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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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Would you still charm me if I was a worm?Every summer, a quiet Cheshire village becomes the scene of one of the world’s most unusual sporting contests: the World Worm Charming Championships. Tom Howells reports.
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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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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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Why have the songbirds that protect the Tower of London been branded 'trickster Gods' and 'butcher crows'?Considering that it was Edgar Allan Poe’s avian muse, the raven has a bloodthirsty reputation that isn’t entirely deserved.
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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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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.
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These iridescently beautiful birds can slow time, reproduce the human voice and sing like angels — so why have we nicknamed them ‘stinker’ and ‘scootie’?A surprising members of the Unloved Birds Club is the starling. Mark Cocker explains why.
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From Worzel Gummidge to the kakashi of Shikoku: The scarecrow is iconic the world overThey might be questionably effective at frightening away birds, but scarecrows remain a quirkily enduring feature of our physical and cultural landscape.
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The marine animals that look suspiciously like dogsFrom Staffie-shaped seals and smiling Samoyed belugas to borzoi swordfish, World Ocean Day seemed the perfect opportunity to tackle one of life's most important questions: which marine animals look most like dogs?
