The Guardian

Winning images from national and international wildlife photography competitions of the year

Sandy, Bedfordshire The tiny bird comes on strong at the end of the year, an emblem of the season

The singers began rehearsing for the main event as long ago as September. At first light, the murmur of traffic would be punctuated with tentative trills or cadences that expired almost as they began. The gaps between plaintive coos of the wood pigeon were filled with sotto voce snatches of song, making up for a lack of volume with notes of high piercing intensity. There is nothing that sings quite like a robin.

Robin song comes on strong at the end of the year, as if the bird were living up to its status as an emblem of the season. The simple scientific explanation is that male and female birds are re-establishing pair bonds and territorial rights.

Designation of Bears Ears in Utah and Gold Butte in Nevada mark last moves to protect environmentally sensitive areas in administration’s final weeks

President Barack Obama designated two national monuments at sites in Utah and Nevada that have become key flashpoints over use of public land in the west, marking the administration’s latest move to protect environmentally sensitive areas in its final weeks.

The Bears Ears national monument in Utah will cover 1.35m acres in the Four Corners region, the White House said. In a victory for Native American tribes and conservationists, the designation protects land that is considered sacred and is home to an estimated 100,000 archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings.

Cougar killed after husky and owner injured in central Alberta forest during unusual attack on pet dog

A Canadian man punched a cougar in the face to stop it attacking his dog, police have said.

The incident occurred in a wooded area near a fast food chain in Whitecourt, central Alberta, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said on Wednesday.

A University of Edinburgh study finds birds are arriving at breeding grounds too soon, causing some to miss out on food

Migrating birds are responding to the effects of climate change by arriving at their breeding grounds earlier as global temperatures rise, research has found.

The University of Edinburgh study, which looked at hundreds of species across five continents, found that birds are reaching their summer breeding grounds on average about one day earlier per degree of increasing global temperature.

Brambles and birds did well, but bees dipped and butterflies were hindered, according to a review of the year’s wildlife and weather by the National Trust

Farmers made hay but rampant grass growth in 2016 made life hard for butterflies and even puffin chicks, according to a review of the year’s wildlife and weather by the National Trust.

The nation’s ever more variable weather brought both booms and busts, with brambles and birds doing well, and slugs flourishing. But bumblebees dipped and owls found field voles hard to find.

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire On a closer look, the trees are not still holding leaves at all but are full of bracts and seeds

From a distance, the common lime trees are a rich orangey colour. This looks wrong. The autumn leaves of these trees are buttery and the last of them blew down a month ago. The limes have a curious russet foliage, just like the coating of rust on the fallen leaves in a spring issuing from ironstone under the Short Woods a few miles north of here. The rusty limes look oddly out of time, as if frozen in an arrested autumn when all about them winter trees stand darkly naked.

On a closer look, the limes are not still holding leaves at all but are full of bracts and seeds. The bracts are small, oblong, modified leaves, pale and almost transparent when they open in spring, like solar panels on a satellite above the dangling cyme of two to seven flowers.

Cropland losses will have consequences especially for Asia and Africa, which will experience growing food insecurity as cities expand

Our future crops will face threats not only from climate change, but also from the massive expansion of cities, a new study warns. By 2030, it’s estimated that urban areas will triple in size, expanding into cropland and undermining the productivity of agricultural systems that are already stressed by rising populations and climate change.

Roughly 60% of the world’s cropland lies on the outskirts of cities—and that’s particularly worrying, the report authors say, because this peripheral habitat is, on average, also twice as productive as land elsewhere on the globe.

The President-elect’s nominees to key positions deny the existence, threats, and solutions to human-caused global warming

When speaking about climate change, President-elect Trump has flip-flopped between acceptance and denial, which suggests that he hasn’t put much thought into one of humanity’s greatest threats. However, what his administration does is far more important than what he thinks. Unfortunately, Trump has nominated individuals to several critical climate leadership positions who reject inconvenient scientific and economic evidence.

Urgent action is needed to stop the world’s fastest land animal becoming extinct, experts have warned

Urgent action is needed to stop the cheetah – the world’s fastest land animal – becoming extinct, experts have warned.

Scientists estimate that only 7,100 of the fleet-footed cats remain in the wild, occupying 9% of the territory they once lived in. Asiatic populations have been hit the hardest, with fewer than 50 surviving in Iran, according to an investigation led by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

A selection of images captured by photographers over the past 12 months, including a Donald Trump lookalike pheasant, kissing parakeets, and a lost sloth

Allendale, Northumberland The lights dance and shift, fading or intensifying, undulating in curtains of colour

As I open the back door, the path shows up in a rectangle of light, the gravel sparkling like golden sugar. My breath shows in pale mists that billow and dissipate in the air. The owls that called repeatedly at dusk are now silent, hunting for voles across the frozen haugh. There’s the sharp smell of cold, and the river seems much louder than it does by day.

Here, in the frost hollow of the valley, it is a couple of degrees lower than the surrounding hills. Cooler air, being denser, flows down into the bowl of the land. The grasses and seedheads of the garden become outlined in hoar frost, coated in spiky crystals, the shrunken browns and greys of dying foliage enlarged into something magical.

David Pitt, 77, went into cardiac arrest after highly venomous reptile bit him on the foot in his home in far north Queensland

An elderly man bitten by a taipan at his home in Queensland has died after spending nearly a week in hospital.

David Pitt, 77, went into cardiac arrest after the highly venomous snake bit him on the foot at his home in Yorkeys Knob, Cairns, on 20 December.

Calls for culls always surge after attacks by ‘salties’ but it’s their habitat not humans that will decide their numbers

For the people of Australia’s tropical north, a wary coexistence with crocodiles is a fact of life.

Protected for more than four decades after being hunted to near extinction, the ancient reptile – on the credible numbers that are available – has staged a remarkable recovery.

Ground-breaking genetic analysis shows native trees may be more resistant than Danish ones to the deadly fungus that has spread across Europe

British ash trees seem to have better resistance against a deadly fungus which is devastating trees across Europe, according to research which has decoded the DNA of the species for the first time.

The ash dieback fungus has spread rapidly since it first arrived in England in 2012 and the latest data shows it is now found in more than half of the country. It has already affected 90% of trees in Denmark and threatens to all but wipe out ash trees, one of Europe’s most common trees.

A year after severe floods in wake of Storm Desmond, John Krebs says ministers still have no coherent long-term plan to deal with it

Major flooding in the UK is now likely to happen every year but ministers still have no coherent long-term plan to deal with it, the government’s leading adviser on the impacts of climate change has warned.

Boxing Day in 2015 saw severe floods sweep Lancashire and Yorkshire, just weeks after Storm Desmond swamped Cumbria and parts of Scotland and Wales. The flooding, which caused billions of pounds of damage, led to the government publishing a review in September which anticipates 20-30% more extreme rainfall than before.

The 200kg mammal had to be tranquillised after climbing on to a car in suburban Launceston

A giant fur seal that spent Boxing Day wandering suburban Tasmania’s streets will be released back into the wild.

Police, and parks and sildlife officers spent much of Monday morning trying to capture the seal, which took a stroll along the streets in Newstead, Launceston – at one point managing to climb on to a car.

River Welland, Lincolnshire This path alone is a find. It’s like walking through a ribcage

Following the river, I got here. Not waterborne as I might have liked; it’s not a day for the canoe. Instead I looked at the map, for new places where the river touches the land. How many find country by looking near roads? But roads go where we wanted them to: the river goes where it has always gone.

One place caught my eye, a place called Spring Woods. Not for spring like the season, but for a series of springs rising on the river’s northern bank, away from roads on a bend where the Welland leaves Stamford, thins, and starts to slink.

Conservationists say about 80 creatures in zoos and private collections hold key to re-establishment of the endangered species

Fewer than 100 Scottish wildcats are now believed to exist in the wild, say leading experts, with no evidence of any decent sized populations anywhere in the country.

While it had been hoped up to 300 may still survive, recent extensive monitoring suggests a lower figure, with individuals or small groups clinging on in isolated and fragmented pockets.

Swimmers urged to stick to patrolled beaches after high number of sightings at favourite holiday spots

About 30 sharks were sighted along Victorian beaches on Christmas Day, prompting Fisheries Victoria to urge people to swim at patrolled beaches.

The Life Saving Victoria helicopter spotted 12 sharks off Anglesea beach, a favourite holiday spot on the Great Ocean Road. About 13km south, between 15 and 20 sharks were sighted at Fairhaven beach.