27/03/08. Today was one of those gleaming windows in a very dismal month. Seizing the moment, I drove to the Boyne River as walking is a dangerous occupation on busy roads. At Queensborough, I came across a very bossy

shelduck, a drake. He drove every poor unfortunate duck from its feeding patch. You can see from the photo that he was quite a bully.




Keeping a diary is great fun, especially in the computer age - write with a word processor and spruce it up with a few digital photographs.

If you haven't taken bird photographs before, an easy starting point is a swan, a duck, a brave little robin or a visitor to your bird table. Those who stand and wait will be rewarded with a breathtaking photograph.

There is another kind of diary which is called a sketchbook diary. It is made up of words and paintings in an unruled copybook. This is brilliant, especially if you are good at drawing. They say a picture paints a thousand words. The paintings might be butterflies, bees, birds, or wildflowers. Give it a go. Sure anyone can draw a ladybird. If you are really into computers, you can scan your sketches and insert them into your word processor document.

Some diarists like to include verses of their favourite poems. Others only have entries for the most interesting days.

I mentioned that drawing swans and ducks is an easy starting point. But to draw them, you need to know where to find them. I will tell you about a great location. It is Rathesker Lake, a wild life sanctuary and picnic area, about a mile or two from Dunleer. To help the driver find it, the good people who look after Rathesker Lake put signs on the Dunleer-Philipstown Road and the Dunleer-Collon Road. If you do get lost, you will all have to turn your coats inside out. That's what you do when you step on a stray sod.

A gravel path curves from the car park to the lake through an avenue of trees. Watch out for squirrels scurrying up tree trunks and across a roadway of branches. You will hear the mallard before you see them. Where the path meets the lake, they'll be roosting on the bank. The drakes are the ones with straw-yellow beaks and glossy bottle-green heads. The hens are the mottled brown ones. Both have perky little tails. For a few crumbs of bread you will be mobbed. From the lake, more ducks, will paddle, waddle and throng around to gobble. Ash-grey cygnets will also lumber up the bank on their great sloe-black webbed feet and may even pluck a morsel from your hand. The adult swans on the other hand are very cranky and keep their distance. They have a constant scowl on their dials and will hiss if they feel threatened.

The lake itself is a large expanse of murky still water with an island to the west. Bull rushes, sally and lichen shrouded trees give it a swampy look. Mute swan, cygnet, mallard, coot and moorhen are the inhabitants

The main walk is around the lake. The well-ground path is bordered on one side by hedges full of throat-string music of finches. Beyond the paddocks for mares and hunters, there is a green-copper turret cap which rises above a circle of trees. This is Rathesker House. Further along the path, there is an undisturbed nook of wild cherry which flower in the Spring. A narrow sluice gate on the eastward side controls the level of the lake.

There is also a walk through the wood which skirts the path from the car park to the lake. The wood is deciduous except for holly and three mighty Scotch pines along its edge. I wonder will you find one of these mighty pines? It should be an easy tree hunt as they are the ones with needles rather than leaves. A stream which winds its way through the wood is traversed by bridge and stepping stones. On the woodland floor, there are anemone and celandine in the leafless early Spring and peeps of primrose before the bursts of bud and cover of Summer green. Autumn, the advent of the year's decay, is the most colourful time. Then, the wood blazes with golden-brown beech, scarlet bramble, red agaric and orange berried stalks of wild arum.

After duck feeding, sketching, picnic and walk, you will sleep till owl-light.

Submit a page of your sketch book or a day from your diary and we will choose a few for our Junior Corner.