A morning bird ringing (bird banding)

Ashley Sendell-Price 4 am: with thermos in hand I close the front door behind me with a click, hop into the car, and after a short drive arrive at my destination – a water treatment facility at the foot of the Malvern Hills. Every two weeks I make the same journey to join my local...

Is that tree about to snap?

Toby Jackson Sounds like a simple enough question, right? However, it turns out we can’t give a very good answer. For a big old tree in a city or a park, it is important for safety reasons to know how likely it is to snap in the wind. Therefore, qualified arborists tend these trees and...

Can you trust a map?

Kaja Fenn Maps… They can be very simple or almost a work of art. We use them in our phones for sightseeing, in sat navs for directions, and the “old school” paper way when hiking. They can describe the terrain we explore, the distribution of natural phenomena, the history of human civilisation, war campaigns, geology,...

White thieves and the wailing child

Brooke Jonson The old fisherman is hunched over his sandwich, and despite the late summer heat pulls his coat about himself like a little tent. “You afraid someone’s gonna nick yer bait, mister?!” someone calls out to him, to some good natured laughs from those assembled round the old band stand on Whitby harbour. I...