Dawn Chorus: Gangster badgers, at home with Sienna Miller, and a fresh slap in the face for first-time buyers

When I was a kid, seeing a badger was a bit of a rarity. When Country Life's boss, Mark Hedges, was a kid, it was even rarer: his dad once stopped the car to let little Mark and his family take a look at a badger who'd been hit by a car, since they'd never set eyes on one before.

Years of extensive protection for badgers means that they're far more numerous — great news for badgers, but much less good news for hedgehogs and cattle farmers. They're far more easily spotted than they once were.

One place where you'll *really* see badgers easily is, apparently, St Leonards-on-Sea. The Sussex seaside town is home to a host of Eurasian badgers who happily toddle round the streets, feasting on scraps left out for them, prompting photographer Ian Wood to set up a hide to see if he could snap some photos of them.

Naturally, he set that hide up across the road from some Banksy-inspired badger street art.

Ian's effort paid off in fine style when one of the badgers didn't just stop nearby, but even paused to take a look at his Ganster Badger doppelganger. The resulting picture has just earned Ian the People's Choice award in the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. See www.nhm.ac.uk/wpy/peoples-choice to see more of the shortlisted pictures.

Quiz of the Day...

...has moved into its own little story, with buttons, and pictures, and all sorts of fun bits, whcih we're published every weeknight at 5pm. Give it a whirl.

Interesting times

The Bank of England trimmed interest rates on Thursday in a move that looks — at least in part — designed to boost the property market ahead of the impending Stamp Duty increase coming in April.

That said, a slight trim in interest rates won't do that much. At the moment, first-time buyers pay no stamp duty when buying a home worth £425,000; come April they will be paying £6,250.

And the savings they'll make on interest rates? Should they put down £50,000 and borrow £375,000, that 0.25% equates to about £50 a month. At that rate it'd take just over ten years to recoup the six grand. Ouch.

Lifestyles of the rich and famous

We've no idea how Architectural Digest persuades so many big names to show them around their homes, and stick the resulting videos on social media. But they do, and it's fascinating as you'll find out in this one with Sienna Miller. In which she casually drops the news that she just decided to buy it, more or less on a whim, when she was 25., proving that not all first-time buyers are worried about interest rates and Stamp Duty.

'The 20th century Tarzan, a party animal swarmed under by supermodels, rock stars and the rest'

If you haven't yet read Christopher Wallace's piece on the incredible life of photographer Peter Beard, go and do it now.

We'll wait...

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See? We told you it was worth it.

That's it for this week — we're back on Monday!