With hundreds of highly prized species, bird tourism is thriving in the country – and farmers are increasingly turning their land into nature reserves

When it came to dividing up his late father’s farm between five brothers, Vinicio Bacuilima says he drew the short straw. Maraksacha, on the main road out of Ecuador’s capital Quito, is a tiny patch of land on the edge of a steep ravine, making it very difficult to make a living from farming.

Then Bacuilima’s wife Anita Cajas had an idea: turn their paltry inheritance into a site to attract visiting birders. Creating the Maraksacha Reserve was a risky venture, but it paid off, with feeders attracting a host of colourful hummingbirds and tanagers.

Zoo welcomes 11 Humboldt chicks, its highest number in a decade, including Thistle and Daffodil

In previous years Chester zoo’s new penguin chicks have been named after crisps – Frazzle, Wotsit – and local football club owners – Ryan, Rob – but the names p … p … p … picked this year are notably less frivolous.

“We’ve decided to go with plants,” said Zoe Sweetman, the penguins and parrots team manager at the zoo. Two of the spikier new arrivals have been named Nettle and Thistle while two others with “colourful personalities” have been named Daffodil and Tulip.

Enlarge / Holstein cows at a dairy farm. (credit: Getty | John Carl D'Annibale)

Another dairy farm worker in Michigan has been infected with avian influenza virus, state and federal health officials reported Thursday.

The case marks the third time the outbreak of bird flu in milking cows is known to have spilled over to a human. The dairy farm worker in Michigan, like the others, had close contact with H5N1-infected dairy cows, suggesting another case of cow-to-human transmission.

But the case reported today is notable for being the first one involving respiratory symptoms. In the first two cases, the dairy workers (one in Texas, the other in Michigan) reported only eye infections (conjunctivitis). This third case—also in Michigan but from a different farm—reported upper respiratory symptoms, including cough, congestion, and sore throat, as well as eye discomfort and watery discharge, but not conjunctivitis. The worker was given an antiviral (Tamiflu) and is said to be recovering. No other workers on the farm have shown symptoms, and the worker's household contacts are being monitored.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Gardens could be part of the solution to the climate and biodiversity crisis. But what are we doing? Disappearing them beneath plastic and paving

In my 20s I lived in Manchester, on the sixth floor of a block of council flats just off the A57, or Mancunian (Mancy) Way. A short walk from Manchester Piccadilly station and the city centre, it was grey, noisy and built up. I loved every piece of it – my first stab at adulthood, at living on my own. I painted my bedroom silver and slept on a mattress on the floor, and I grew sweetcorn, tomatoes and courgettes in pots on the balcony. (I was 24 – of course I grew sweetcorn on the balcony.)

I worked and played in the bars and clubs of Manchester’s gay village, and I would walk home in the early hours, keys poking through my clenched fist to protect me from would-be attackers, and I would see hedgehogs.

Conservationists say Barbara Creecy has failed to implement vital changes to stop fishing around colonies amid fears African penguins could be extinct by 2035

It’s 3.40pm on a Thursday and Penguin 999.000000007425712 has just returned to the Stony Point penguin colony in Betty’s Bay, South Africa, after a day of foraging. She glides elegantly through the turquoise waters before clambering comically up the rocks towards the nest where her partner is incubating two beige eggs. She doesn’t realise it, but a rudimentary knee-high fence has funnelled her towards a state-of-the-art weighbridge. When she left the colony at 6.45am this morning she weighed 2.7kg. Now, after a full day of hunting, she has gained only 285g.

Eleanor Weideman, a coastal seabird project manager for BirdLife South Africa, is concerned. “In a good year they come back with their stomachs bulging,” she says. Penguins can put on up to one-third of their body weight in a single day of foraging. “But there’s just no fish out there any more.”

In 1924, cellist Beatrice Harrison caused a sensation when her duet with a nightingale in her garden was broadcast live. When the truth of this groundbreaking event was questioned, I decided to investigate

One hundred years ago this week, a cellist sat in the gathering gloom of her garden in Surrey, and played. She did so most evenings, by the ivy-clad tree in the woods surrounded by bluebells. But that evening she was not alone. More than a million people were listening. This was Beatrice Harrison, one of the finest players of her generation, and it was not a solo performance but a duet. She had found that when she played outside a nightingale would visit the garden and would join her. And in a moment that made broadcasting history, she was about to share it with listeners from across the Commonwealth. It would become one of the most successful broadcasts of all time.

So when in 1992 the Mail on Sunday published an article that claimed the whole thing had been faked, it was not only a huge slight on Beatrice’s reputation, but a source of great dismay to all who had grown up with the story of these groundbreaking, beautiful broadcasts. They were the first ever to take place outside a studio, the first recordings of nature. They represented one of the most significant moments in radio, but also something intimate, simple and poignant which profoundly moved its listeners then, and ever since.

The well-preserved huia bird feather was expected to fetch up to NZD$3,000 but ended up selling for more than NZD$46,000

A rare and highly prized feather from the extinct New Zealand huia bird has sold for NZD$46,521 (US$28,365), making it by far the world’s most expensive feather ever sold at auction.

The hammer price far exceeded initial estimates of between $2,000-$3,000, and blew the previous record-holder’s price out of the water. Until Monday’s sale, the previous record sale was another huia feather that sold in 2010 for $8,400.

Vulnerable birds deviating from migratory routes by up to 155 miles, which could affect breeding

Eagles that have migratory routes through Ukraine have shifted their flight paths to avoid areas affected by the conflict, researchers have found.

GPS data has revealed that greater spotted eagles not only made large detours after the invasion began, but also curtailed pitstops to rest and refuel, or avoided making them altogether.

When my husband and I found this tiny creature, we felt we had to rescue him. The next few weeks marked us for ever

One day in 2008, my husband, Hiraki, was making a film for which he decided he needed some vintage birdcages. We headed to the antiques market as the sky was lightening. Get there too late and we might not find anything to buy.

After going around the market a few times and paying for several cages, we were standing under a tree, deciding whether to call it a day, when, suddenly there was a baby bird on the ground at our feet.

Pigeons are friendly, acrobatic and affordable, and these days they are winning the hearts of more and more youthful pigeoneers

When Boris the fantail arrived in Callum Percy’s life in 2020, the 29-year-old trainee teacher was immediately smitten. Boris had been discovered by a family friend in a dishevelled state after what looked like a run-in with a sparrow hawk, its blond-white tail as fluffy as a cumulus cloud.
“We called him Boris after the prime minister as his feathers were all over the place when we found him,” Callum laughs as his 13-strong flock of fantails, frillbacks and capuchines coo in the aviary behind him. He and his girlfriend, Serena Mihaila, 24, also a trainee teacher, installed the 6ft by 4ft wooden and mesh aviary and nesting area in the garden of their Derby home earlier this year.

For now, Callum and Serena are fancy birders – they keep their frilled, coloured and crested feathered friends for the sheer pleasure of appreciating their looks. But next year, when the couple buy their own home, they would like to start exhibiting at shows. That means upstaging Boris and co with some purer-breed pigeons, such as frillbacks with more erect frills or capuchines with elaborate, super-fluffy head crests. At show, these headturners will be assessed for their appearance, good breeding and how they sit in their handlers’ hands.

A new exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London includes ‘tragic’ tales of species wiped out from their natural habitats

Douglas Russell, a senior curator at London’s Natural History Museum, was examining a collection of nests gathered on the island of Guam when he made an unsettling discovery.

“The nests had been picked up more than 100 years ago, and I was curating them with the aim of adding them to the museum’s main collection. They turned out to be one of the most tragic, saddest accumulations of objects I’ve ever had to deal with,” Russell told the Observer last week.