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Golf clubs, private schools and car washes may face tighter rules from water companies as England’s drought continues
Three water companies are seeking to impose severe restrictions on businesses as the drought continues across most of England, putting rivers and wildlife under huge pressure.
Golf clubs and private schools could be barred from using mains water to irrigate playing fields and courses, and commercial car washes stopped from operating, under “non-essential use bans” being sought by the companies.
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Declining stocks and increased fishing pressure have led to lower sustainability ratings for two popular cod alternatives
UK shoppers have previously been urged to avoid UK-caught cod and to buy European hake or coley instead – but now these fish are in trouble, too.
The Marine Conservation Society (MCS), an environmental charity, publishes its Good Fish Guide to help consumers and businesses make sustainable seafood choices. It uses a traffic-light system to rate seafood according to the health of fish stocks and environmental impact.
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Citizen scientists on UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme recorded insect visits to flowers during 10-minute surveys
Ubiquitous urban plants often derided as “weeds” are the most attractive to pollinating insects.
The autumn blooms of common ivy, rich in pollen and nectar, are the most visited by insects including bees and butterflies, according to an eight-year study.
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Despite their size and gentle appearance, puffins will fight to keep their catch of sand eels from an opportunistic gull
Few birds are as paradoxical as the puffin. It rivals the robin as Britain’s best-loved bird, yet most people have never seen one in the flesh. In spring and summer, they gather in large, noisy colonies to breed, but spend the autumn and winter far out to sea in the North Atlantic. And despite their small size, and gentle, clown-like appearance, puffins will fight to save their precious catch of sand eels from being seized by an opportunistic – and much larger – skua or gull.
Puffins, like penguins, have a very human quality, too. When the late Bill Oddie and I filmed puffins at a colony on Shetland, he memorably described them as “looking like old men in dinner jackets, waiting to go into supper at the club”, while the bird’s scientific name, Fratercula arctica, translates as “little brother of the Arctic”.
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High-speed video captures a previously unknown process that lets a honeybee’s two-millimetre stinger pump venom even after detaching from the insect’s body. Using a clear gel that mimics human skin as a target, researchers from Macquarie University detached the stingers and then filmed them in action pumping venom
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River Lagan, Belfast: Right now you can see winter in the black-headed gull plumage, and spring in the mallards’. Yet feathers are also vital to how birds even came to exist
On my walk along the towpath, I pick up a small grey feather. It’s a flight feather, probably from the wing of a feral pigeon. I stroke it absently as I watch the birds that are swimming on the river’s surface. Steeped in autumn sunshine, the different species are also feathered with other seasons. Summer is in the fuzzy down of a late-hatched moorhen chick. Winter gleams in the white heads of the “black-headed” gulls. And, while a mallard’s emerald-green head is, as yet, tatty as old velvet, his crisply curled drake’s tails herald the coming spring.
If the story of birds is told in their plumage, then moult – the shedding and regrowth of feathers – is the turn of a page. The moorhen chick reminds me that the first chapter is about keeping warm. I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, almost tucking the pigeon feather in as well. While our hair and birds’ feathersare both made of keratin, they differ in how they grow. In essence, hair extends as a single linear thread, whereas down feathers emerge frothing in all directions. As a fledgling matures, its outer feathers then lengthen, with a central shaft supporting branches that can flatten out and zip together to make a smooth surface.
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Team works to restore the sunflower sea star as 95% of these key underwater ecosystems have been decimated along the Pacific coast in past decade
Off the coast of Monterey, California, a team of researchers is gearing up for its first dive of the day into the cold and choppy waters of the Pacific Ocean.
On the back deck of the boat, Ashley Kidd, a co-founder of the non-profit Sunflower Star Laboratory, gave the divers their final command: “Dive No 1 … stars in the water.”
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Should you look for French seams or overlocking? Is dry-clean only a red flag? And how do you spot quality when shopping online? We asked the pros
• How to make your leather last a lifetime
Take a look at the outfit you’re wearing now: how many times have you worn each item? And how long have you had them? Just over 10 years ago, Eco-Age founder Livia Firth and journalist Lucy Siegle launched the 30 wears challenge to encourage people to buy clothes they would wear at least 30 times.
The 30 wears challenge is a great concept. As a journalist interested in sustainable fashion, I’ve enjoyed applying this rule for years and found the goal can often be surpassed, but with one proviso: clothing must be chosen carefully. The goal is only realistic if garments are of good enough quality to stand up to repeated wear. So, how do you know if your clothes really are well made? Does it mean you have to spend a fortune on them? Do you need to know the difference between a French seam and an overlock seam? And how can we judge clothing quality before buying if we are, like 37% of Britons, getting most of our clothes online? I spoke to experts to find out.
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A Thames21 charity citizen science project helps track plastic pollution in the capital’s river
On a pale-blue Sunday morning on the foreshore of the River Thames, 40 people are searching for what others have tried to lose. Dotted across a 250-metre stretch under Hammersmith Bridge, they are combing through layers of silt, seashells and dirty driftwood to find one of the river’s most stubborn problems: wet wipes.
“People come and walk here and it looks just like mud, at a distance,” says the organiser, Dr Felicity Rhodes. “And then you get closer in and see.”
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When populations fall, fledglings can struggle to learn the right notes to attract mates. But research on how birds communicate offers hope for species’ survival
Listening to birdsong is one of life’s great joys, but when researchers heard a particular tune emerging from a tree in a Buenos Aires park, they were especially jubilant. This arrangement was among those chirped by the local rufous-collared sparrows in the 1960s, but had since disappeared from the area.
That was until scientists created a computer-generated rendition, curious to find out if birds might consider it realistic enough to imitate. Less than three months later, a local avian resident began to copy parts of the song.
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