The Guardian

The discovery of a hundred-million-year-old specimen, beautifully preserved in amber, shows how the birds of yesteryear hatched fully prepared for takeoff

We’re back with News from the World of Old Feathers, and Lida Xing and colleagues strike again. They describe a new amber specimen of a Cretaceous bird with parts of the head, feet and wings beautifully preserved. Why is this important? After all, we have seen feathers in amber before, we have seen wings of juvenile birds in amber and last year we even had a piece of an actual dinosaur in amber. Haven’t we reached peak amber? I like to think we have not*.

What Xing and his team of paleontologists from China, Canada and the US describe in a new paper is a hatchling Enantiornithine bird that became trapped in sticky conifer resin about 99 million years ago, in what is now Burma. Although Enantiornithes looked superficially like modern birds – which is to say they were feathered and likely to have been good fliers – the anatomy of their shoulder girdle is different, they were toothed and the fingers in their wing had claws. The newly described specimen, nicknamed Belone, offers an unparalleled glimpse into feather development and molting in young Enantiornithes.

Wenlock Edge, Shropshire Birds verminous and ominous, persecuted and mythologised, foolproof, climateproof, futureproof

Two crows fly into a tree towards the end of a long dreamy summer’s day. They had been walking their beat on Windmill Hill, through the flowering cocksfoot, lady’s bedstraw, pyramidal orchids and whitlowgrass, hunting there as they have done every day for 15 years I know of. They now perch together as if watching the sunset, and so do I.

In the same place doing the same thing, what can I know of the corvid mind? We know corvid intelligence is equal to that of primates. We know early people were intimately connected to the crow tribes and there are funerary relics from more than 5,000 years ago containing the bones of crows and ravens buried in this land. This belongs to ancient rituals that suggest a mutual trade in death; these were birds of omen long before they were thought of as vermin.

In an excerpt from his book on Australian birdlife, Geoffrey Maslen finds there’s method in magpies’ madness

Hostilities have broken out up and down the east coast of Australia. The enemy strikes from above, and always attacks from behind. Casualties have been reported and the dive bombings that began with the onset of spring have become more frequent. Zoologists have been called in to devise some means of defence but they have also suffered from the swift and silent enemy.

Related: Penguin Bloom: how a scruffy magpie saved a family

Environmental Protection Agency and army propose ending clean water rule to hold ‘substantive re-evaluation’ of which bodies of water should be protected

The Environmental Protection Agency is poised to dismantle the federal clean water rule, which protects waterways that provide drinking water for about a third of the US population.

The EPA, with the US army, has proposed scrapping the rule in order to conduct a “substantive re-evaluation” of which rivers, streams, wetlands and other bodies of water should be protected by the federal government.

The restoration of the ozone hole, which blocks harmful radiation, will be delayed by decades if fast-rising emissions of dichloromethane are not curbed

The restoration of the globe’s protective shield of ozone will be delayed by decades if fast-rising emissions of a chemical used in paint stripper are not curbed, new research has revealed.

Atmospheric levels of the chemical have doubled in the last decade and its use is not restricted by the Montreal protocol that successfully outlawed the CFCs mainly responsible for the ozone hole. The ozone-destroying chemical is called dichloromethane and is also used as an industrial solvent, an aerosol spray propellant and a blowing agent for polyurethane foams. Little is known about where it is leaking from or why emissions have risen so rapidly.

A Greenpeace expedition around Scottish coastlines has found plastic in the feeding grounds of basking sharks, in the habitats of puffins, seals and whales, and in the nests and beaks of seabirds

A Greenpeace research expedition into plastic waste finds devastating pollution on Scottish beaches and seabird colonies

Plastic bottles and packaging are overrunning some of the UK’s most beautiful beaches and remote coastline, endangering wildlife from basking sharks to puffins.

A Greenpeace research ship has spent the past two months touring the Scottish coast and islands assessing the impact of plastic waste.

Fourteen critical bottlenecks, from roads to ports to shipping lanes, are increasingly at risk from climate change, say analysts

Increasingly vulnerable “chokepoints” are threatening the security of the global food supply, according to a new report. It identifies 14 critical locations, including the Suez canal, Black Sea ports and Brazil’s road network, almost all of which are already hit by frequent disruptions.

With climate change bringing more incidents of extreme weather, analysts at the Chatham House thinktank warn that the risk of a major disruption is growing but that little is being done to tackle the problem. Food supply interruptions in the past have caused huge spikes in prices which can spark major conflicts.

Allendale, Northumberland Every now and then I hear the peep of what sounds like a single owlet, but I can’t be sure

It can take a while for owls to accept a nest box. My homemade wooden one was built to a chimney design from the RSPB website and set on a sycamore branch at the recommended 45-degree angle. My garden has a plentiful supply of voles, which are owls’ main prey. I have waited five years for one to move in.

For the past couple of weeks, the signs had been there: hysterical blackbird calls and a fluster of blackcaps and dunnocks signalling the daytime presence of a tawny owl in my garden. I have watched her edging closer to the box as the days have passed, first on a level spur of the ash tree, next on the side branch of a sycamore, and then so near the house that I could study her as I ate my breakfast.

The move follows demonstrations in the city and the decision by China to ban their own trade

Hong Kong has launched a landmark bill to ban its domestic ivory trade, amid accusations that authorities were lagging behind China in phasing out the market.

Hong Kong is home to the world’s biggest retail ivory market, with more items for sale than anywhere else in the world. The majority of buyers are mainland Chinese, who smuggle the worked ivory across the border. Hong Kong is also perpetuating the illegal market: more than a third of licensed ivory dealers have been found to advise buyers on ways to smuggle ivory out of the city, according to a recent report by Traffic.

Leaders from more than 250 cities gathered at the US Conference of Mayors in Miami Beach to vote on a resolution to reach a 100% clean energy goal

Mayors meeting in Florida are considering an ambitious commitment to have US city governments run entirely on renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2035.

Related: New Orleans mayor: US climate change policy cannot wait for Trump

A blue shark caused panic on Saturday after being seen by bathers close to the beaches of Cala Major and Can Pastilla. The animal was captured on Sunday, with local media reporting that it was suffering from a head wound, possibly caused by a harpoon

• Blue shark captured after Mallorca beach panic
  

John Hume to take advantage of court ruling allowing domestic sales of horns, despite international ban

A rhino breeder in South Africa is planning an online auction of rhino horns to capitalise on a court ruling that opened the way to domestic trade despite an international ban imposed to curb poaching.

The sale of rhino horns by breeder John Hume, to be held in August, will be used to “further fund the breeding and protection of rhinos”, according to an auction website.

National Infrastructure Commission says UK must maintain ties with EU to save key projects such as third runway and HS2

A hard Brexit would be a “calamity” that would spell the end for the Heathrow expansion, according to the chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission.

While the airport has argued that Brexit makes its third runway ever more important, Andrew Adonis said private investment in infrastructure would be off the table unless Britain could maintain ties with the EU.

In a dig at Trump’s climate change inaction, French president welcomes the green campaigner and says there will be ‘no new exploration licences’

The new French government has sought to further burnish its green credentials with the announcement it is to stop granting licences for new oil and gas exploration.

In his first major intervention since Emmanuel Macron’s election victory, the ecological transition minister, Nicolas Hulot, told the broadcaster BFMTV there would be “no new exploration licences for hydrocarbons”.

Stiegler Gorge dam on the Selous park, a world heritage site listed as ‘in danger’, will cause irreversible damage, say conservationists

Plans to build a huge hydroelectric dam in the heart of one of Africa’s largest remaining wild areas have dismayed conservationists who fear that the plans will cause irreversible damage to the Selous game reserve in Tanzania.

After many years of delays and false starts, last week the president of Tanzania, John Magufuli, announced that he would be going ahead with the Stiegler’s Gorge dam on the Rufiji river. Magufuli, nicknamed “the Bulldozer”, was elected in 2015 in part on his record of successful road and infrastructure building. The dam will provide 2,100MW of electricity to a country that is currently extremely undersupplied: Tanzania, with a population of approximately 53m to the UK’s 65m, has just 1,400MW of installed grid capacity compared to the UK’s total grid capacity of 85,000MW.

Although there’s some uncertainty in the distribution among Earth’s ocean basins, there’s no question that the ocean is heating rapidly

As humans put ever more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, the Earth heats up. These are the basics of global warming. But where does the heat go? How much extra heat is there? And how accurate are our measurements? These are questions that climate scientists ask. If we can answer these questions, it will better help us prepare for a future with a very different climate. It will also better help us predict what that future climate will be.

The most important measurement of global warming is in the oceans. In fact, “global warming” is really “ocean warming.” If you are going to measure the changing climate of the oceans, you need to have many sensors spread out across the globe that take measurements from the ocean surface to the very depths of the waters. Importantly, you need to have measurements that span decades so a long-term trend can be established.

Survey by Energy Institute finds industry professionals think policy is ‘on pause’ and warn Brexit is ‘material concern’

The UK’s ambitious target of slashing carbon emissions by more than half within 13 years is at risk because of government dithering on energy policy, industry professionals have warned.

A survey by the Energy Institute, the professional body for the energy sector, has found that four fifths of its members believe the UK is currently on track to miss the 2030 goal.

Comins Coch, Aberystwyth Beech leaves moved silkily in the warm wind as though breathing, the only other sounds the stream and distant sheep

Long after midnight, with the temperature well above 20C and humidity high, I gave up attempting to sleep and checked what the night sky might offer in compensation. With the moon yet to rise, the village was in darkness, swathed in a murky blanket of haze that all but obscured the mountains to the east. Looking up, a few stars were just visible above the beech trees – whose leaves moved silkily together in the warm wind as though breathing, the only other sounds those of the stream and a few distant sheep.

Kenya’s wildlife numbers are plummeting. Reconnecting people to nature is key to the solution.

On May 31st Kenya celebrated the inauguration of the first phase of the new high-speed rail link from Mombasa to Nairobi. Now Kenyans can travel between the two largest cities quickly and cheaply. Accelerated movement of cargo and people will mean more trade, more income generation, and therefore, more jobs, and that’s good for our youthful nation.

Much less widely reported were results of studies by Dr Joseph Ogutu and colleagues at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), which reveal that Kenya’s wildlife numbers are plummeting. Some of our most treasured animals, such as hirola, rhinos, cheetah, lions, and giraffe, are being pushed to the brink of extinction.