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Bedgebury Pinetum, Kent Checked and weighed by surer hands than mine, I felt the hollow-boned weightlessness of a blue tit in the cup of my palm

There’s something extraordinary about holding a bird in the palm of your hand. For me, out bird-ringing with volunteers from the British Trust for Ornithology one brisk November morning, it was a blue tit. It had been checked and weighed by surer hands than mine and then placed delicately in the cup of my palm. A familiar bird transformed by such proximity. I felt the hollow-boned weightlessness of it, the fast-fluttering life that sat there for a moment, looking around with black-bead eyes. Its feathers were iridescent in the low slant of the winter sun. Then it was gone, up into the trees, and it was as if I’d lost something precious.

We were at Bedgebury Pinetum in Kent just after dawn. It was a blustery day and the pines soughed and sighed, the resident ravens cronking overhead. High in the canopy were hawfinches and crossbills, birds that twitchers come from miles to see. We had set mist nets near the pinetum’s eastern edge, up above the lily pond. These nets are so fine as to appear transparent to the birds, who fly into soft pockets and are gently dandled until they can be extracted, ringed and measured.

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WARNING: this footage may distress some readers.

Footage released by activist group Sea Shepherd shows Japanese fishermen harpooning whales in the Southern ocean before dragging them, still alive, along the side of the vessel. The publication of the video follows a five-year legal battle with the Australian government to make the images public. The footage was filmed in 2008 by Australian customs officials and requests from Sea Shepherd in 2012 for the film were denied by the government amid fears it would damage international relations. Sea Shepherd’s managing director, Jeff Hansen, said: ‘The Australian government has chosen to side with the poachers instead of defending the whales of the Southern ocean.’

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Vestas Australia, the only global energy company dedicated exclusively to wind energy - today announced the appointment of Peter Cowling as Country Head /VP, Sales Australia and New Zealand.

New "dual-pol" weather radars promise to spot large hailstones forming inside thunderstorms, giving people a heads-up when it's about to hail. Joshua Soderholm, Research scientist, The University of Queensland Alain Protat, Principal Research Scientist, Australian Bureau of Meteorology Hamish McGowan, Professor, The University of Queensland Matthew Mason, Lecturer in Civil Engineering, The University of Queensland Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Ambitious solar and storage developer Lyon Group embroiled in an escalating court battle with US solar giant First Solar, just as it seeks to complete sale of some of its biggest projects.

Big win for battery storage in change to market settlement periods that will be introduced .... in four years time.

The red kite is still at risk from poisoning despite the success of conservation schemes, say scientists.

Australia has more than 100 places on its National Heritage List. Find out where they are with this new map.

Carnegie Clean Energy set to build 10MW Northam Solar Farm, after selection of indigenous co-equity investors in the merchant project.

NT govt supports plant to take Territory to 50% renewables by 2030, including funding for household solar and battery storage, and a plan for reverse solar auctions.

ARENA says battery storage will struggle to make ends meet because of undeveloped nature of some key markets in Australia.

AEMC chief John Pierce has had a long run at AEMC chief, perhaps long enough. And why sale of Loy Yang B is good for competition.

Homeowners will be able to make a positive impact on their finances as well as the environment, through a new solar initiative launched this week by NAB and Origin.

The current chaos around climate and energy policy brings to mind George Santayana’s caution that: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. That is exactly what we are witnessing.

Young people are taking to bins to protest food waste. Chamila Perera, Lecturer, Swinburne University of Technology Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Guardian readers share their stories on the success of dowsing

Re your article “Water firms admit they still use ‘medieval’ dowsing rods” (22 November): in the 1950s, our family lived on a farm in an isolated part of northern Somerset. The farmer submitted an application for planning permission to build two new houses in a field, including details of water supply and drainage (there were no mains services at all). He had already walked over the field with his L-shaped birch twig, and we watched as the point of the L creaked downwards in his hands as he walked over a spot he had marked on the ground. A man from the water board arrived and looked at the site with geological maps. After half an hour he said “it’s anyone’s guess”, went back to his van and brought back his own birch twig. When he walked across the mark, the point of the L creaked upwards in his hands. He said that was the right place to dig a well, which the farmer and my father dug, and it never dried up.

I believe that when dowsers were tested many years ago, they were taken to a field under which was an underground reservoir. None of them located water. The farmer in Somerset told us that his own technique of dowsing only locates running water, so the reservoir would not have been indicated by this method.

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A structure that allows sound information to be processed extremely fast has been identified in bats' brains.

The EU will renew glyphosate's licence for five years, despite some health concerns.

EU votes to reauthorise the pesticide, ending a bitterly fought battle that saw 1.3 million people sign a petition calling for a ban

Glyphosate, the key ingredient in the world’s bestselling weedkiller, has won a new five-year lease in Europe, closing the most bitterly fought pesticide relicensing battle of recent times.

The herbicide’s license had been due to run out in less than three weeks, raising the prospect of Monsanto’s Roundup disappearing from store shelves and, potentially, a farmers’ revolt.

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Targets for reducing illegal levels of NO2 pollution from vehicles will be achieved more quickly than the government expects, a study says.