Nature
-
Dawn Chorus: Nature's 'wholesale fightback' is an inspiration for us all to keep trying
Tuesday's Dawn Chorus brings you five reasons to be cheerful — or six, if you count turning an austere City institution into a brightly-coloured Christmas delight.
-
11 things to look out for on a Nature walk in winter
Winter is a season that few could genuinely love, yet as the leaves and flowers abandon us, the structure of the countryside is starkly revealed. John Wright takes the time to revel in form over flamboyance.
-
'Fractals are everywhere, even within the human body: our nervous system, blood vessels and the structure of our brain and lungs'
What do spiders’ webs, snowflakes and snail shells have in common? They all contain fractals: Nature’s exquisite, endlessly repeating mathematical pattern.
-
Dawn Chorus: Britain has its own rainforests — and they're disappearing even faster than the ones in Brazil
The rainforests of Britain, a Cornwall light show, Christmas gardens and more in our Dawn Chorus round-up this morning.
-
'I could see puffs of condensed breath as he sang. Suddenly, the world felt fine': The wren, a little mite with a mighty heart
Shy yet bold, furtive yet fearless and fond of nesting in your trousers, the tiny ‘Jenny wren’ has a lusty voice that matches its sense of adventure.
-
John Lewis-Stempel: Heathland, a place of freedom and unconventionality
Grey and bleak in midwinter, yet purple and exotic come high summer, our heathland is an unloved landscape that has become rarer than rainforest.
-
Curious Questions: What's in a (scientific) name? From Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides to Myxococcus llanfair pwll gwyn gyll go gery chwyrn drobwll llan tysilio gogo goch ensis, and everything in between
Scientific names are baffling to the layman, but carry all sorts of meanings to those who coin each new term. Martin Fone explains.
-
John Lewis-Stempel: The moors, a landscape of 'seamless sameness'
Once considered a vast, stretching terror-land synonymous with bog, the national perception of the ecologically invaluable moors has dramatically changed
-
John Lewis-Stempel: Into the deep of England's lakes
Beneath the crystal-clear, alien world of water lie the great piscean survivors of the Ice Age. The Lake District is a fish-spotter’s paradise.
-
Dummy eyes, faking death and and the whiff of rotting flesh: The great deceptions of Nature's most cunning creatures
A whiff of rotting flesh, the flash of a painted eye, a dead-faint to the floor: Nature is full of cunning survival tricks, says Laura Parker, as she explores the greatest mimics and frauds you'll find among the animals, insects, plants and birds of Britain.
-
John Lewis-Stempel: The Broads, a relic wetland resurrected
A strange, amphibious land floating somewhere between earth and sky, East Anglia’s majestic wetlands remind us that our ancestors made arcadias in these isles.
-
Curious Questions: How did a scrotum joke confuse paleontologists for generations?
One of the earliest depictions of a fossil prompted a joke — or perhaps a misunderstanding — which coloured the view of dinosaur fossils for years. Martin Fone tells the tale of 'scrotum humanum'.
-
John Lewis-Stempel: Beechwood, nature's own cathedral
‘Most lovely of all’, the stately beech is our tallest native tree and creates a shaded environment that few plants can survive.
-
The 1,000-year-old sweet chestnut tree you'll find in the Cotswolds — and what to do if you have a younger example near your home
Tis the season to roast sweet chestnuts.
-
John Lewis-Stempel: The perfumed arcadia of the Downs, England's oldest manmade habitat
Home to the iconic skylark, the chalk downlands are as colourful and botanically diverse as rainforest.
-
Hedgehog numbers have plunged in the last 20 years — but help is at hand
Annunciata Elwes reports on the new National Hedgehog Conservation Strategy that's been created by two key conservation organisations.
-
Trees of God: The story of the mighty cedar
Once considered an exotic addition, cedar trees were frequently employed by ‘Capability’ Brown as topographical punctuation marks and are now as loved and reassuring as any fine church steeple.
