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‘Though she be but little, she is fierce’: Everything you didn't know about sparrowhawksScourge of the bird feeder and a master of ‘shock and awe’ assassinations, the sparrowhawk pursues its quarry with such tenacity and unpredictability that it often blindsides its prey.
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An ode to Britain's wildflowers, from the London bloom which grew in the craters of the Blitz, to the weather-predicting scarlet pimpernelDecorating the land with their brilliant and varied hues, our native flora which operate as clocks, calendars and Nature’s medicine cabinet are blooming brilliant, says John Lewis-Stempel.
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Is there enough beauty and hope left in the natural world to counter the current state of global despair?Trees are dying, our food is covered in chemicals and we are stuck in a deteriorating international security situation.
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The pine marten is a predatory force to be reckoned withThe pine marten may have a taste for jam sandwiches, but its razor-sharp claws and appetite for eggs and grey squirrels makes it a predatory force to be reckoned with.
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Roger Morgan-Grenville: We need to reset our children's connection to nature — and it starts at schoolOur schools can — and must — lead the way in teaching the next generation the incalculable value of the natural world.
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The white-tailed eagle is crafty, controversial and has wings the size of a barn doorA penchant for spring lamb saw the raptor species ruthlessly exterminated, but the beguiling white-tailed eagle — also known as the sea eagle — is now back on our shores.
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Insectageddon delayed for another year at least, as warm and wet spring leads to bumper crop of bugsA warm and wet spring has provided the perfect conditions for our insects, which is even better news for the bats and birds.
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No job too big: Britain's native breeds can save our countrysideBritain’s native breeds and their grazing talents are an integral part of the drive to balance food production with biodiversity recovery. We should look closer to home in the quest to re-create the natural habitats of the past
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Arthur Parkinson: Chicken Licken isn’t just a children’s story about a chicken who believes the sky is falling, it tells us everything we need to know about keeping hens happyToo many people think chickens only need shelter when it's hot, but the truth is much more complex.
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A wing and a prayer: saving our farmland bird populationsBy bridging ‘the hungry gap’ with supplementary feeding, we can breathe life into our declining farmland bird populations, but farming practices must be changed to secure their future.
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William Kendall: 'We need to build a lot more solar farms and some wind turbines, too'The thought of losing of productive arable land to renewable-energy developments can be dispiriting and alarming, but informed local knowledge may be the key to their successful design.
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The 'greatest battle for 300 years': England's great estates face up to a green futureThe climate crisis will affect us all. All over Britain, major landowners are stepping up to tackle a warming world and biodiversity loss.
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'He unleashed a series of war cries, then intercepted the vole mid-air': There's nothing remotely common about the common kestrelKnown in Orkney as ‘moosie-haak’, kestrels are fierce hunters but have seriously declined and are now an amber-listed species.
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The truth about P.G. Wodehouse: Robert Daws on playing England's greatest comic writerThe actor Robert Daws starred alongside Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in Jeeves and Wooster back in the 1990s, and the work of P.G. Wodehouse has been part of his decades-long career ever since. He joined the Country Life Podcast.
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Country Life 16 July 2025Country Life 16 July 2025 is our sustainability special, looking at the animals who are saving our landscape, solar power, and the best of the Proms.
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Don't judge a plant by its smell: Why 'the little stinkers of the natural world' are just doing their jobReminiscent of love and with an unmistakable odour of death, the little stinkers of the natural world might incite repulsion, but they are only doing their job, pleads Ian Morton
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Puffins and shearwaters, skuas and terns, gannets and gulls and guillemots and wings, these are a few of our favourite things (seabirds)From a heroic long-distance swimmer to a producer of spectacularly eerie sound effects, the seabirds seen swooping and diving over British waters have all manner of singular skills.
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‘This isn't just silver — it's a story of a man who fell in love with a woman who society deemed unworthy': The large silver sculpture of rutting stags that scandalised Victorian societyGeorge Harry Grey, the 7th Earl of Stamford, was shunned when he married a circus performer. This sculpture was his way of showing the world that he was a fighter — and it's now been acquired by the National Trust.
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What it's like to come face-to-face with a great white shark, with Dan Abbott of Netflix's All The SharksThe wildlife cinematographer Dan Abbott joined James Fisher on the Country Life Podcast.
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The life that thrives among the dead: How wildlife finds a home in the graveyards and churchyards of BritainHome to a veritable ‘Noah’s Ark of species’, thanks to never being ploughed, sprayed or fertilised, our churchyards offer a sacred haven for flora and fauna, says Laura Parker.
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Peregrine falcons went to the edge of extinction in the 1960s — today, there are more of them than at any time since the Middle AgesIn the latest instalment of Mark Cocker's 'Winging it' column, he looks at the peregrine, a bird of prey with astonishing speed and super strength.
