Wildlife
My battle of the bulb
The streetlighting engineer walked up and down outside my house trying to work out who was right: me, or my…
Why it’s boom time for bitterns
Bitterns are booming, both literally and metaphorically. These handsome brown birds from the heron family make a noise quite unlike…
Is the adder slithering towards extinction?
In early April, when the chiffchaff sings its drab little song in the leafless hawthorns, something is stirring in the…
We’re spending lockdown defending a family of mice
Austin My first Independence Day in the US for many years. Usually I’d be in Paris avoiding Texas heat. My…
Are you a lockdown eel or a pygmy goat?
I identify strongly with the garden eels in the Tokyo aquarium. Pre-corona, they were perfectly sociable. Come opening hour, when…
Vegans are brave – and they have a point
It was a clear and icy night at home in Derbyshire last week. I love these times and, before bed,…
The commercialisation of shooting may kill the whole sport
A few years ago I was sitting on the sofa at Sandringham enjoying a ham sandwich with the Queen’s then-head…
Why we should listen to elephants
Laikipia, Kenya ‘An elephant has fallen over,’ said the man running up to me. My first thought was that…
Wildlife obsessives must learn when to back off
Richmond Park is an eerie place at this time of year. It’s not just that it’s the deer rutting season,…
All hail the return of the crane
The RSPB regularly gets calls from people who have seen ‘a funny bird’. ‘It’s got a red head and it’s…
Building artificial beauty spots to protect nests is a bird-brained idea
While walking or riding on the beautiful heathland near my home, I have noticed a growing number of signs telling…
The heartbreaking story of Pecky, a young green woodpecker
Ever since I was a child, I’d always yearned to see a green woodpecker. With its scarlet cap and lime-green…
The biggest threats to gorillas (Cincinnati Zoo not included)
Gorilla warfare Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla, was shot at Cincinnati Zoo after he started dragging away a boy aged four…
What do we gain by burning ivory?
Burning stockpiles of ivory was meant to wipe out poaching. After nearly 30 years, is it working?
Snakes, kookaburras and bandicoots: a garden in Australia’s rainforest
What you can see from a tin house in the Australian rainforest
Your guide to the coming moth invasion
After this mild winter, you can expect a clothes-ruining epidemic. They’ve already got my best suit
‘I could do many things... but I could not listen to Bach’
Six years ago, on Good Friday, the journalist Melanie Reid was thrown off her horse while on a cross-country ride…
The noisy, filthy, scary glory of geese
They’re noisy, filthy, scary – and glorious. No wonder we have such complicated feelings about them
How humanity learned to love whales (and what they taught us in return)
How humanity learned to love them – and what we learned about ourselves in the process
Henry Worsley and the annals of heroic British failure
So near and yet so far Henry Worsley died in a Chilean hospital of peritonitis after being airlifted from Antartica,…
The Luangwa is far from being a happy valley
Simon Barnes opens with a presumably true idea, that we are all in search of our own versions of paradise…
The glories of the Galapagos
Robin Oakley on what to see in the Galapagos – if you can
The joy of winter birdwatching (and how it’s changing)
Our harsh December days are a temperate escape for some gorgeous birds
Anglesey: la dolce vita in north Wales
We teased our friends by saying that our holiday would be on a far-away island. The Maldives, perhaps? No, Anglesey,…
Just how tough a sentence was 14 years for Libor-rigging?
Rogue traders Former UBS trader Tom Hayes was jailed for 14 years for rigging the Libor market. How long could…
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