Paris pollution victim sues France for bad air

A Parisian woman is taking the French state to court for failing to protect her health from the effects of air pollution.

Clotilde Nonnez, a 56-year-old yoga teacher, says she has lived in the capital for 30 years and seen her health deteriorate.
However, it became worse than ever when pollution in Paris hit record levels last December.
Her lawyer says air pollution is causing 48,000 French deaths per year.
"We are taking the state to task because we think the medical problems that pollution victims suffer are as a result of the authorities' lack of action in tackling air pollution," François Lafforgue told Le Monde newspaper.
More cases would be brought in the coming weeks, in Lyon, Lille and elsewhere, he added.
Paris has struggled for years to combat high levels of smog and the authorities have introduced fines for any vehicle not carrying a "Crit'Air" emissions category sticker - part of a scheme to promote lower-emitting vehicles.

Several routes in the capital now have restrictions on car use and a 3km (1.8-mile) stretch of the Right Bank of the River Seine has become pedestrianised.

Ms Nonnez says she has led a healthy life, first as a dancer and more recently as a yoga teacher, but has increasingly suffered from respiratory problems, ranging from chronic asthma to pneumonia.

• How Paris is stepping up its drive against the car
• Is there a way to tackle air pollution?
• Amazing views and dirty air in French Alps

When pollution hit the worst levels for a decade last December, her existing bronchial condition prompted an acute pericarditis attack.

"The doctor treating me says Paris air is so polluted that we're breathing rotten air. She has other patients like me, including children and babies too. My cardiologist says the same," she told the France Info website.

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French Lubrizol factory struggles to stop foul gas leak

Staff at a chemicals factory in north-western France are working to stop a gas leak that has spread a foul smell to Paris and south-east England.
French Ecology Minister Delphine Batho said she was heading for Rouen, where the factory is located, to oversee operations to deal with the leak.
Thousands of people, from as far away as Paris and London, have complained of nausea and headaches.
The gas is mercaptan, an additive to natural gas said to be harmless.
It leaked on Monday from a plant run by a French subsidiary of the US chemicals manufacturer Lubrizol near Rouen, 75 miles (120km) north-west of Paris.
Winds blew the cloud over northern France on Monday night and then into England on Tuesday.
Ms Batho is cutting short a visit to Germany to a visit to supervise operations to stop the leak.
Tuesday evening's French Cup football match between Rouen and Marseille has been postponed because of the stink.
"We did not want to find ourselves with 10,000 fans two kilometres from the factory and with no means of confining them or evacuating them if necessary," local government official Florence Gouache told AFP news agency.
Rotten eggs A Rouen resident told Reuters news agency the stench pervaded his home; "You can't ventilate. There is nothing to do, it's constantly in the room and it's unbearable."
Another resident told AFP news agency: "This is horrible. I thought I was in a gas cylinder." Another said the air smelled of "rotten eggs".
There is no word on the cause of the leak. The factory has been closed.
It is a "Seveso" site - a classification named after an industrial leak in Italy in 1976 and entailing a high degree of supervision,
A senior executive at the factory, Pierre-Jean Payrouse, said stopping the leak could take until the evening.
In Britain, the Health Protection Agency said: "The smell drifting over Southern England today poses no risk to public health.
"The odour, which is similar to rotten eggs, has been noticed by people mainly in Kent, East and West Sussex and some parts of Surrey."
Emergency officials in southern Kent advised residents "to keep doors and windows closed due to a gas cloud".
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Hosepipe bans: Final four companies lift restrictions

The final four water companies in England with hosepipe bans in place have lifted them, in a move affecting about six million domestic customers.

South East Water, Sutton and East Surrey Water, Veolia Water Central and Veolia Water Southeast imposed the restrictions on water use in April.

They followed two dry winters but end after "abnormally heavy rainfall".

Meanwhile, the Festival of British Eventing in Gloucestershire has been cancelled because of the weather.

Water officials said they had expected the bans to remain throughout the summer.

Anglian Water, Southern Water and Thames Water lifted their bans in June.

The announcement comes after a weekend in which a number of communities across Britain were hit by flooding following torrential downpours, and forecasters warn there is more rain on the way.

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Meet the brains of the animal world

"In the past, people thought birds were stupid," laments the aptly named scientist Christopher Bird.
But in fact, some of our feathered friends are far cleverer than we might think.
And one group in particular - the corvids - has astonished scientists with extraordinary feats of memory, an ability to employ complex social reasoning and, perhaps most strikingly, a remarkable aptitude for crafting and using tools.

Mr Bird, who is based at the department of zoology at Cambridge University, says: "I would rate corvids as being as intelligent as primates in many ways."
The corvids - a group that includes crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays and magpies - contain some of the most social species of birds.
And some of their intelligence is played out against the backdrop of living with others, where being intelligent enough to recognize individuals, to form alliances and foster relationships is key.
However, group living can also lead to deceptive behaviour - and western scrub jays (Aphelocoma californica ) can be the sneakiest of the bird-bunch.
Many corvids will hide stores of food for later consumption, especially during the cold winter months when resources are scarce, but western scrub jays take this one step further.

Mr Bird says: "If they are being watched, they will hide their food, but they will do some 'fake hides' as well - so they'll put their beak in the ground, but not place the food. It's a bit like a confusion strategy.
"Sometimes, if they are being watched, then they'll even go back and hide the food again."
You looking at me?
Corvids' cognisance of other birds has led scientists to ponder whether they are also aware of themselves.
And to test this, scientists use the Gallup mark test, where an animal is marked on a part of its body that it cannot normally see and is then shown its reflection in a mirror.If it notices this mark and tries to remove it, then it suggests that the animal knows it is looking at itself and could possess some kind of self-awareness.
So far, only some species of primates have consistently passed this self-recognition test, although more recent studies suggest elephants and dolphins may also respond.
But last year, a German team revealed that magpies, marked with a coloured sticker under their beaks, tried to remove it when presented with a mirror - the first time a bird had been seen to pass this test.
Professor Onur Gunturkun, from Ruhr-University Bochum, one of the authors of the Plos paper, says: "It throws out the assumption that only higher mammals were capable of self-recognition."
Tool tales
While the birds' social intelligence has continued to impress, it is perhaps their physical intelligence, and in particular their tool use, that has stirred the most interest.
Recent studies reveal that corvids' tool-use may at least rival, and even surpass, that of primates, such as chimpanzees.
And one species in particular possesses an extraordinary ability - the New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides ), which is found on the Pacific island of New Caledonia.
Russell Gray and his colleagues from the department of psychology at the University of Auckland have studied this species extensively, and were the first to discover that the birds were crafting tools in the wild.

Professor Gray tells BBC News: "They do some really complex looking things.
"We have seen that they take a whole branch, chop off the side branches and hone away at the end to create a hook, which they use to get grubs."
Other experiments carried out at field stations have even shown that the birds will use a number of different tools to reach a tasty snack.
Brainy Betty
Inside the laboratory, captive New Caledonian crows are also helping scientists to better understand tool use and corvid intelligence.

And one bird in particular seemed to posses a remarkable ability when it came to solving problems using tools - Betty.
Alex Kacelnik, who leads the behavioural ecology group at Oxford University, said: "Betty was captured as a juvenile from the field, and she must have been one-and-a-half years old when she came to us. And we didn't have any reason to suspect that she was an unusual animal."

However the team discovered, by chance, that Betty was able to perform some remarkable feats that had never been seen before in any other animals.
The researchers were testing how New Caledonian crows selected tools by presenting them with a small bucket filled with some food, which was placed in a well, and pieces of wire, some straight and some with a hook at the end.
The aim was to see whether the crows would select the bent wire to retrieve the treat-laden bucket.
But Betty astonished researchers when she selected a straight piece of wire and then used her beak to bend it into a hook so she could pull up the bucket of food.
When she was later tested with just the straight wire, Betty repeatedly bent it into hooks - and other experiments with aluminium strips revealed how she would bend, shorten and lengthen the material to get to her food.
This was the first time that any animal had been seen to make a new tool for a specific task, without an extended period of trial-and-error learning.
'The million dollar question'
As scientists discover ever-more intelligent behaviour in corvids, they are now trying to understand why this group has developed these special abilities. And New Caledonian crows' tool-use is a key focus.

Professor Gray explains: "What has led to just this one species in this one little island in the Pacific being able to make these complex tools? It's an ongoing mystery."
Professor Kacelnik agrees: "This really is the million dollar question.
"We know that this is heritable - we have demonstrated that if you raise New Caledonian crows, without exposure to any social input, they still would want to use tools to solve problems."
Researchers are also looking at the cognitive processes that underpin this behaviour.
Mr Bird says: "The interesting thing is that they can do so many of these clever things that primates can do - sometimes they can do them even better. But their brain is completely different from the mammalian brain.
"They don't have the area of the mammalian brain that is thought to be the area of intelligent cognition - the neocortex.
"Interestingly, they have another area, the nidopallium, that might do the same job."

As scientists try to understand this, the research is also driving forward some more fundamental questions about intelligence.

Christian Rutz, who also works for Oxford's behavioural ecology group, says: "There are such enormous semantic issues. How do you define intelligence? How do you define what it means to understand something?"
We have to be careful with ascribing intelligence to seemingly impressive behaviours, he says.
He explains: "Not everything that looks smart to the human observer is actually smart.
"For example, take orb web spiders. These animals build sophisticated structures for foraging, but would we call this behaviour 'intelligent'? Probably not."
He says to understand what the birds are doing and whether this sets them apart in any way, the same experiments need to be carried out, multiple times, on many different species, to properly compare results.
Dr Rutz adds: "People tend to think corvid cognition research is now incredibly advanced and we've answered most of the questions - I don't think so, I think it is at the very beginning."

By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News

O papel das florestas de atuar como filtros gigantes de carbono está sob o risco de "ser totalmente perdido", segundo um relatório compilado por alguns dos maiores cientistas florestais do mundo.
O documento compilado por 35 profissionais da União Internacional das Organizações de Pesquisas Florestais (IUFRO, na sigla em inglês) afirma que as florestas estão sob um crescente estresse como resultado das mudanças climáticas.
Ainda segundo o relatório, as florestas podem começar a liberar uma enorme quantidade de carbono na atmosfera se as temperaturas do planeta subirem 2,5ºC acima dos chamados níveis pré-industriais.
As descobertas serão apresentadas no Fórum da ONU sobre Florestas, que começa nesta segunda-feira, em Nova York, e estão sendo descritas como sendo a primeira avaliação mundial da capacidade das florestas se adaptarem às mudanças climáticas.
Seca e pobreza
"Normalmente, pensamos nas florestas como 'freios' do aquecimento global", disse à BBC Risto Seppala, do Instituto de Pesquisa Florestal da Finlândia e presidente do painel de especialistas.
"Mas nas próximas décadas, os danos provocados pelas mudanças climáticas podem fazer com que as florestas comecem a liberar uma enorme quantidade de carbono, criando uma situação em que elas contribuirão mais para o aceleramento do aquecimento do que ajudarão a reduzi-lo."
Os cientistas esperam que o relatório ajude a informar os profissionais envolvidos nas negociações sobre as políticas ambientais.
O documento destaca ainda outros fatos novos, como a projeção de que as secas devem se tornar mais intensas e frequentes nas florestas subtropicais e temperadas do sul, e de que as plantações comerciais de madeira podem se tornar inviáveis em algumas áreas.
O relatório diz também que as mudanças climáticas podem "aprofundar a pobreza, deteriorar a saúde pública e aumentar os conflitos sociais" entre as comunidades da África que dependem das florestas.
Andreas Fischlin, do Instituto Federakl Suíço de Tecnologia, e co-autor do estudo, ressalta, no entanto, que mesmo que se implemente todas as medidas necessárias, as mudanças climáticas podem ainda neste século exceder a capacidade adaptativa de muitas florestas".
"A única maneira de assegurar que as florestas não sofram danos sem precedentes é conseguir fazer uma enorme redução nas emissões dos gases de efeito estufa", concluiu.

Mark Kinver
Da BBC News

Bid to protect wild bird hot spot

English Country Songs

The survival of two of the world's rarest birds could be improved with the creation of reserves in Syria, according to a Scottish-based expert.

Martin Scott was one of four RSPB Scotland staff to recently visit the Middle Eastern country.
They are now preparing reports on how species such as the critically endangered sociable lapwing and bald ibis can be given greater protection.
Swallows and cuckoos, migratory birds seen in the UK, pass through Syria.
The team - Hywel Maggs, Graham Rebecca and John Wills from Aberdeenshire and Mr Scott from Lewis - hope key areas of desert and woodland habitat can be protected for the birds.
Mr Scott said: "Syria is almost untouched, but the population is growing and more and more areas are being turned over to agriculture.
"There is a lot of forestry being felled and people we spoke to said changes to the land have happened rapidly over the last few years."
The four are writing reports for the Syrian authorities and ideas include national parks based on boundaries sketched on maps by the various team members.
Northern bald ibis, which was revered by the Egyptian Pharaohs and once widespread in the Middle East, Africa and Europe, are clinging to survival in Syria and Morocco.

Sociable lapwings have also suffered dramatic declines, mainly because of hunting. The Scottish team saw about 60 on their trip.
Mr Scott said the sight of hundreds of steppe eagles flying overhead highlighted the country's importance to species that make long distance journeys to breed and overwinter.
He said: "There were 1,200 of the sea eagle-size birds. It was like a conveyor belt of eagles flying over the top of us."
However, for the Western Isles based RSPB officer, one of the high points of the visit was spotting two wolves.
The mammals have becoming an increasingly rare sight in Syria.
The team worked with local people and government officials, in a partnership which brought together the RSPB, the Syrian Ministry of the Environment and the Syrian Society for Conservation of Wildlife.
The project was being carried out through the Darwin Initiative, which assists countries that are rich in biodiversity but poor in financial resources.

Page last updated at 00:35 GMT, Thursday, 16 April 2009 01:35 UK

Charles Darwin's egg rediscovered

An egg collected by Charles Darwin during his voyage on HMS Beagle has been rediscovered at Cambridge University.

The small dark brown egg, with Darwin's name written on it, was found by a retired volunteer at the university's zoology museum.
It bears a large crack, caused after the great naturalist put it in a box that was too small for it.
The egg is the only one known to exist from Darwin's Beagle collection.
At one time it was thought there were a dozen or more.

It was spotted one day in February by volunteer Liz Wetton, who spends a day each week sorting eggs in the museum's collection.
She said: "It was an exhilarating experience. After working on the egg collections for 10 years this was a tremendous thing to happen."
It was the collections manager, Mathew Lowe, who first realised the importance of the specimen. "There are so many historical treasures in the collection, Liz did not realise this was a new discovery," Mr Lowe told BBC News.
"To have rediscovered a Beagle specimen in the 200th year of Darwin's birth is special enough, but to have evidence that Darwin himself broke it is a wonderful twist."
Dr Mike Brooke, the museum's curator of ornithology, traced the specimen's origin in the notebook of Professor Alfred Newton, a friend of Darwin's and a professor of zoology in the late 19th Century.
Newton had written: "One egg, received through Frank Darwin, having been sent to me by his father who said he got it at Maldonado (Uruguay) and that it belonged to the Common Tinamou of those parts.
"The great man put it into too small a box and hence its unhappy state."
Darwin himself mistook the bird for a partridge at first.

And in his notebooks from 1833, he wrote that the bird had a "high shrill chirp" and that its flesh was "most delicately white" when cooked.
The museum's director, Professor Michael Akam, said: "This find shows just how valuable the work of our loyal volunteers is to the museum".

By Christine McGourty Science Correspondent, BBC News

Wilkins: Ponte de gelo na Antártica quebra

Uma ponte de gelo que liga um bloco do tamanho da Jamaica a duas ilhas da Antártica quebrou, informaram investigadores este fim-de-semana. Cientistas afirmam que o rompimento pode indicar que o bloco Wilkins, como é conhecido o território, flutuará livremente, o que seria um sinal das mudanças provocadas pelo aquecimento global.
O bloco Wilkins, que fica no oeste da península Antártica, está a diminuir de tamanho desde a década de 1990. Para os cientistas, a ponte de gelo era uma barreira importante que mantinha o bloco ligado à região. O rompimento permitiria que o bloco Wilkins se movimentasse livremente entre as ilhas de Charcot e Latady.
Fotos da Agência Espacial Europeia haviam demonstrado que a ponte estava a começar a quebrar. O investigador David Vaughan, do instituto British Antarctic Survey, colocou um GPS na ponte de gelo em Janeiro e está a monitorizar o movimento do bloco Wilkins.
«Nós sabemos que [o bloco de gelo Wilkins] está completamente ou muito estável desde os anos 30, e depois começou a diminuir de tamanho nos anos 90», disse à BBC.
«O facto de estar a diminuir e agora ter perdido ligação com uma das ilhas é uma indicação forte de que o aquecimento da Antártica está a ter efeitos noutro bloco de gelo.»

O rompimento não deve ter impacto directo no nível dos mares, porque o gelo está a flutuar e não derreteu, mas os cientistas estão preocupados com as alterações no clima da Antártica.
Nos últimos 50 anos, a península tem sido uma das que mais está a aquecer no planeta. Muitas das camadas de gelo diminuíram no período e seis delas romperam por completo - Prince Gustav, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller e Jones.

Diário Digital

Finches choose sex of offspring

Females judge prospective mates by the colour of their feathers

Female Gouldian finches "decide" to have more male chicks if they are less compatible with their mate.

The birds, which have either red or black heads, prefer to mate with males with the same head colouring, as this signifies a better genetic match.
Chicks from a mismatched mating - particularly the females - are weaker and more likely to die very early.
A report in the journal Science says that the birds compensate for this by having more male chicks in their brood.
Broods are more gender balanced when the parents are the same colour

Colourful Gouldian finches can judge if a mate is genetically compatible just by looking at its head.
A female that mates with a male with the same colouring lays eggs that hatch much healthier chicks.
This new study has found that, when the female finches mate with a male that has a different head colour, they select the sex of their offspring - giving their chicks a better chance of survival. Parental control
In birds, the sex of an egg is already determined before it is fertilised by the male.
Sarah Pryke, a biologist from Macquarie University in Sydney, led this study. She found that when female finches mate with mismatched males, 70% of their chicks are male.

This is beneficial for the birds, because male chicks from genetically mismatched parents are more likely to survive than females.
"It is pretty amazing to think that the female herself has so much control - subconsciously of course - over this basic physiology," said Dr Pryke.
The results were particularly striking because colour-matched matings, which result in much healthier broods, always produce roughly equal numbers of male and female chicks.
"Females really don't want to mate with a male with a different head colour.
"But there simply aren't enough compatible males, so later in the mating season they seem to use this control to make the best of a bad situation."
Birds of a feather
Dr Pryke's team disguised some of the male finches to show that this "sex bias" is entirely controlled by the females.
They blackened the head feathers of red males, using a non-toxic dye, and paired them to both red and black females to allow them to breed.
"It's actually quite hard to tell the experimentally blackened birds apart from natural black males," explained Dr Pryke.
The birds were fooled, and the team found that black females that mated with the "disguised" red males produced an equal ratio of male and female chicks.
"This is the clearest and perhaps most extreme example of sex biasing that has been found," said Dr Pryke. "It's really black and white - or in this case black and red."
She said that exactly how the birds select the sex of their eggs is still a "big mystery".
"We have an idea that hormones may play a role - but that's a working hypothesis we're looking to test."
Dr Ruedi Nager, a biologist from Glasgow University who specialises in avian reproduction described this as an "excellent experiment".
"It's now clear that the control is driven by the females," he told BBC News.
"Somehow the female recognises the sex of the follicle [or egg cell] and selects it based on how much she likes the male.
"Hopefully, this will reinvigorate the debate about how this works."
By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News

Tags reveal birds' ocean odyssey

Electronic tags have offered an insight into the mysteries of the 20,000km migration of Manx shearwaters.
A team of UK scientists found that the birds made regular "stopovers" lasting up to two weeks, probably to feed and replenish their energy reserves.
The data was recovered from logging tags fitted to six breeding pairs of Puffinus puffinus from

Skomer Island, off the coast of Wales.

"We have interpreted this as being stopover behaviour because this is common in terrestrial migrant birds; essentially, they stop to refuel," he told BBC News.
But, he added, sea birds that migrated over open seas did not normally display this behaviour because, unlike terrestrial species, they were not able to return to the same feeding spot each year.
However, in the case of the tagged Manx shearwaters, a small bird weighing about 400g, they appeared to have adopted the same behaviour as it offered the "optimal migration strategy".
Professor Guilford suggested that the birds were more likely to survive if they made a series of regular stops rather than flying directly to South America.
"If they flew directly, they would have to have a larger fat reserve in order to make the journey," he explained.
"They could do that, but on the other hand that would mean the bird would be flying the first part of the migration weighing more than it needed to.
"It is a complex trade-off between the aerodynamics of long distance flight and the risks and time constraints of having to stop and refuel.
Ringing true
Professor Guilford said the data did not throw up too many surprises as far as the birds' migratory route was concerned.
"The route that they took was very broadly consistent with what people using more traditional methods, such as ringing, thought they had taken.
"It is gratifying that these techniques, which have been the mainstay of our understanding of avian migration for so long, turn out to be broadly correct."
However, he added that the data from the tags did reveal a few differences.
"They go a little bit further south than we expected, but that was probably the result that human settlements were much more sparse, where there were fewer people to recover the rings."
The team used two different kinds of logging tags, both of which were designed and made by the British Antarctic Survey."They are very similar except that one is a slightly more recent version, which records contact with salt water," Professor Guilford explained.
"This allowed us to know whether the bird was sat on the water or diving, or whether it was flying." By combining the two data sets (location and flight/stationary), the researchers were able to work out the birds' migration pattern and behaviour en route.
Rather than using a satellite tag, which beams the data back almost straight away, the team opted for a "logging device" that stored the information until it was physically retrieved from the bird.
"This is the slightly nerve-wracking side of things," he admitted. "The primary benefit is that they are much smaller than devices that transmit."
All of the tagged birds returned to the UK breeding site, which suggested that the tags did not inhibit them during their seven-month migration.
"We have gone to great lengths to try and minimise the impact of our devices," said Professor Guilford.
Although the Manx shearwater, as a species, is not under threat, he added that the findings helped improve our understanding of what was happening in the world's seas and oceans.
"Although they are doing very well, they are still limited to big but compact populations on islands, which are very vulnerable to predators etc," he explained.
"So it is nice to say that we can now begin to understand what these birds depend upon in terms of resources on land, and now at sea.
"We won't be stopping with Manx shearwaters, we are beginning to put them on puffins as well." The findings appear in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
"Every one of the 12 birds made at least one stop during its migration in one place for up to two weeks," observed co-author Tim Guilford of the Animal Behaviour Research Group at the University of Oxford.

By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Earth enjoys full moon close-up

A full moon has occurred closer to the Earth than it has done at any time for the past 15 years.
The Moon's elliptical orbit means its distance from the Earth is not constant.
It was a little over 350,000km away as it passed over the northern hemisphere, about 30,000km closer than usual.
Astronomers said the moon would appear brighter and larger than usual, but the sky in the UK was almost completely covered by cloud.
Closest path
Friday's full moon was predicted to appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons this year, according to Nasa.
The Moon's orbit is elliptical, meaning it does not follow a circular but rather an oval path.
It has reached the point where this oval orbit is nearest to the Earth.
"It's only every few years that a full moon happens to coincide with the part of the Moon's orbit when its closest to the Earth," said Marek Kukula, an astronomer at the UK's Royal Observatory.
The moon appears largest as it rises and sets, but this is a psychological illusion, Dr Kukula said.
"When it's close to the horizon, our brain interprets it as being bigger than it actually is, this is called the moon illusion," he said.
"The size may be striking when it's near the horizon," said Robert Massey of the UK Royal Astronomical Society.
However, he cautioned against expecting too much.
"The Moon may be brighter and may appear somewhat larger, but it's really quite hard for the eye to notice the difference; the eye will compensate for the extra brightness, it's not like going from night to day," said Dr Massey.
The Moon's brightness varies throughout its annual cycle, during the mid-winter in the northern hemisphere it can appear brighter simply because it is higher in the sky.

Making a garden sparrow-friendly

A lack of greenery may be responsible for the decline in sparrow populations

A new report suggests that modern garden design, urban development and paving over front gardens to use them as parking spaces could all be contributing to the catastrophic decline in the numbers of sparrows in our towns and cities.
Researchers say the study, by scientists from the RSPB, De Montfort University and Natural England, is the first to investigate the 20-year decline of house sparrows in suburbia.
But what does it take to create a sparrow friendly garden?
The sparrow used to be a familiar sight in our towns and cities, but within a generation, numbers have plummeted.

Researchers say numbers started falling in towns and cities in the mid-1980s. Cockney sparrows are almost non-existent, and the species has almost vanished from London.
House sparrows are also disappearing from Bristol, Edinburgh and Dublin.
One of the co-authors of the study, Dr Kate Vincent, describes it as "one of the most mysterious and complex declines of a species in recent years".
This new research studied house sparrows in Leicester and surrounding villages.
The birds declined by 28% during the three-year study - but scientists found that while sparrow chicks were hatching, they weren't surviving.
'Lazy gardening'
Dr Mark Avery, from the RSPB, says the research suggests that a lack of garden greenery means that the insects that sparrows rely on to feed their young are in short supply:
"When even the common sparrow is declining, it shows the world is in a bad state," he says.
"Massive changes in population can happen in a very short space of time, even in species that start off as very common. For example there were 9 billion passenger pigeons just 50 years before they became extinct."
One place that sparrows continue to thrive is in St Ives, Cambridgeshire - more particularly, in Will Peach's back garden.
But as the lead author of the new sparrow research, he admits that, if sparrows didn't thrive in his garden, it would be a rather worrying state of affairs.
He attributes his sparrow success to honeysuckle, and being a "useless, lazy gardener".
"Honeysuckle attracts loads of spiders and insects, which the sparrows love," he says, "and leaving vegetation to grow gives the right conditions".
It certainly seems to work - two sparrows are, as we speak, perching on a nearby tree looking at us inquisitively, and the air is melodious with birdsong.

So, now you have an excuse for doing nothing in the garden - you're helping one of Britain's best loved, and rapidly disappearing, birds.

By Sarah Mukherjee Environment correspondent, BBC News

Australia youths 'maul flamingo'

Four teenagers in Australia have been charged with an attack on an almost blind greater flamingo, thought to be one of the oldest of its kind alive.

Wildlife conservation: Congress diary

More than 8,000 conservationists and policy makers are in Barcelona, Spain, for the IUCN World Conservation Congress.
Held once every four years, the gathering is viewed as a landmark event where future conservation strategies are developed.
In his daily diary, environment correspondent Richard Black reports on the topics beings discussed in the conference halls, and visits some of the fringe events.

1986: Coal mine canaries made redundant

1986: Coal mine canaries made redundant
More than 200 canary birds are being phased out of Britain's mining pits, according to new plans by the government.
Modern technology is being favoured over the long-serving yellow feathered friend of the miner in detecting harmful gases which may be present underground.
New electronic detectors will replace the bird because they are said to be cheaper in the long run and more effective in indicating the presence of pollutants in the air otherwise unnoticed by miners.
The gas detectors will be hand-held and carry a digital reading which appears on a screen alerting miners to the extent of the gases.
The birds' replacement will be introduced gradually next year.
Miners are said to be saddened by the latest set of redundancies in their industry but do not intend to dispute the decision.
The removal of the canaries will end a mining tradition in Britain dating back to 1911, since when two canaries have been employed by each pit.
Signs of distress
They are so ingrained in the culture miners report whistling to the birds and coaxing them as they worked, treating them as pets.
The canary is particularly sensitive to toxic gases such as carbon monoxide which is colourless, odourless and tasteless.
This gas could easily form underground during a mine fire or after an explosion.
Following a mine fire or explosion, mine rescuers would descend into the mine, carrying a canary in a small wooden or metal cage.
Any sign of distress from the canary was a clear signal the conditions underground were unsafe and miners should be evacuated from the pit and the mineshafts made safer.


In Context
Coal miners now rely on carbon monoxide detectors and monitors.
Canaries were not the only animals which were used to detect the presence of dangerous gases underground - mice were too.
But tests conducted by the Bureau of Mines showed canaries were favoured because their reaction to carbon monoxide was more apparent even if small quantities of the gas were present.
The coal mining industry was going through massive changes at the time and was in decline.
A year-long strike by the National Miners' Union had ended without much success in March 1985 and the miners had lost a lot of bargaining power because of it.
In the 1940s there had been 718,000 mine workers but by 2002 that figure had dropped to about 12,000.
BBC News

Part of bird reserve left to sea

Part of one of Britain's most important bird reserves is to be abandoned because of coastal erosion.
Up to a third of the RSPB's Titchwell Marshes on the north Norfolk coast will be given up to protect the rest of the sanctuary from the encroaching sea.
Salt water would damage the freshwater habitat at the reserve, which is home to rare species including bitterns, bearded tits and marsh harriers.
The RSPB says it will spend £1.5m on a managed retreat and new sea walls.
The erosion of the coast has put the reserve's mixture of brackish marshes - salt marshland which is diluted with freshwater - freshwater marshes and reedbeds at risk of inundation, threatening the resident birds.
At any time, high tides and storm surges could breach the current sea walls which protect 56 hectares (138 acres) of the site.
The managed retreat will see 11 hectares (27 acres) of brackish marsh return to saltmarsh and mudflats exposed to the tide.
Rob Coleman, the reserve's manager, said the need for the scheme "was clear".
"We faced a stark choice between sacrificing the brackish marsh or losing the whole site to the sea."
Climate change
The RSPB's Helen Deavin, project manager of the managed retreat, said the scheme should ensure the reserve is protected for 50 years, when the natural erosion process is expected to move further down the coast.
"We've got to bear in mind the impacts of climate change such as sea level rises along the coast and increased storminess. These problems aren't going to go away," she added.
But despite losing the brackish marsh, the newly-created intertidal saltmarsh and mudflats will also become important habitats for birds, the RSPB said.
The charity is also planning to create more island nesting sites for breeding avocets in the freshwater part of the reserve and at the Freiston Shore and Frampton Marsh reserves, about 19 miles away.
Four more hectares of reedbed for bitterns will also be created.
The site, visited by around 90,000 people a year, was a tank range during World War II and the site of a military hospital.
BBC News

Birds 'off the pace' with warming

French birds are moving northwards in response to climate change, but not fast enough, scientists have found.
Their data came from a large survey in which volunteer ornithologists counted more than 105 species of bird.
In the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, researchers say that the birds are lagging some 182km behind the increases in temperature.
This lag may be of particular concern to rare birds or species that have very specific food requirements.

"The flora and fauna around us are shifting over time due to climate change," said Vincent Devictor, who led the research project from the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) in Paris.
"The result is desynchronisation. If birds and the insects on which they depend do not react in the same way, we are headed for an upheaval in the interaction between species," he told the AFP news agency.
At its worst, this desynchronisation could result in species extinctions, he said.
Slow march
In 1989, French ornithologists began a systematic survey of breeding birds. Sightings are taken at set times of the year in set locations, and follow a standard protocol.
A wide variety of habitats are surveyed across the whole country, including farmland, forests, suburbs and cities.
The result is a dataset that covers virtually all wild bird species in the country, and can be used to track changes over the period.
Chaffinches are among the birds found to be nesting earlier in the UK
On average, bird populations moved 91km northward between 1989 and 2006.
In order to have kept themselves at a constant temperature as the country warmed, they would have had to move 273km northwards, the researchers calculated.
Ben Sheldon from Oxford University, who also studies nature's response to rising temperatures, commented: "At any one site, the community of birds you find there has changed over time.
"Now, more of the species that are found in warmer climates are occurring, but that change is not occurring as fast as the change in temperature is," he told BBC News.
This study did not examine whether the failure to "keep up" with rising temperatures was affecting the birds.
Evidence from other studies suggests it depends on the species involved, their habitat, how their prey are responding to climate change, and what other threats and constraints they face.
A recent study of great tits in England found they were coping well with rising temperatures, changing their egg-laying times in order to adapt to the earlier emergence of insect prey.
But in the Netherlands, the same species is suffering.

"Some species have changed their range hugely over the past two decades," observed Professor Sheldon.
"For example, the buzzard - one of our biggest birds of prey - 20 years ago was restricted to the west of Britain, but has now spread as far east as London."
Another recent study found a number of species in the UK, including the chaffinch, were laying eggs earlier than 40 years ago.
The French team suggests more research on the issue is vital if better conservation options are to be developed.

BBC News

Weather alerts boost lung health

A scheme warning people with a lung condition about weather which could have an effect on them has cut hospital admissions for the problem by a fifth.

The Met Office alerts tell people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) when cold weather is due.
More than 8,000 patients from 189 GP practices across the UK are signed up to the scheme.
The British Lung Foundation says users can plan to avoid being out during cold snaps which could harm their health.
COPD is a progressive lung disease that affects over 900,000 people in the UK, causing acute breathlessness meaning everyday life can be very difficult.
Cold air can worsen symptoms by making airways narrower, making it even harder to breathe. Chest infections are also more common in winter.
Deaths due to respiratory disease, like COPD, increase 12 days after a fall in temperature, which causes an increase in colds and breathing problems.
Aggravation
Compared to winter 2006 - when the scheme was not running - NHS figures show there was a 24% fall in hospital admissions for COPD patients from the practices in the scheme, but there was just a 3% drop seen in practices in the same areas which are not taking part, giving a 21% net benefit.

Each GP practice involved in the scheme is e-mailed a weekly forecast between November and April.
The Met Office uses health information, such as what respiratory viruses are circulating, as well as weather forecasts to decide when warnings need to be given.
If an alert is needed, patients receive an automated phone call spelling out what they can do to safeguard their health and asking if they feel they need to see their GP.
There were four alert calls during last winter.
Wayne Elliott, the head of the Met Office forecasting team, said: "If there is a cold snap coming, patients can get their shopping in beforehand, or contact their doctors and get their prescription early so they are not exposed to the low temperatures."
'No complacency'
The Met Office has surveyed more than 3,000 of the patients taking part in the scheme.
Over a third were prompted to contact their GP practice to get a repeat prescription for their medication, while 11% consulted their doctor about worsening symptoms.

Patients commented that the service "made them feel that someone cared".
One patient said: "I found this system to be very useful in planning and ordering of medication, and adjusting lifestyle to take account of the weather conditions."
Dame Helena Shovelton, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation (BLF) said the forecast was "of great benefit".
"Being aware of detrimental weather conditions enables people to plan ahead and avoid situations that could aggravate their condition."
But Dame Helena said being part of the scheme should not make patients complacent about their condition.
"It should not be seen as a replacement for other important services, such as pulmonary rehabilitation classes, which increase lung fitness, and specialist respiratory nurses which play a vital role in keeping people with COPD healthy and out of hospital - although access to them is patchy across the UK."

Attacks on birds of prey 'up 40%'

The number of crimes reported against birds of prey rose by 40% last year to a record level, the RSPB has said.

The bird welfare charity recorded 262 attacks in 2007, up from 185, including 34 shootings and 49 poisonings.
Crimes against all wild birds also hit a record high with 1,208 incidents reported to the RSPB, up from 1,109.
It said the rise may be down to better sharing of information with other agencies but believes many crimes go undetected in remote areas.
Eggs collected
The birds of prey poisoned included 17 red kites and one half of the only breeding pair of golden eagles in the Scottish Borders.
The RSPB's annual Birdcrime report also revealed:

619 reports of birds other than birds of prey being shot or the victims of destruction
39 egg-collecting incidents, including two confirmed and four probable from protected birds
165 reports of poisoning
The report said protected birds were also illegally disturbed and photographed, while other crimes included the theft, possession and sale of wild birds.
It urged the Home Office to make it clear to police forces that wildlife crime should be given a higher priority and called for measures to tackle it to be written into forces' policing plans

Data from the report identifies four counties that were the worst in England for reported persecution of birds of prey.
They were North Yorkshire, with 78 reports, Northumberland with 22 and Shropshire and Cumbria with 16 reports each.
RSPB head of investigations Ian West said: "The number of reports coming in to us is the highest we have ever had, but we are still only seeing the tip of the iceberg.
"It's hard to say whether the problem is increasing or whether we are just getting to hear about more of the offences that are taking place.
"What is clear is that very large numbers of birds are being illegally killed every year and that is totally unacceptable in a civilised society. There has to be a greater effort to enforce the law."
There was worldwide condemnation after the 10-year-old female golden eagle was poisoned in Peeblesshire last August.
The male eagle has since found a new partner and a chick hatched earlier this year.

BBC News

Breeding rate fall for rare bird

Slavonian grebe are one of UK's most colourful birds

One of the UK's rarest birds is facing its worst breeding season on record, according to RSPB Scotland.
Slavonian grebe first nested in Scotland near Loch Ness, Inverness-shire, in 1909.
The entire UK breeding population - today numbering only 29 pairs - continues to be found within 40 miles of the area.
RSPB officer Stuart Benn said the birds were being monitored to determine what factors were affecting them.
The fears over the breeding season come in the wake of a bird ringed in Scotland being found dead in Iceland.
A fisherman found the bird drowned in his net at Myvatn - midge lake - and handed it in to the local research centre.
The centre in turn contacted RSPB staff in Inverness.