New research has found that for the first time ever puffins have been rare in Britain.  Unfortunately, shags, nightingales and our biggest wader, the curlew have too.  They have all been added to the official red list.  This shows that more than one in four of the UK’s 244 bird species are so rare they may become a cause of concern for the RSPB.  The number of British birds on the red list is now 67-up 15 since the last list in 2009.  It includes some of our favourite and best known birds, including the cuckoo and the starling.

Britain may not have the lions of Africa or the grizzlies of orth America, but it does have outstanding wildlife.  Some of our most special species are among the smallest islands.  These wildlife heroes include the world’s oldest creature and a beetle that farms its own food.  All are rare and being helped by National Park rangers and volunteers.  Among them is the mountain or bilberry bumble bee which hums away in the heathers of Northumberland National Park.  This tough invertabrate survives snow, howling winds and lots more awful wheather.  Also, there’s the extremely rare tadpole shrimp of the New Forest NP.  With its horshoe shaped shell it has been…

This lion cub looks like it’s got a massive black moustache, but it’s actually its mother’s tail!  This six week old cub spent a few minutes messing about with its mother’s tail, biting it and trying to pull it away.  The mother has four young cubs and all of them were keen to get her attention.  As she rested, another of her young cubs lay on her back.  Anup Shah from Kington Langley, Wiltshire, took these humorous shots in Kenya.

The brown masked polecat often looks mischievous.  But this hunter from the hedgerows is a miracle worker;it’s increasing its population.   Once widespread across Britain, they were virtually hunted to extinction.  And just 100 years ago it was clinging on with its claws in its last stronghold in mid-Wales.  But fortuantately with legal protection and a boost in its favourite prey, rabbits, have sent numbers bouncing back.  And there is still chance to help the the Vincent Wildlife Trust chart its distribution by sending sightings to its National  Polecat Survey which runs till the end of this month.    This the third survey since the 90’s and the VWT says…

Climate change seems good for one of our creatures;crickets.  Three species new to Britain have arrived as they moved north through Europe. They include the long-winged conehead and the Rosell’s bush cricket.  There is also going to be reintroduction progress for the wart-biter cricket. The size of a small dog, the Tasmanian devil, a snarling predatory marsupial, has been given a helping hand against a killer disease.  Since 1996, numbers have been sent plummeting by 96 percent because of a deadly cancer.  But Sidney’s Devil Ark has bred healthy stock and has released at least 40 into a decease-free area of bush in Tasmania.

When you’re one of Africa’s most successful predators, there are times you don’t want a camera being pointed at you.  This hungry jackal used all his strength last week to get a tasty breakfast, only to be left nursing his hunger, his wounded pride caught on camera for the whole world to see.  The jackal had been lying in wait for birds to come to the water hole every day at first light.  Spotting some early bird doves, the jackal leaped into the water to try to catch his quarry but he wasn’t quick enough.  After an hour, a noisy flock of sandgrouse arrived.  But the predator mistimed his attack…

This amazing picture shows two buzzards fighting to the death over dinner.  The hungry buzzards were circling over the Bulgarian city of Varna when they spotted fresh meat.  The starving birds both swooped down as soon as they’d spotted it and ended up having a scrap to decide which one had dinner.  Photographer and bird enthusiast Svetoslav Simeonov caught the two buzzards, the long-legged and the common, on camera.  Buzzards are opportunists and will feed on whatever they find, from rubbish and carrion to a fully grown hare.

Martin Grimm is a very lucky man!  The other night this German wildlife photographer was bobbing about in the Baltic on a research vessel  when thousands of birds descended out of the darkness.  His Youtube videos are like something from a horror movie, quotes John Igham.  His boat was swamped with finches.  Lit up by the ship’s lights, the birds were on the deck and all over the place.  Meanwhile thousands more were flying in, swirling clouds of them, trying to seek a refuge from the bad weather.  This is the autumn migration in full flow, with chaffinches and even their northern relatives, bramblings.  They were joined by siskins, greenfinches,…

This mother bear can hardly bear to watch as her cubs climb higher and higher up a tree!  The photo shows the cubs all looking down to see how far their brothers and sisters have got.  They know that their mother can’t stop them as they head higher up.  Sitting at the bottom, mother even holds her head in her paws because she can’t bear to watch them!  Photographer Ville Paakkonen, 20, from Finland was out bear watching when he found the cubs playing around.  Finland’s pine forests are home to an estimated 1,500 European brown bears.  Sightings can be almost guaranteed.

Two predatory birds were caught on camera, one stealing the other’s prey.  This barn owl had caught a vole and was carrying it back to its perch with it, when a female kestrel, only half its size, came and snatched it off it again! It snatched it in its talons and swooped upwards, but then the barn owl flew after it and got it back with its beak.  Photographer Chris Castling, 60, captured this incredible tug of war.

Globe trotting Mya Rose Craig, at 13 years old, has become the youngest person in the world to see 4,000 different bird species.  She set the record when a recent trip to Kenya allowed her a rare glimpse of a red throated tit.  She has seen many different bird species, including the southern cassowary which see saw when she was only four, and it has become her favourite bird.  That was when her mother let her start counting them on her own.  Her mother said she and Chris took her to the Isles of Scilly when she was only a few months old.  When she was ten her retired parents…

The spectacular game bird, the black grouse, is now confined to very few parts of moorland in England.  So when John Ingham went to RSPB’s Geltside reserve in the Cumbrian Pennines one cloudy spring morning he was rewarded.  The males were locked in a dance over who got to mate with the females, flying into the air and and then landing on their attacker.  Since 2008, beer named the Black grouse had raised 600000 pounds for black grouse conservation at RSPB reserves in Scotland, one of the black grouses last strongholds.  At the same time the numbers of male dancing black grouse have risen from just 18 to 59!  But…

Britain’s birds and butterflies are travelling slowly north thanks to warmer temperatures.  A study of 80 bit species shows that over the past 15 years their range has moved an average 30 miles further north.  The BTO report in Bird Study focused 1994 to2009, which was a period when British temperatures increased by 0.59C.  Great spotted woodpeckers have moved an amazing 125, with jays range increasing 100 miles north and nuthatches a shorter 80 miles.  Researcher Dario Massimino said that 20 years ago great spotted woodpeckers used to be seen south of Glasgow but now they’ve been seen in Iverness.  Green woodpeckers used to keep south of the river Tees…

A tiny bird the size of a goldcrest that breeds in Siberia may be showing evolution progress right under our eyes.  Yellow-browed warbler overwinters in South-East Asia and breeds in Siberia could be carving out a new migration route.  Record numbers of these birds have been sighted here in the UK.  Every summer and autumn we get migrants flocking in from the Atlantic and Asia.  Since the 1960’s a few YBWs have been signed every autumn.  Once 20 was a big arrival, then 200 and 1000 this year.  They may be victims of a phenomenon called reverse migration.  These little warblers, instead of travelling south and then east, are going…

If you go out on an autumn night you can witness one of nature’s greatest spectacles- migration.  There’s all sorts of birds out there: thrushes, geese, starlings, waders and many more are pouring from as far away places as Russia and Greenland.  Before you go to bed, listen out for the high pitched calls of redwings, thrushes a bit like song thrushes.  There is also pink-footed geese flocking in, with a massive 30,ooo in wildfowl and wetland trusts.  But more impressive is the feet of Britain’s smallest birds, goldcrests, which travel an astounding 500 miles.  For a bird only 9cm long, it is quite a way to travel.  The birds…