-
Charity advises replacing seed and nut feeders, where birds gather, with small amounts of mealworms, fat balls or suet
Garden birds should not be fed seeds and nuts over the summer months, the RSPB has said, in an attempt to reduce the spread of avian diseases.
Bird lovers are being urged to take down their bird feeders between May and October to help birds such as the greenfinch, whose numbers have plummeted after the spread of trichomonosis, a parasitic disease transmitted more easily when birds cluster around feeders in the warmer months.
Continue reading...
-
Brigg, Lincolnshire: The peas are in and next up are maize and wildflowers, but with our fuel use running to 50,000 litres a year, I have one eye on the news
Spring has sprung, and with warming soils we start planting our more delicate crops such as peas. With the chatter of skylarks in the background, we slowly drill our way across this 15-hectare field using a three-metre precision drill that carefully places the seed. Six weeks ago, this would have cost £7.50 per hectare on fuel, now it’s £15 per hectare – a severe shock to the farm’s finances.
It’s not often that an arable farmer’s mind is so focused on global events, but our fuel use tops 50,000 litres a year and the Middle East conflict is having profound consequences. Thankfully, we’re partly protected. Over the last seven or eight years, we have transitioned to a low-disturbance approach to establishing crops, disturbing the top inch only. This means less tractor use and healthier soil – a big priority here. Fertiliser prices are also a worry. Common practice is to buy a year’s worth every June, but prices are skyrocketing, and there’s no UK production any more to help us out.
Continue reading...
-
In a village in Norway, humans representing flora and fauna of all kinds meet to reimagine ‘nature-centric governance’
“My ask of humans is quite large,” says the northern bat to a room of reindeer, wolf lichen, bog, and other beings. “It’s a shift of consciousness, and an understanding that … we are a relation.”
The scene could come from a sci-fi novel imagining a more-than-human uprising. In fact, it’s from a recent “interspecies council” in Oppdal, Norway, in which non-humans – spoken for by humans – convened to discuss the region’s future.
Continue reading...
-
Campaigners say birds could die trying to access ancestral nests that were sealed during rail refurbishment
Some swifts returning to Britain to breed will be unable to access their ancestral nesting holes after they were blocked in a £7.5m refurbishment of a Derbyshire railway viaduct, campaigners say.
Nature lovers had appealed to Network Rail to unblock three holes which were among at least nine swift nesting sites on the twin viaducts at Chapel Milton, on the edge of the Peak District.
Continue reading...
-
New study describes what may be the first case of a unified community of chimps, in Uganda, turning on itself
On a June day in 2015, primatologist Aaron Sandel was quietly observing a small cluster of the Ngogo chimpanzee group in Uganda’s Kibale national park when he noticed something strange. As other members of the chimpanzees’ wider group moved closer through the forest, the chimpanzees in front of him began to display nervous behaviour. They grimaced and touched each other for reassurance, acting more like they were about to meet strangers than close companions.
In hindsight, Sandel said, that moment was the first sign of what would become a years-long bloody conflict between a once close-knit group of chimps.
Continue reading...
-
Residents of Fleetwood say continuous foul smell from Transwaste site is causing illness and making life hell
In the week that many families went to the coast for the fresh sea air or the tang of fish and chips, visitors to one Lancashire resort inhaled a rather more unpleasant aroma.
“Welcome to Fleetwood,” read the local newspaper headline. “The town that smells of bin juice.”
Continue reading...
-
This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world
Continue reading...
-
On Monday, a public inquiry will reopen, nine years after the plan was proposed and a toxic local battle began
When Fidelma O’Kane retired more than a decade ago from her career as a social worker and lecturer, she thought she would be “travelling and having a glass of wine and eating chocolate and reading books” while based in the quiet, hilly corner of rural County Tyrone where she has lived almost all her life.
It didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, an idle remark from a neighbour would set O’Kane on a path that would become an all-consuming mission. A mining company, the neighbour told her, was planning to drill for long-rumoured reserves of gold in the Sperrins, the low peatland mountain range in Northern Ireland where O’Kane’s family has lived for generations.
Continue reading...
-
Neill says ‘one of the most beautiful and remote places in the world’ will be permanently changed if Bendigo-Ophir wins fast-track approval
The grapevines in Sam Neill’s vineyard in Central Otago – a picturesque region known for its undulating hills and wines – are pregnant with pinot noir grapes, almost ripe for picking as autumn arrives.
“My family has been here for over 150 years. I’m connected to this land like nowhere else on earth,” the 78-year-old actor and winemaker says. “It’s perfect for wine. It’s great for tourism. And it’s one of the most beautiful and strange, remote places in the world.”
Continue reading...
-
Javier Milei’s reforms to the law will open up high-altitude areas to mining and risk water reserves already strained by the climate crisis, say activists
Saul Zeballos was born and raised in Jáchal, a community tucked into the foothills of the Andes in Argentina, drinking water from the river that bears the town’s name. That changed in 2005, when the Veladero gold and silver mine started operating in San Juan province.
A decade later, a major cyanide spill from the mine polluted the rivers in the San Juan region, raising fears it could affect waterways downstream in the Jáchal basin, although further studies have shown that cyanide levels remained at safe levels. Two further spills were reported in 2016 and 2017 and are still under investigation.
Continue reading...
