The Guardian

Every year, after mating season, millions of red, yellow and black landcrabs invade Playa Girón, on the eastern side of the Bay of Pigs or Bahía de Cochinos. The crabs migrate from the surrounding forests to the bay to spawn in the sea

Wenlock Edge We have lost so many old orchards here that this young tree will hopefully encourage future planting

To misquote the old Andrews Sisters song about a May Day wedding: “I’ll bewitch you, in apple blossom time.” Apple blossom has powerful emotional, cultural and ecological significances, each of which is inseparable in these woozily psychedelic days of spring.

There’s a small apple tree planted a few years ago behind the windmill on top of the hill. It’s grafted from a scion cut from a hedge apple about half a mile away as the crow flies, selected for its beautiful blossom. This simple act encapsulates centuries of cultivation and the ancient art of growing the branches on one tree on the roots of another.

Matt Canavan accuses bank of conflict of interest over policy to limit lending for coal projects to ‘existing coal-producing basins’

Matt Canavan has redoubled his attack on Westpac – accusing the bank of a conflict of interest over financial links to the Newcastle port – as a direct competitor to future coalmines in the Galilee basin.

“This stinks to high heaven,” the resources minister told the ABC in response to the bank’s new policy to limit lending for new thermal coal projects to “existing coal-producing basins”.

Adult whale Lulu was one of UK’s last resident pod and had never produced a calf, signalling pollutants in her blubber cause infertility

One of the highest concentrations of toxic pollutants ever recorded in a marine mammal has been revealed in a Scottish killer whale that died in 2016.

The adult whale, known as Lulu, was a member of the UK’s last resident pod and a postmortem also showed she had never produced a calf. The pollutants, called PCBs, are known to cause infertility and these latest findings add to strong evidence that the pod is doomed to extinction.

Urbanisation of marine environment impacts on seal hearing and is comparable to noise pollution of inner cities

Seals are being temporarily deafened by underwater noise in the UK’s busy shipping lanes, a new study suggests. Researchers compared the experience of the seals to that of people living amid the din of inner cities.

Dr Esther Jones, an ecologist from the University of St Andrews, said: “Like humans living in busy, noisy cities, some seals live in areas where there is a lot of shipping traffic and associated noise.

May brings the joys of spring for the northern hemisphere while winter is a step closer for the southern hemisphere. We’d like to see your wildlife photos

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Whether you are in the northern hemisphere where creatures are enjoying spring, or you’re in southern climes edging closer to winter, May, which brings change, is a great time for wildlife photography.

Related: Corvids build castles in the sky

The Guardian has expanded its global environment desk with three new appointments

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Last November, the Guardian environment columnist Bill McKibben made the grim prediction that the “damage from the US election would be measured in geologic time”.

One hundred days and counting into Trump’s presidency, there’s little reason for optimism. The former CEO Of ExxonMobil is our secretary of state. The new head of the US Environmental Protection Agency wants to dismantle the agency. The Keystone pipeline has been revived, the clean power plan is in peril, and vast swaths of the Atlantic seaboard may be opened to offshore drilling.

No 10 will not challenge high court judgment, which rejected ministers’ efforts to keep policy secret until after election

A draft plan to tackle air pollution will finally be published within the next week, after No 10 said it would not challenge a court ruling forcing the government to release information before the election.

Theresa May’s official spokesman said the government would not appeal against the high court judgment, which rejected attempts by ministers to keep the policy under wraps until after the poll.

A terrible new white paper tries to make the case that carbon pollution isn’t dangerous

Although Trump’s EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has been among the biggest proponents of withdrawing America from the Paris climate agreement (using bogus ‘blame China’ arguments to make his case), climate deniers have been unhappy with him. That’s because Pruitt doesn’t want to challenge EPA’s carbon pollution endangerment finding – he thinks it would be a lost cause. A group of contrarian scientists released a white paper trying to pressure him to attack the finding anyway.

After Trump’s revival of the pipeline project, some communities along its route are preparing to fight back while others see a promise kept by the US president to ‘make America great again’. The Guardian drove along the proposed route of the pipeline through three red states – Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska – to hear what those who will be affected have to say about it

The Rhône glacier in the Swiss Alps is shrinking due to climate change. Artist Noémie Goudal produced and photographed an installation of the changing landscape for Project Pressure

Claxton, Norfolk Once the nest building instinct has been unleashed it is remarkable how lavish their designs can be

It is wonderful to walk down the lane on to the marsh and see how, despite April’s refrigerated interlude, spring is building still. In some cases, this is literally true, not just the hawthorn hedges, which are fattening up with fresh leaves and blossom, but also the jackdaws, whichjourney back and forth with great gobbets of moss and cattle hair in their beaks. Some are so front-loaded with construction materials that one wonders how they see to navigate.

Corvids are generally great architects, and once the instinct has been unleashed it is remarkable how lavish their designs can be. The standard rook nest is a rough 15cm-deep stick platform, but recently I have come across some where the foundations are in a deeply forked situation. They have gone on until these twisting columns of sticks, which are known as “castles”’, are more than a metre tall.

Bush Heritage Australia will try to replicate the tiny outback fish’s natural spring habitat in the hope of thwarting its nemesis

In a tiny patch of the Australian outback, a living link to a continent’s ancient past is holding out against a modern day invader.

Just.

Proposals to raise legal limits of sulfur dioxide by more than 12 times linked directly to sale of US-owned smelter in the Andes

It’s a fairly common tactic in Peru to issue a significant or potentially controversial decision or resolution when you hope no one is paying attention. 24, 26 or 31 December, for example. The Environment Ministry (MINAM) recently adopted that ploy by releasing, just before the Easter week holiday, proposals to dramatically roll back certain air quality standards across the country.

The draft National Environmental Quality Standards for Air propose maintaining the maximum legal limits for nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulphide, lead and benzene, but doubling the limit for some particulate matter. Most startling, they propose increasing the limit of sulfur dioxide by more than 12 times.

Twitchers charter planes to North Ronaldsay island hoping to spot first red-winged blackbird ever recorded in Europe

It is a small brown bird with no ostentatious marking and unremarkable to the untrained eye. But a single female American blackbird spotted on a remote island in the Orkneys has prompted birdwatchers to charter planes, drive through the night and catch ferries to in the hope of catching a glimpse of the hitchhiking bird.

More than 15 planes have landed on North Ronaldsay in the past two days, and dozens of birdwatchers have arrived by boat, since news spread among birding enthusiasts that the first red-winged blackbird ever spotted in Britain – and indeed in Europe – had landed on this distant Scottish outpost.

People who habitually feed birds as well as cafes and restaurants that improperly dispose of food to be hit with £80 fine

Seaside residents and holidaymakers who feed seagulls could be fined under new council powers in an effort to stop the birds attacking people for food.

People who feed the often aggressive birds could be hit with an £80 fine as part of public space protection orders (PSPOs) issued by East Devon district council.

Otley, West Yorkshire It ran around the back of our house, connecting it to the fields via a conduit of green shadows

Mid-run, I suddenly stop by the inconspicuous entrance. I have passed it many times, but the thought to revisit never occurred until now. As an adult, with my sense of scale expanded, perhaps it had acquired a sort of invisibility, vivid in the memory but overlooked in the present.

You might refer to it as a ginnel. You might even, depending on where you grew up, know it as a gennel, a guinnel or a jennel; a yard, a 10-foot or a close; a chare, a chure or a chewar; a jitty, a jigger or an ennog.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 1 May 1917

April 30
All weekend, from dawn to dusk, the chiff-chaff throbbed in the trees, its small body jerking with each emphatic note; everywhere in the Delamere woods I heard the cheerful music of the willow wrens, which, a friend told me, reached here in numbers on the night of the 25th-26th, though he heard several at Marbury on Wednesday. Yesterday I heard a cuckoo before I was up, and it was calling at Bowdon on the previous day; the corncrake, which usually arrives about the same time as the cuckoo, was seen at Hatchmere in the middle of the week. It was seen, though not heard, for the grass, though now full of “sweeps,” is still short, and the corncrake prefers to call when it is hidden. Swallows have been joined by house martins – on Thursday a number were seen together on one Cheshire pool for the first time, though odd martins had been noticed earlier in other places. Yesterday the tree pipit was singing as it descended towards its perch, and a beautiful male redstart was in one of the woods, where the anemone is now plentiful and marsh marigolds, are at last appearing. Primroses are out on the banks with other belated spring flowers – veined wood sorrel, moschatel, dog violets, and golden saxifrage. Bumble-bees are stirring the wind-dried leaves as they prospect for future nesting holes, and hive-bees are busy in the garden. Spring has at last asserted itself.

Witness says ‘all of the back of her leg was kind of missing’ after attack that experts say likely involved a great white or seven-gill shark

A shark attacked a woman wading in the ocean with friends, tearing away part of her upper thigh in the ocean off a popular southern California beach, authorities and witnesses said on Sunday.

The attack occurred on Saturday near San Onofre State Beach in northern San Diego County.

US president criticises deal where ‘the United States pays billions of dollars while China, Russia, and India ... will contribute nothing’. His comments came as thousands of people across the US marched in rain, snow and sweltering heat to demand action on climate change — mass protests that took aim at his agenda for rolling back environmental protections.