Spotting tawnies is a bit like completing a crossword: it’s easier once you are familiar with the patterns yet you can always get stumped
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The most popular family in my neighbourhood is also one of its shyest. The adults, bedecked in a mottled silvery-grey, tend to fade into their surroundings. Their children are strange goggly creatures with saucer-like eyes, and usually well-hidden from passersby. The whole family keeps nocturnal hours. For those who know them, however, visiting at any hour becomes a kind of compulsion.
So it was for my partner and me when we moved to a new house and found tawny frogmouths in a nearby park.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
10/07/2025 - 09:00
10/07/2025 - 09:00
Prof Christian Downie points to the Business Council of Australia and News Corp newspapers as examples of deliberate obstruction
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Political and media attacks on renewable energy and climate action in Australia in recent months have come “out of the climate obstruction playbook” that has been honed over decades around the world by fossil fuel interests.
Prof Christian Downie, an Australian researcher, says he has studied techniques used by business groups and lobbyists all over the world which are now being seen in Australia.
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10/07/2025 - 06:28
Exclusive: Luis Vayas Valdivieso says he is quitting for personal and professional reasons after reports of pressure behind the scenes
The chair of stalled UN plastics treaty talks, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, is preparing to step down, after accounts of behind-the-scenes pressure from the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep).
The move will be announced at a UN meeting on Tuesday, with an official announcement expected by Thursday. Vayas Valdivieso confirmed in an interview with the Guardian that he was resigning and said: “There have been some challenges in the process.”
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10/07/2025 - 04:00
Scientists find 10% chance that similar events to the ‘unheard of’ temperatures in 2023 could occur each year
The unprecedented marine heatwave of 2023 was in line with climate modelling, research shows, as scientists warn such events will become more frequent.
The “unheard of” heatwave off the UK and Irish coasts during a summer of 40C temperatures raised concerns that fish, shellfish and kelp would not be able to survive.
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10/07/2025 - 03:53
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young called environment department bureaucrats ‘weak’ - though later withdrew the remark
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Australian government officials are investigating whether a coal mining company is putting threatened greater gliders and koalas at risk by illegally clearing bushland in central Queensland without approval under federal law.
The revelation came in a fiery Senate estimates hearing in which the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young criticised the Albanese government for not doing more to stop the clearing and described environment department bureaucrats as “weak” – an allegation she later withdrew.
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10/06/2025 - 23:00
Young people in Whitehaven on England’s north-west coast rely on the power plant for everything from jobs to civic investment. But for those who see their future elsewhere, options can be limited
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Photographs by Polly Braden
It is a rainy Thursday in Whitehaven on the north-west coast of England, but the seafront is buzzing with activity. This Saturday is Harbour Fest, a day of music, performance and activities. An array of colourful street food vendors are already setting up.
It’s unusual to see such excitement on the seafront, says 18-year-old Lacey Ritson. Growing up, Lacey and her friends would gravitate to picturesque Saint Bees along the coast or the nearby Lake District if they wanted to spend time by the water. And sometimes, she says, “we’d sit by the river and look at people, guessing who worked at Sellafield – like, ‘they’ve got a nice car – they’re from Sellafield’”.
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10/06/2025 - 23:00
National Trust gardeners expect vivid hues and bountiful fungi, nuts and berries thanks to recent weather conditions
The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is likely to be particularly vivid this year, with the combination of a sun-drenched summer and rainy September causing excellent conditions for autumn colour in many of the UK’s loveliest gardens.
Experts at the National Trust are predicting a long, gradual wave of reds and yellows, the warm conditions meaning annuals and herbaceous perennials are having a second flush, adding to the bright palette.
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10/06/2025 - 20:34
Ambler Road project, approved in Trump’s first term but blocked by Biden, would harm Native tribes and wildlife
Donald Trump on Monday ordered the approval of a proposed 211-mile road through an Alaska wilderness to allow mining of copper, cobalt, gold and other minerals.
The long-debated Ambler Road project was approved in the US president’s first term, but was later blocked by the Biden administration after an analysis determined the project would threaten caribou and other wildlife and harm Alaska Indigenous tribes that rely on hunting and fishing.
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10/06/2025 - 18:01
Record solar expansion and steady wind growth driving world’s shift away from fossil fuels in 2025, report finds
The world’s wind and solar farms have generated more electricity than coal plants for the first time this year, marking a turning point for the global power system, according to research.
A report by the climate thinktank Ember found that in the first six months of 2025, renewable energy outpaced the world’s growing appetite for electricity, leading to a small decline in coal and gas use.
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10/06/2025 - 12:02
Toxic mass chiselled out of Feltham pipes amid campaign to stop people tipping harmful substances down drains
A team of water engineers have spent a month blasting and chiselling a 100-tonne fatberg loose from under the streets of west London.
The blockage consisting mainly of wet wipes glued together by congealed fat, oil and grease, was the equivalent in mass of eight doubledecker buses, stuck 10 metres below street level.
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