Ouse Fen, Cambridgeshire: The great egret’s story is remarkable, as is the conversion of this low-grade agricultural land into one of the richest wetlands in Britain

In keeping with this region’s summer of torrid heat and drought, the field by the path was an expanse of burnt, dead thistles. What was totally unexpected were the 13 great egrets among it. Ironically, the birds may well be here as a consequence of the climate crisis, but their appearance in a parched brown expanse felt strange.

First, they are creatures of freshwater marsh and routinely hunt fish. Second, great egrets are the size of grey herons, but pure white, aside from lemon eyes and dagger-like beaks of pale autumnal orange. What was weirdest of all was the gestalt whole; the way they threaded through that horizon of brown, long necks extending and retracting like winding snakes, and all this gleaming intensity focused on catching voles. Then a bird would fly, the white rope of its neck rising, followed by a ragged cloak of wings, turning eventually to the stolid beat of heavy flight.

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© Photograph: Mark Cocker

© Photograph: Mark Cocker

© Photograph: Mark Cocker

Conservation work by RSPB has led to recovery of terns, gulls, plovers and oystercatchers on England’s south coast

The colony of sandwich terns nesting at Pagham harbour, West Sussex, was completely wiped out by bird flu in 2022. But numbers have bounced back from zero to 756 breeding pairs in just three years after conservation work in the Solent.

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© Photograph: David Kinchin Smith/RSPB

© Photograph: David Kinchin Smith/RSPB

© Photograph: David Kinchin Smith/RSPB

As Mark Cocker approaches a landmark for the world’s oldest column in an English-language newspaper, he is still inspired by powerful encounters with nature

In the autumn of 1987, Mark Cocker sat in a field near Norwich and watched a jay burying acorns for the long winter ahead. He described the scene in his first country diary for the Guardian. Thirty-nine years on, some of those jay-planted acorns will be mature oaks now, and Cocker is completing his 1,000th diary for the world’s oldest column in an English-language newspaper.

In his next diary, he will reflect on the changing birdlife around Flint Clough, in the Peak District, where he first marvelled at rare birds aged 12 after devouring bird books in his bedroom. As a boy, he would find cuckoo, golden plover, ring ouzel and twite, a once-common bird which is now virtually extinct in England.

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© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian

© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian

© Photograph: Fabio de Paola/The Guardian

In an extract from his new book, the nature historian explains how technology could help the seabird survive

For centuries human beings have exploited puffins, harvesting them by the thousand on their breeding grounds for their food and feathers. Over time, though, this relationship has changed, so that today we have come to love them, celebrating their quirky character and comical appearance and giving them a central place in our affections – a journey described by the environmental historian Dr Rob Lambert as the shift “from use to delight”.

How ironic, then, that just as we have come to truly appreciate them, our own existence now threatens theirs. The climate crisis threatens almost all the world’s roughly 11,000 species of birds, but its consequences have particularly dire significance for seabirds, whose life cycle is so intimately connected to the timing and abundance of their food supplies.

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© Photograph: Tim Graham/Alamy

© Photograph: Tim Graham/Alamy

© Photograph: Tim Graham/Alamy

Glenisla, Angus: Damage by squirrels is common; the mustelid less so. Still, as a local told me, ‘you cannae blame them wanting somewhere to live’

That the thatch is thick with moss and crusted with the brittle fronds of lichen is not unusual for a roof of this age. What’s puzzling me is the hole in its centre. It is about 10in wide – a dark scoop, as if someone has taken a giant ladle to the roof.

When I climb the ladder for a closer look, I can see toothmarks on the reed. I also see that the hole does not go all the way through – the animal obviously gave up after an exploratory burrow.

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© Photograph: Mark Hamblin/2020VISION/Devon Wildlife Trust/PA

© Photograph: Mark Hamblin/2020VISION/Devon Wildlife Trust/PA

© Photograph: Mark Hamblin/2020VISION/Devon Wildlife Trust/PA

The ‘Great Fall’ of 1965 was caused by harsh conditions forcing migrating species to land on their way to Africa

My birding mentor, the late Derek Moore, was also a keen cricketer. But one autumn day in 1965 he was unable to concentrate while fielding because many hundreds of songbirds were landing around him on the pitch at Lowestoft.

The arrival of hundreds of thousands of birds along the Suffolk coast that day became known as the “Great Fall”, and it was caused by a weather system bringing cloud, winds and heavy rain.

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© Photograph: Kevin Elsby/Alamy

© Photograph: Kevin Elsby/Alamy

© Photograph: Kevin Elsby/Alamy

Despite their size and gentle appearance, puffins will fight to keep their catch of sand eels from an opportunistic gull

Few birds are as paradoxical as the puffin. It rivals the robin as Britain’s best-loved bird, yet most people have never seen one in the flesh. In spring and summer, they gather in large, noisy colonies to breed, but spend the autumn and winter far out to sea in the North Atlantic. And despite their small size, and gentle, clown-like appearance, puffins will fight to save their precious catch of sand eels from being seized by an opportunistic – and much larger – skua or gull.

Puffins, like penguins, have a very human quality, too. When the late Bill Oddie and I filmed puffins at a colony on Shetland, he memorably described them as “looking like old men in dinner jackets, waiting to go into supper at the club”, while the bird’s scientific name, Fratercula arctica, translates as “little brother of the Arctic”.

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© Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

© Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

© Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

Nearly half of species are in decline, with farmland birds and seabirds the worst hit, conservation bodies say

Wild bird populations in the UK have fallen to their lowest level since records began, figures show, with nearly half of species in decline.

Figures produced by leading nature conservation bodies for the government show that average populations across 132 native breeding species fell by 19% between 1970 and 2025, with farmland birds and seabirds the worst hit in recent years.

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© Photograph: BIOSPHOTO/Alamy

© Photograph: BIOSPHOTO/Alamy

© Photograph: BIOSPHOTO/Alamy

When populations fall, fledglings can struggle to learn the right notes to attract mates. But research on how birds communicate offers hope for species’ survival

Listening to birdsong is one of life’s great joys, but when researchers heard a particular tune emerging from a tree in a Buenos Aires park, they were especially jubilant. This arrangement was among those chirped by the local rufous-collared sparrows in the 1960s, but had since disappeared from the area.

That was until scientists created a computer-generated rendition, curious to find out if birds might consider it realistic enough to imitate. Less than three months later, a local avian resident began to copy parts of the song.

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© Photograph: Martín Benchimol

© Photograph: Martín Benchimol

© Photograph: Martín Benchimol

What happens when a forest loses its birdsong? Following clues hidden in the sounds birds make while asleep, Argentinian physicist Gabriel Mindlin uncovers a hidden extinction – not of species, but of memory – and sets out to revive vanished melodies before they disappear forever. Part detective story, part cutting-edge science, Mindlin’s mission leads him to the dusty 1960s archives of Buenos Aires naturalist, confirming that some songs no longer echo in the biosphere. So he deploys “robot tutors” to see whether young birds can learn and spread the old songs once again.

Read more on this topic: Trill seekers: can scientists use AI and tutors to help birds remember lost songs?

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© Photograph: Martín Benchimol

© Photograph: Martín Benchimol

© Photograph: Martín Benchimol

A living room encounter with a toast-loving pigeon proved a big mistake. It led to weeks of drawn curtains and crawling around on the floor to avoid its eerie and unerring gaze

The pigeon landed on the windowsill. It was shortly after dawn during the spring holidays, but I was 11 and had been up for a while eating toast and watching TV. It pecked at the window and I turned to see this bird pressed up against the glass. It was beautiful, with two dark wing bars and a navy-tipped tail. I was immediately taken with him. It wasn’t until later that I realised he wasn’t just looking inside, he was looking directly at me.

Pigeons are not that common in Somerset, and since we lived on the top floor of a house in a quiet village, our view was mostly sky, so we had come to really value sightings of them. We were having a run of beautiful mornings, and I enjoyed watching its peculiar rituals through the sash windows. The way he moved across the sill, his small dark doll’s eyes, his slightly unnatural head tilt, the way he seemed to know where he was. We certainly didn’t see pigeons as pests. Nor did we see them as threats.

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© Composite: Guardian design; FrankhuangNicolas;Moreau/Getty Images

© Composite: Guardian design; FrankhuangNicolas;Moreau/Getty Images

© Composite: Guardian design; FrankhuangNicolas;Moreau/Getty Images

River Lagan, Belfast: Right now you can see winter in the black-headed gull plumage, and spring in the mallards’. Yet feathers are also vital to how birds even came to exist

On my walk along the towpath, I pick up a small grey feather. It’s a flight feather, probably from the wing of a feral pigeon. I stroke it absently as I watch the birds that are swimming on the river’s surface. Steeped in autumn sunshine, the different species are also feathered with other seasons. Summer is in the fuzzy down of a late-hatched moorhen chick. Winter gleams in the white heads of the “black-headed” gulls. And, while a mallard’s emerald-green head is, as yet, tatty as old velvet, his crisply curled drake’s tails herald the coming spring.

If the story of birds is told in their plumage, then moult – the shedding and regrowth of feathers – is the turn of a page. The moorhen chick reminds me that the first chapter is about keeping warm. I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, almost tucking the pigeon feather in as well. While our hair and birds’ feathers are both made of keratin, they differ in how they grow. In essence, hair extends as a single linear thread, whereas down feathers emerge frothing in all directions. As a fledgling matures, its outer feathers then lengthen, with a central shaft supporting branches that can flatten out and zip together to make a smooth surface.

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© Photograph: Mary Montague

© Photograph: Mary Montague

© Photograph: Mary Montague

Lockerbrook, Derbyshire: Last week they were here, now they are not. Yet the details of their epic migration are still a mystery to us

The sudden absence of something, even though you know it’s coming, can dent the heart a little. The Japanese, inevitably, have a phrase for it: mono no aware, the pathos of things – and by things, in this case, I mean house martins.

Last week I had stood in the same spot, looking across the same valley. The weather then was much the same as it was today, low‑angled sunlight through patchy cloud lighting up the yellowing birch leaves and bronzing moors on the north-eastern slopes of Kinder Scout. It had picked out the spread wings of a buzzard a little below my eyeline, along with a haze of large insects, which in fact, I quickly realised, were house martins.

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© Photograph: imageBROKER/Alamy

© Photograph: imageBROKER/Alamy

© Photograph: imageBROKER/Alamy

Two men, who arrived separately from Cuba days apart, each carried clutches of live birds concealed in their clothes, the authorities said.

© United States District Court

Chichester harbour, Hampshire: I witness a battle of wills as this magnificent raptor attempts to fuel up on sea bass, before it heads south on migration

The autumnal sunlight gilded the sea as our boat drifted off Fowley Island, a small, uninhabited tidal saltmarsh between Thorney Island and Hayling Island. A colony of grey seals lay sprawled along the intertidal mudflats, their size and prominent, sloping Roman noses making them easily distinguishable from the more lithe, cat-faced common seals that also inhabit the harbour.

Two sub-adults were tumbling and splashing in the shallows, play-fighting with the exuberance of puppies. They mouthed and nipped at each other’s heads and necks, lunging and rolling over one another before disappearing beneath the waves, only to pop up again in a spray of water and resume their boisterous tussle. These playful interactions are a form of social bonding, but they also serve as a rehearsal for future dominance contests.

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© Photograph: TomsPhotos/Alamy

© Photograph: TomsPhotos/Alamy

© Photograph: TomsPhotos/Alamy

Four native species selected after consultation, but which one adorns which note is yet to be decided

Bees, barn owls, puffins and hedgehogs have been picked to feature on the next generation of banknotes, the Bank of England has announced.

The quartet of creatures were selected after a large-scale consultation settled on wild animals as the theme, with members of the public then asked to pick their favourites out of 18 options divided into three categories.

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© Photograph: Andrew Fusek Peters/Guardian Community

© Photograph: Andrew Fusek Peters/Guardian Community

© Photograph: Andrew Fusek Peters/Guardian Community

Chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski Island in Antarctica down by two-thirds since 2011, probably due to climate crisis

The world’s largest penguin colony has declined by two-thirds since 2011, most likely because of the climate crisis, a study has revealed.

Scientists said the rapid demise of chinstrap penguins on Zavodovski, the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands in Antarctica, increased the risk of a wider ecosystem collapse.

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© Photograph: John Dickens/British Antarctic Survey

© Photograph: John Dickens/British Antarctic Survey

© Photograph: John Dickens/British Antarctic Survey

As well as books, the new facility in Colorado offers hundreds of kits to connect people with the natural world. We asked five of the first visitors what they thought of it

Mark Fink knows exactly why he opened the first public nature library in the US. “There are a lot of barriers for people to access nature here. We want people to learn about the birds and the plants in their own back yard and to appreciate that you don’t need a three-day camping trip in the mountains to experience nature.”

The library offers people in Colorado’s Adams county the opportunity to borrow books and equipment to help them to engage with the natural world – for free.

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© Composite: Kevin Mohatt

© Composite: Kevin Mohatt

© Composite: Kevin Mohatt

A new study has identified two species of Brazilian birds, the bare-throated bellbird and the red-legged seriema, as the loudest in nature.

The tracker was still working on August 29th, when E7 [a female godwit] started flying southeast, over the Pacific. ... North of Kauai, she took a slight right turn and continued flying. On September 7th, after more than two hundred hours aloft, she landed at the mouth of the Piako River, back on the North Island of New Zealand.

It’s the only example of a dinosaur-era feather found within rock that wasn’t completely flattened through the centuries.

Birds are drawn to lights, and more than a billion die each year after crashing into buildings, experts said.

© Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times