dropped distinctly at the end.

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Michael Van Dessek, Fahan, Co Donegal

The kestrel also has a double note call described as "keelee".

Several readers reported cuttlefish bones washed in at widely separated points on the coast: at Ballyconneely in Connemara, on Dollymount Strand and at Tramore in Co Waterford. One correspondent wrote of finding one some years ago on a strand in Bantry Bay, where she was told that it was called Teanga Bo Ballaighe (Tongue of a Speckled Cow), a descriptively apt name.