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The 20 photographs of the week
The Rio Olympics, wildfires in Europe, the continuing violence in Aleppo – the best photography in news, culture and sport from around the world this week
Continue reading...The secret life of a tiny pond
New Forest It’s a muddy hole that holds water all year round. We could so easily have walked by without seeing it
The walking group stop as they see me peering into a net. “Can we ask what you’re doing?” I explain that I’ve heard there were shells in this pond and have come to find out what they are. As we talk, a blue-bodied dragonfly circles over the water. I tell them what it is and say that it has chosen this mucky pool as its breeding patch, and is probably waiting for a mate to arrive. “Thanks for the nature lesson,” they say with a smile, and head on.
This pond isn’t easy to find. We have only a rough idea where to look. To get to it we cross heavily cropped grassland with tufts of heather and ground-hugging gorse in among which is petty whin. This is a member of the pea family whose yellow flowers are carried on stalks with vicious thorns. We see it because it’s still flowering, much later than the guides say to expect it.
Continue reading...Pumped hydro for the cloudy windless days and nights
Tandem solar cells to capture even more light
A replacement for plastic
Zebra finches program offspring for a hotter world
Breakfast of the Numbat King
Holmes truths for Theresa May | Brief letters
Phil Jones (Letters, 18 August) says that tidal energy cannot possibly provide baseload power, because it offers energy in “four three-hour blocks a day”. Make that 80 three-hour blocks a day: the tide is a wave that takes 20 hours to move around the British Isles. True, one tidal project can’t provide baseload on its own – but Jones asks you to believe that tidal power can’t do it, period. That’s inaccurate.
David Robjant
Bedford
• There is indeed a problem of obesity in this country, and many different suggestions for tackling it (Letters, 19 August). Isn’t it rather counterproductive that a large audience is eagerly anticipating The Great British Bake Off – a programme dedicated to making us eat cake?
Julia Reisz
Walberswick, Suffolk
Sea potatoes wash up en masse on Cornish beach
Marine experts say mysterious orbs found at Long Rock, near Penzance, are species of urchin stirred up from sandy burrows
With their biomechanical, other-worldly appearance, these orbs look like baseballs reprocessed through the imagination of HR Giger. So their appearance en masse on a beach near Penzance this week left locals uneasy.
“I took one home with me, then panicked and put it in the bin in case it attacked,” said one dog walker who found hundreds on the beach at Long Rock, between Penzance and Marazion. His spaniel refused to go near them, he said.
Continue reading...The week in wildlife - in pictures
Burrowing owls at the Olympics, a pygmy elephant with very special tusks, and a rare white mynah bird are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world
Continue reading...Study identifies key species which act as warning signs of ecosystem collapse
The success or failure of certain species can be used to predict the future health of an entire ecosystem, research says
The Earth’s biodiversity is under attack. We would need to travel back over 65 million years to find rates of species loss as high as we are witnessing today.
Conservation often focuses on the big, enigmatic animals - tigers, polar bears, whales. There are many reasons to want to save these species from extinction. But what about the vast majority of life that we barely notice? The bugs and grubs that can appear or vanish from ecosystems without any apparent impact?
Continue reading...Zebra finch 'heat song' changes hatchling development
Gas supplies to rise and secret contracts to be scrapped under Coag reform plan
States agree to develop coal seam gas and make deals more transparent in an effort to increase competition and reduce prices
Gas supplies in Australia will be expanded and suppliers forced to publish previously secret prices under reforms agreed to by state and federal ministers at the Coag energy council meeting in Canberra.
All states except Victoria, which has a blanket ban on coal seam gas, agreed to focus on expanding onshore gas activities. The state government in Melbourne agreed to consider its position.
Continue reading...Water voles to be reintroduced to England's highest lake
National Trust will release 100 of the endangered animals, not seen at Malham tarn in Yorkshire dales for 50 years
Britain’s endangered water voles will reach new heights when they are returned to Yorkshire’s Malham tarn for the first time in 50 years.
Around 100 water voles will be reintroduced on Friday to the National Trust estate in the Yorkshire dales, home to England’s highest freshwater lake, in what the trust says is the highest-altitude reintroduction of the species it has carried out in Britain.
Continue reading...High on Kinder Scout, land at the end of its tether
Kinder Scout, Derbyshire Far from being a dismal, greasy world of chocolate peat, the plateau appeared luxuriantly green
There is something littoral about the northern rim of Kinder Scout, the plateau that includes Derbyshire’s highest point. Its start in life was estuarine. Its famous gritstone cap, abrasive icing on a sedimentary layer cake, began as infill of a vast river delta, a Ganges in north Derbyshire. As I picked my way westwards along this narrow shoreline, between Kinder’s summit plateau and the sky, the setting sun emerged below the level of the cloud. The moors to my right – Howden, Alport and Bleaklow – were suddenly bathed in light.
Related: Country diary: Kinder Scout: A silent brooding crowd on the moor
Continue reading...Central Hunter Valley eucalypt forest and woodland
Natural Temperate Grassland of the South Eastern Highlands
Market operator says no system security issues in South Australia
Culling 5,000 brumbies: 41 scientists back controversial Kosciuszko proposal
Academics say plan to slash number of wild horses is needed to protect delicate Snowy Mountains environment
A plan to cull more than 5,000 brumbies in the Snowy Mountains has received the support of leading scientists from around Australia.
Forty-one scientists from 16 universities have written to the New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, to support the proposed cull of 90% of the brumby population in Kosciuszko national park.
Continue reading...Dirty power games: Coalition steps on the gas
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