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Nature Watch

Nature Watch

Birdwatching, April 2023.

Published in Nature Watch

We are delighted to share Steve Jones's report from a fruitful week's birdwatching in April 2023.

Wood Sandpiper
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'Gulls in the harbour - storm at sea'

Published in Nature Watch

Birds as weather forecasters

Kingfisher - symbol of 'Halcyon Days'
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"BEE HAPPY" 2022.

Published in Nature Watch

Hvar's first observation beehive, celebrating World Bee Day, May 20th 2022.

"BEE HAPPY" workshop
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Brief Nature Watch, Spring 2022

Published in Nature Watch

Nature watcher Steve Jones paid a short visit to Hvar in April.

Hvar mongoose
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Beware: caterpillars processing!

Published in Nature Watch

The caterpillars of the pine processionary moth (thaumetopoea pityocampa) come out any time between February and April each year.

Pine processionary moth caterpillar nest
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Luki finds the first Orchids!

Published in Nature Watch

Luki is one of Hvar's happiest dogs, and one of Hvar's greatest nature-lovers. On March 15th, he sniffed out early orchids not far from Vrboska. 

Orchids, 15th March 2020.
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Hvar's Springtime Treats

Published in Nature Watch

Sunshine, mild weather and some occasional outbursts of rain are bringing Hvar's spring on at great speed.

Gomiljasta perunika
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Saving Wildlife and Biodiversity: Looking to the Future

Published in Nature Watch

November 2019 saw the launch of the European Citizens' Initiative petition under the title 'Save Bees and Farmers'.

Saving Wildlife and Biodiversity: Looking to the Future
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Dragonflies and Damselflies

Published in Nature Watch

These delicate-looking, exquisite creatures play an important part in the natural chain. They are especially useful to humans because of their voracious appetite for mosquitoes and other biting insects such as midges.

Emperor Dragonfly
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Eco Environment News feeds

  • ‘Dirty secret’: insiders say UK water firms knowingly break sewage laws

    Exclusive: Whistleblowers point to broader sewage scandal, with wastewater systems manipulated to divert sewage

    Whistleblowers say UK water companies are knowingly failing to treat legally required amounts of sewage, and that some treatment works are manipulating wastewater systems to divert raw sewage away from the works and into rivers and seas.

    It is well known that water companies are dumping large volumes of raw sewage into rivers and seas from storm overflows but an investigation by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations reveals that the industry’s “dirty secret” is bigger, broader and deeply systemic.

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  • UN livestock emissions report seriously distorted our work, say experts

    Exclusive: Study released at Cop28 misused research to underestimate impact of cutting meat eating, say academics

    A flagship UN report on livestock emissions is facing calls for retraction from two key experts it cited who say that the paper “seriously distorted” their work.

    The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) misused their research to underestimate the potential of reduced meat intake to cut agricultural emissions, according to a letter sent to the FAO by the two academics, which the Guardian has seen.

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  • EPA moves to make US polluters pay for cleanup of two forever chemicals

    Superfund law requires industries responsible for PFOA and PFOS contamination in water or soil to pay for cleanup

    The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday designated two forever chemicals that have been used in cookware, carpets and firefighting foams as hazardous substances, an action intended to ensure quicker cleanup of the toxic compounds and require industries and others responsible for contamination to pay for their removal.

    Designation as a hazardous substance under the Superfund law does not ban the chemicals, known as PFOA and PFOS. But it requires that release of the chemicals into soil or water be reported to federal, state or tribal officials if it meets or exceeds certain levels. The EPA then may require cleanups to protect public health and recover costs that can reach tens of millions of dollars.

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  • Pub shrub: landlords asked to plant up their patios to help wildlife

    Royal Horticultural Society hopes punters will be inspired by Salford winner of pub garden competition

    Pub gardens often feature barren patios, characterless lawns and – worst of all – fake grass.

    Now, the Royal Horticultural Society is asking landlords across the country to plant up their patios, saying they are full of untapped potential for urban green space and wildlife.

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  • Crunching worms, squeaking voles, drumming ants: how scientists are learning to eavesdrop on the sounds of soil

    More than 50% of the planet’s species live in the earth below our feet, but only a fraction have been identified – so far

    Read more: No birdsong, no water in the creek, no beating wings: how a haven for nature fell silent

    The sound of an earthworm is a distinctive rasping and scrunching. Ants sound like the soothing patter of rain. A passing, tunnelling vole makes a noise like a squeaky dog’s toy repeatedly being chewed.

    On a spring day at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research institution in Hertfordshire, singing skylarks and the M1 motorway are competing for the airways. But the attention here is on the soundscapes underfoot: a rich ecosystem with its own alien sounds. More than half of the planet’s species live in the soil, and we are just starting to tune into what they are up to. Beetle larvae, millipedes, centipedes and woodlice have other sound signatures, and scientists are trying to decipher which sounds come from which creatures.

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  • For the first time in decades, the elusive call of the ‘bunyip bird’ returns to Tasmania’s Lagoon of Islands

    Experts celebrate discovery of secretive and endangered Australasian bittern in recently restored wetlands

    The “bunyip bird” – named after a mythological river-lurking, human-eating monster – is as elusive as its namesake. Also known as the Australasian bittern, it is heard more often than it is seen.

    It means that when bittern expert Geoff Shannon discovered the bird at Tasmania’s recently restored Lagoon of Islands – the first time it had been seen there in 40 years – it was a “very special moment”.

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  • ‘Ban them until we know they’re safe’: Dutch flower growers urged to stop using pesticides

    Organic float at annual flower parade a sign of changing times amid concerns over chemicals’ link to neurological disorders

    Flower farmer John Huiberts stands next to a flamingo made of thousands of organic pink hyacinths. At the annual BloemenCorso, or flower parade, where decorated floats travel through 26 miles of fields in full bloom, his electric vehicle is a sign of changing times in the Netherlands.

    “It makes you proud,” said the co-owner of Huiberts Biologische Bloembollen, who went organic 11 years ago. “They say the chemicals are safe but I don’t know. It took me a few years to have good and healthy bulbs, but it is reassuring not to use them any more.”

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  • MP Caroline Lucas: ‘My biggest disappointment? Not to have been joined by more Green MPs … yet’

    The Green party MP on her stint as a chambermaid, a brush with the law and the importance of hairspray

    Born in Worcestershire, Caroline Lucas, 63, studied at the University of Exeter where she gained a PhD in English. She joined the Green party in 1986 and went on to become leader in England and Wales from 2008 to 2012, and co-leader from 2016 to 2018. Since 2010 she has been MP for Brighton Pavilion, the UK’s first and only Green party MP. At the next election she plans to retire from parliament. Her new book, Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story, has just been published. She is married with two sons.

    When were you happiest?
    Picnicking on the Downs with my family and dog – birds singing, sea sparkling, and mobile switched very firmly off.

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  • ‘Not the only birder in the village’: how citizen science is the bedrock of tackling species loss

    Birdwatching may have started out as a hobby, but active volunteers are helping bridge data gaps of threatened species and reaping real world outcomes as they go

    • Change by Degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint
    • Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

    Sean Dooley first started birdwatching as a 10-year-old with a notebook in hand at a place then known as the “Seaford swamp”, a freshwater wetland beside his primary school in Melbourne’s south-east.

    “I was just going out as a kid doing what I loved but recording the birds I saw as I did,” he says. On one of his early visits he met another birdwatcher, Mike Carter, who had been recording birds there and also at nearby Edithvale swamp for some years.

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  • Western Australia’s eucalypt forests fade to brown as century-old giant jarrahs die in heat and drought

    Dead and dying shrubs and trees – some of which are found nowhere else on Earth – line more than 1,000km across the state’s south-west

    A couple of weeks ago, Joe Fontaine stood in the middle of one of Western Australia’s eucalypt forests on another hot and dry day that was stripped of the usually raucous backing-track of bird calls.

    “I could hear this scratching-crunching noise coming from the trees,” says Fontaine, a forest ecologist at Perth’s Murdoch University.

    Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

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