Feed aggregator

West Dartmoor To have chanced across this night-roamer, lolloping calmly across the muddy lane, was a rare privilege indeed.

Hemmed in on either side by tall hedgerows, this narrow Dartmoor lane skirts the flank of higher ground and scores a deep furrow between fields so that after dark you feel you are tunnelling through the terrain, headlights tracing a leaden seam of asphalt. There is little traffic here to trouble nocturnal wildlife. Over the years I have come across badgers, heads striped like road markings, furtive-looking foxes and occasionally a barn owl, achingly white in the full beams.

This winter’s night, an unexpected wanderer took shape among the blanched fishbone stems of dead weeds, as if created by the action of light on darkness. Long ears held high, hindquarters arched over rangy rear legs, large eyes that brought me to a halt. A hare!

Continue reading...

April's pro-science Washington rally has the full backing of the world's largest scientific membership organisation.

Federal Labor has backflipped on its renewable energy target backflip, with leader Bill Shorten insisting party still committed to 50% by 2050.

Coalition's "clean coal" plant would be costlier and dirtier than alternatives, and on top of that would require billions of dollars of government indemnities and guarantees.

Wind power has briefly supplied 52.1% of total power generation on a US grid connecting 14 south-western states – a new record for North America.

The Minister for the Environment and Energy has launched the Threatened Species Prospectus at Taronga Zoo

Coal dependent NSW, Queensland and Victoria facing biggest rises in electricity costs, possibly more than 20 per cent based on recent prices.

The last rotor of Ararat Wind Farm’s 75 turbines was installed today.

Lyon Solar says 'very confident' of building solar and storage in SA this year, with investment from Magnetar Capital.

Work set to begin on three 100MW solar farms near Mildura – the state's largest, and possibly first, large-scale projects.

German research vessel Polarstern is set for a remarkable year-long expedition in the Arctic.

has signed a conditional contract with Nexif Energy for the EPC contracts and maintenance agreements for the 25 turbine Glen Innes Wind Farm in NSW.

Vehicle manufacturer Tomcar Australia recently won an AusIndustry Innovation Award, at the same time as Toyota and Holden prepare to close their Australian production facilities.

Friends of the Earth and Taxpayers' Alliance are normally at odds on policy, but both criticise HS2

Existing gas generation in South Australia is expensive, inefficient, highly polluting, and controlled by just two market players. Battery storage is a smarter and cheaper option.

The sequel to 2001's ocean series is due to be shown later this year on BBC One.

Wind farms to show they can provide same system services - inertia and frequency - as coal and gas plants in major new trial in South Australia.

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 20 February 1917

On Saturday a grey crow was perched on the topmost rotten branch of an oak beside the river, and was as communicative as usual. Perhaps it enjoyed watching the ice sheets floating past and hearing them scrunch as they piled together at the bend. Yesterday there were three paddling on the sloppy ice of the mere, still talking as they cleaned up the various bird remains. I thought the note was always repeated three times in quick succession, but as often as not four caws follow one another rapidly after each pause of a few seconds’ duration. The grey crow’s call is shriller than the carrion’s but deeper than the rook’s.

The thaw livened up the thrushes and starlings and started the dunnocks afresh: everywhere these little hedge-frequenters are shuffling their wings and trilling vigorously. The blackbirds, silent since last summer, immediately tuned up; I heard my first on Saturday, and to-day many are in excellent mellow voice. Herring gulls have not yet left the mere; they have been about for several weeks, for the first appeared long before the waters were ice-bound; they raised a joyous chorus yesterday, their full, clear calls sounding quite vernal. Like the crows, they consorted with the living blackheads and fed upon the dead ones. Near the bank a three-foot eel was embedded in the ice, and crow or gull had got through a weak spot, and reached a few inches of the fish, picking it to the bone.

Continue reading...

In the Selous Game Reserve you can see seven different bee-eaters. Each one sports impossibly beautiful colours

Bee-eaters are the supermodels of the bird world: slim, glamorous – and hopelessly out of reach for us mere mortals. But in the Selous Game Reserve, in southern Tanzania, you can see seven different species of bee-eater hawking for insects under sun-filled skies. Each one sports impossibly beautiful colours, outcompeting even the half-a-dozen species of kingfisher we saw here. On a game drive from Selous Impala Camp, in the heart of Africa’s largest wildlife reserve, we went in search of the “magnificent seven”.

The two commonest species, white-fronted and white-throated, may have similar names, but they are very different in appearance. The white-throated is, by bee-eater standards, almost austere: a plain, foliage green body topped with a black-and-white head.

Continue reading...

Endangered Irrawaddy dolphins and river communities are threatened by three new dams proposed for 'feasibility studies' along the Mekong River in Cambodia.