Neath, south Wales: This quarry built the abbey and the nearby terraced towns – and it’s different every time I visit

The way to Neath Abbey Quarry is a perfect stranger to me this morning. It’s been three years since my last visit, and the maze of the path has shifted; old tree trunks have turned to mulch and the brook carves a different channel. My companion and I shoulder big bouldering pads, poorly proportioned for tight manoeuvres, yet we bump, turn and pivot our way through. Thanks to the late sunrise, we’re gifted a lingering coda of the dawn chorus, coming from a holly thicket heavy with berries. A goldcrest fizzes around ahead of us, seeking bugs startled by our approach.

Like every old quarry, this place has been host to much change. Once it was just a plain old hill, then a source of building blocks for monks and their abbey. Much later, it was extracted again for the terraced towns of the south Wales coalfield. Once that need had faded, climbers found the place, hacking paths through the tangle and stringing ropes up its face.

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© Photograph: Eben Muse

© Photograph: Eben Muse

© Photograph: Eben Muse

Exclusive: Use of toxic plastic beads in treatment works is unnecessary and outdated, say conservationists

The use of tiny, toxic plastic beads at sewage works should be banned nationwide, an MP and wildlife experts have said after a devastating spill at an internationally important nature reserve.

Hundreds of millions of “biobeads” washed up on Camber Sands beach in East Sussex last month, after a failure at a Southern Water sewage treatment works caused a catastrophic spill. It has distressed and alarmed local people and conservationists, as not only are the beads unsightly but they pose a deadly threat to wildlife.

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© Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

© Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

© Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Teaching methods | Holly stripped bare | Cricket in state schools | Flat Earth Society physics prize | Impact School of Motoring

As a retired teacher with family and friends who are still in the profession, I must take exception to John Harris’s assertion that our current method of education consists of “standing in front of 30 kids and shouting at them for an hour” (The right’s callous overdiagnosis bandwagon is rolling. Wes Streeting should not be on it, 7 December). At no point in my career would this have been regarded as an acceptable method of teaching any children, regardless of their individual needs or learning styles.
Jane Caley
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands

• Susie White was lucky to find holly with berries (Country diary, 8 December). The one in my front garden had had the inner berries eaten by wood pigeons some time ago, and now the rest have gone – after a flock of redwings took the ones at the ends of the branches that the fat pigeons couldn’t get to. Not a single flash of scarlet remains.
Copland Smith
Whalley Range, Manchester

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© Photograph: Ableimages/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ableimages/Getty Images

© Photograph: Ableimages/Getty Images

The slaty-masked tinamou, recently discovered in Brazil, is utterly unafraid of people. That could be its undoing, ornithologists worry.

Males of two species of pheasants seem to trade attractiveness for the ability to get a good look at predators.

© blickwinkel, via Alamy

A collective of land trusts, conservancies and tribes is capturing birdsong with audio gear and A.I. for clues about habitat health.

© Meron Menghistab for The New York Times

Scientists analyzed thousands of autopsies of seabirds, sea turtles and marine mammals and found that even small amounts of ingested plastic can be deadly.

© Kamran Jebreili/Associated Press