26/05/2026
🦫 Cute, yet invasive, juvenile coypus (Myocastor coypus) I spotted today in Northern Italy. Spending a few days back in the town I grew up in before returning to Sligo, I've been noticing how local nature and wildlife have shifted in the thirty years since I lived here. These are just impressions, in no particular order.
🦔 I used to listen to hedgehogs shuffling through the garden at night - on any summer evening, you could count on spotting one. Neighbours left cat food out, there were no fences, only old rambling hedges and stashes of firewood. I haven't seen or heard a single hedgehog this visit, or in my past few visits. The hedges and woodpiles are gone, replaced by security fencing, gravel, and concrete tiles.
🐦 Where swallow nests once lined the eaves, only faint stains remain on the walls. As children, we would watch them launch out of their muddy nests at dusk, filling the air with that soft, rushing chatter. The skies above the rooftops feel emptier and quieter now.
✨ The fireflies, too, have long since vanished. They used to peak in June/July, and I have vivid, fond memories of the magic of a garden flickering through the summer dark. It feels strangely silent and eerie now - even the crickets with their lovely song have grown rare.
Meanwhile, magpies, buzzards, and cicadas seem more numerous than before, joined by newcomers who weren't here thirty years ago - some kind of charming, like the coypu, others considerably less so, like the tiger mosquito and Asian hornet.
Times are changing, and small, quiet losses have a way of accumulating unseen. I find myself wondering what my son's generation will consider normal. Whether the absence of the old nature and wildlife will simply become the baseline, unremarkable and unmourned.
I hope not.
