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Rubbish dumps can expose birds to contaminants, raising questions over whether landfill foraging helps or harms
Storks are gaining weight from a diet of literal junk, according to research that suggests the previously disappearing birds face potential health risks as a result of increasingly eating from rubbish dumps.
Landfill offers what appear to be quick and convenient meals for white stork populations in Europe. But new research suggests they may be gaining a short-term energy boost at the cost of hidden long-term health effects.
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That characteristic song was an unexpected delight alongside the chiffchaffs, blackcaps and whitethroats too
With hindsight, the late June heatwave was not the ideal time for my (very) old schoolmates and me to be cycling around Suffolk. Yet, despite the searing heat and the lateness of the season, the woods and hedgerows were still awash with birdsong.
Chirping chiffchaffs, melodic blackcaps and warbling whitethroats were everywhere, while swallows twittered over fields and swifts screamed past rooftops in the towns and villages we rode through. I even saw a cuckoo – which I momentarily mistook for a sparrowhawk – flying fast and low across the road.
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Barston, West Midlands: It’s been a strange year so far for butterflies, and I get my summer meadow brown moment beneath a roaring jumbo jet
On one of the longest days, my mum and I walk through Warwickshire countryside near her home beneath the flight path of Birmingham airport. The planes are loud enough that we have to pause our conversation as they thunder overhead. This is second nature to Mum but it’s jarring for me, especially as the landscape looks as if it might have remained the same for hundreds of years. We traipse tracks worn by time, people and wildlife, shaded by gnarled oaks and flanked by un-flailed hedges that burst with life. It feels peaceful, bucolic, ancient. Then the sky fills with a jumbo jet and the present hits us with a bang.
Amid the din, we make out chiffchaffs and great tits, robins and yellowhammers. Grasses reach up to my shoulders but are as tall as my much shorter mum, and sometimes I lose her in them. I get lost in them too, as meadow brown butterflies dance for a mate and I stop to greet each one of them.
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The scientific consensus is that burning fossil fuels drives the climate crisis, yet the world’s biggest oil companies are planning to increase production
As the world swelters in ever more dangerous heat, why are oil companies being allowed to turn up the gas instead of paying for the consequences of their greed?
That ought to be the question on everyone’s minds amid baking heat domes over much of the northern hemisphere, temperature records being smashed day after day, children dying in locked cars, hospitals filling with heatstroke victims and emergency services tackling wildfires.
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New Economics Foundation and Finance Innovation Lab suggest loan scheme backed by Bank of England could benefit up to 8m homes
Millions of UK households could save hundreds of pounds a year on their energy bills if the government were to approve low-cost loans for solar panel installation, research has found.
Solar panels with batteries are one of the cheapest ways to generate electricity and reduce energy bills, but with an upfront cost of about £6,000 they are still beyond the reach of most cash-strapped UK households while other countries forge ahead with installation.
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Buxton, Derbyshire: What a fine sight it is to see one throwing its head back in song, especially after a 50-year absence. Yet this is a journey of vulnerability
The wood warbler is one of my signature birds, a highlight of schooldays when a pair bred annually in Lightwood five minutes from my house. They were also widespread at other local sites and while we took them in our stride, they were always special too. Seeing the bird was less frequent than hearing its song, which comes down from the high canopy as a hard, brittle repeat note delivered with increased pace and volume, until it swells to a final exhilarating trill.
Yet the full impact of the species cannot truly be understood without observing the song’s delivery. His head is thrown back. His pink bill is agape and points skywards, often translucent against the sunlight, rather like the brilliant green of the beech leaves, to which he brings an unfathomable synaesthetic effect. His lemon breast is thrust forward and the long wings shiver as the sounds emerge, and with each climactic trill, the bird pauses, his wood is given back to silence, the warbler shifts location, and – way above your head – the song builds again.
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Exclusive: Campaigners argue news channel’s attacks on climate action ‘work in financial interests’ of Sir Paul Marshall
The hedge fund run by the co-owner of GB News almost tripled its investments in fossil fuel companies in the first quarter of 2026 to $2.8bn (£2.1bn), the Guardian can reveal.
Critics have accused Sir Paul Marshall of “cashing in on climate chaos” and have claimed the news channel, which frequently attacks climate science and action, was “working in its owner’s financial interests”.
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‘Sea cures’ are not new but the idea that exposure to oceans, rivers and lakes can be medicine for the brain is gaining traction
Watching the waves break across the vast, roaring ocean in front of him, Dave Phillips felt out of options standing on the cliff’s edge in Cornwall several years ago. The former British army corporal had lost a number of loved ones in quick succession, and the compounding effects of untreated post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his military tours had become all-consuming.
“I’m from a generation where we didn’t talk,” says Phillips, 67. “I tried dealing with it myself and ended up standing on a cliff edge thinking, ‘Yeah, this is the way.’”
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You can keep temperatures down without the cost – or environmental price – of air conditioning. Here’s some tips and tricks
In the UK we are used to worrying about our homes being warm enough, but after struggling to cope with high temperatures in May and June the race is on to cool them down before the next heatwave hits.
And while it might be tempting to swap your desktop fan for a portable air conditioner, there are lots of low-cost, more sustainable ways to stop rooms overheating.
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Jodie Heenan says her award-winning short film, Guardians of the Burrow, ‘looks and feels’ real
Scene: a dimly lit underground burrow. A giant Amazonian tarantula and a tiny dotted humming frog share the space, an unlikely duo captured in extraordinary detail.
Except, they haven’t been. Guardians of the Burrow, a short “wildlife documentary” by the Australian digital content designer Jodie Heenan, is entirely AI generated. At the weekend it won a prize in the Omni international AI film festival, adjudicated by a panel led by The Crow and Dark City director – and AI advocate – Alex Proyas.
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