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The Princess Royal's horses at Gatcombe: 'They have to do something useful'HRH The Princess Royal has been involved with horses throughout her life. Kate Green went to Gatcombe Park to speak to her about the steeds which she keeps at her home estate today.
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Don't bat away the fruit fly! This humble pest has six Nobel Prizes to its nameThey may be small insects with a taste for fermenting produce, but fruit flies are both a gift to scientific research and the first living creature in space, discovers Ian Morton.
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Why the treacherous lure of quivering quicksand haunts our nightmaresThe seaside sludge has captivated the minds of writers and film-makers for centuries. Harry Pearson gets to the bottom of why.
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We're heading for an autumn of unparalleled colour — but why?If the days stay warm and the nights are cold, Charles Quest-Ritson is optimistic.
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The ocean is dying. Titouan Bernicot is regrowing it, one coral at a timeThe world (and Rolex and Prada) are betting on a 20-something-year-old's coral gardens.
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What is everyone talking about this week: Is this to be the worst apple harvest in history?Record heat and next to no rainfall all summer means Britain's orchards are set to suffer devastating losses.
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In classical times this bird was sacred to Aphrodite and for millennia served as an erotic symbolThe braying cacophony of a greylag goose flock in full chorus has made the breed unlikeable, despite their amorous connections, writes Mark Cocker.
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'A shared experience unlike any other in Britain since the Blitz': What have we learned since summer 1976?This week's leader asks what we've learnt since Britain's last major heatwave.
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Silent assassin or scapegoat: Is the sparrowhawk really to blame for Britain’s vanishing songbirds?Mark Cocker turns his attention to the surprisingly fast sparrowhawk in this instalment of his column, The Unloved Bird's Club.
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If this drought has one upside, it's that it's revealed many of our landscape's long lost treasuresThis week's Athena notes that at Portchester Castle, and other sites, more history is on show than usual due to the heat and drought.
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The ultimate shapeshifters: There's more to clouds than meets the eyeConstable spent hours re-creating them on canvas and Shelley was so obsessed that he wrote a poem pretending to be one.
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Why centuries of superstitions cast this bird as a villain and an omen of ill fortuneThe swaggering corvid with the chain-smoker’s rasp carries around centuries’ worth of superstitions. Mark Cocker asks if the magpie’s reputation has been unfairly tarred.
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Country Life's heatwave winners and losers. Spoiler alert: it's good news for tomatoesAs we struggle through another heatwave, we list our winners and losers of the sweltering season.
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'The human equivalent would be able to leap across London's Park Lane': The wonderful world of insectsBe they bioluminescent, possessed of inbuilt violins or builders of Gaudí-esque cathedrals, the insects beneath our feet are worthy of closer inspection, says Charles Harris.
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Pigeons are too successful for their own good — that's why we hate them so muchSpare a thought for these much maligned birds with their soft, crooning seven-note song, writes Mark Cocker.
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Bugs bugs, glorious bugs: 'The little things that run the world'This week's leader celebrates the many merits of the humble insect, from the bumblebee to the butterfly.
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The ultimate noisy neighbours: The antisocial squawking seabirds whose screams have been heard in ParliamentMany of us have heard the shrill cackle of a herring gull at 4am, writes Mark Cocker, but these birds have an ethereal beauty.
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If the Unloved Birds’ Club has an apex predator in its midst, then it is surely the white-tailed eagleWhat part–if any–did the white-tailed eagle play in the mysterious disappearance of a group of Shetland foals? Mark Cocker investigates
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Britain's gamebird of choice is more exotic in origin than you might thinkThe pheasant’s gradual triumph over the sporting imagination belies this striking gamebird’s hotly contested impact on flora and fauna, writes Mark Cocker.
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If England wants to win the World Cup, it should listen to these emperor penguinsAs it turns out, the natural world has a lot of good advice for how to make a great football team. Country Life and the World Wide Fund for Nature break down the keys to success.
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Cheerio Churchill, hello hedgehogs: The British animals Country Life wants to see on our banknotesAs the nation votes on the British wildlife that will appear on the next series of banknotes, our writers argue their case for their favourite animals.
