ANOTHER LIFE: The sudden silence of September is orchestrated by ravens: the throb of their wings, their hoarse exclamations in passing, seem to leave the hillside even quieter. A walk on the shore sends ripples through wagtails at the stepping-stones, sanderlings at the tide's edge, starlings sifting through the sheep on the duach: all the small, familiar gatherings of autumn, writes Michael Viney.
Such thistle-drift mornings can prompt me to wonder what is going on elsewhere in the Irish bird world, what seasonal marvels of rarity lurk for the twitchers in the bushes of Cape Clear Island, the ponds of Ballycotton.
A good run of autumn gales will deliver all kinds of vagrants, but mostly to counties Cork and Kerry, not Thallabawn.
The way the Irish bird-list has been growing is brought home by a well-merited second edition of The Complete Guide to Ireland's Birds (Gill & Macmillan, €24.99), first published in 1993. It is eight pages longer than the original, making room for accounts of more than two dozen "extremely rare vagrants" sighted for the first time in the intervening years.
Such birds "require great caution in their identification", as author Eric Dempsey is scrupulous to say. Indeed, they bring to about 250 the species for which the Irish Rare Birds Committee demands "documentation" - photographs or convincing field-notes made on the spot. It's a startling figure for one small island and shows the extraordinary range of birds that converge on us, if often only briefly and by chance. It also speaks for the diligence of twitchers with mobile phones, telescopes and far-flung field-guides. (How else to be sure of a great knot or long-toed stint from north-east Siberia, a bufflehead duck from the States, a needle-tailed swift from Asia?)
For our native birds, the decade since the first edition has seen enough change to need new notes on distribution and fresh lines on the maps: the corn bunting is finally gone, the yellowhammer is dwindling, even the lapwing is reduced to a hopeful shading of habitat. But there are one or two pluses as well: the southward advance of the buzzard, for example, and the coastal spread of decorative little egrets.
Above all, as Michael O'Clery's cover painting gloriously proclaims, we have the return of the golden eagle to the mountains of Co Donegal.
As the book is published, the second instalment of Scottish eagle fledglings have been released at Glenveagh, the Donegal national park - part of a five-year reintroduction project that could eventually see eagles reclaiming the skies from Donegal to Kerry. Five of the first six birds released last year survived 80 m.p.h. winter winds and fierce periods of snow, hail and rain (one was lost from an early accident) and the new batch of eight chicks will soon join them in roaming the mountains from Muckish to Glendowan.
It is early days, but a continuing high rate of first-year survival could mean fewer chicks to be kidnapped, under licence, from Scottish nests: perhaps nearer 60 than the 75 originally thought necessary. Meanwhile, the project's excellent website (www.goldeneagle.ie) plots the travels of the first radio-tracked birds and chronicles their adventures, month by month.
Like fond parents, the project team, headed by Lorcan O'Toole, has noted the first display flights, the first carrying of a stick, the first tumblings and mock-grapplings that promise pair- bonding and territorial claims. In April, they told how the eagle called One-Spot was mobbed by hooded crows and ravens near Glenveagh and then "suddenly checked its flight and dived from about four metres at a hare running along a bog track", It missed - but the team was delighted at this first sight of a Donegal eagle swooping on its natural prey.
Gratifying also is the continuing goodwill of the county's farmers, for the main threat to the project has always been human persecution rather than any natural hazard. Early consultation, and reassurance from the experience of Scottish sheep farmers, has brought the local IFA into the management programme. Much less lambing now takes place on the hills, and the golden eagle's predation on hooded crows, ravens and young foxes earns it good marks.
So does the attraction of tourists to the B&Bs of the county's inland farmers. As the birds roam ever wider (50 kilometres so far), their two-metre wingspan could bestow a very definite blessing on bungalows below.
The Complete Guide to Ireland's Birds is not the only countryside book to warrant a decade's updating in a welcome second edition. The splendid Book of the Burren, edited by Jeff O'Connell and Anne Korff (Tir Eolas, €18.50), has a lot of new and fascinating things to say and show about the Republic's most distinctive region.
The most dramatic events of the decade, chronicled here by Lelia Doolan, were the attempt to build an interpretive centre within the magical ambit of Mullaghmore Mountain and the ultimately successful campaign of resistance by the Burren Action Group.
There is further comfort for conservationists in the updating by Cilian Roden of the Burren flora and by Gordon D'Arcy of its wildlife.Plants thought to have dwindled to extinction have been found safe after all, and a remarkable limestone reef at the shore is now a Special Area of Conservation.
In the contributions from Richard Broad and Brendan Dunford there is good news about co-operative community planning (though ghastly things continue to be built) and a real appreciation of the farmers' role in the environment.
There is still no sign, however, of any comprehensive strategy that will manage and respect the Burren as an ecological region.
• During the holidays in Ballygar, Co Galway, my dad, my baby sister and I saw a black kitten. Four or five wrens flew around it chirping loudly until it ran away. They followed it down a lane until it ran off across a field.
Rose Mullen (10), Fairview, Dublin 3
They were probably a family of young wrens and they were brave to mob a kitten.
• We spotted a small green lizard with yellow spots, at about 1,000 feet above sea level on a boggy part of Mullaghcleevaun, in Co Wicklow. How did it get there and how will it survive?
Joan Barnewell, Portobello, Dublin
Lizards are often found on the upland bogs of Co Wicklow and they live on insects.
• I noticed in late August that a swallows' nest in our cow-shed held four recently hatched chicks. Is this unusual for this time of year, and is it possible that the swallows expect an Indian summer?
Angela Duffy, Moynalty, Co Meath
Swallows often rear two broods in the year and can lay up until early July. This year, when insects were scarce, a first brood may have been delayed. However, yours are late even for a second brood to be still in the nest. These young swallows will also be late for the mass migration southwards in September and may still be around into November. Keep an eye on them.
• Edited by Michael Viney, who welcomes letters sent to him at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo (e-mail: viney@anu.ie). Observations by e-mail should be accompanied by postal address.