Farmland bird numbers in England fall to record low

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/29/farmland-birds-record-low

The figures for England are based on the annual breeding birds survey by the British Trust for Ornithology, in which volunteers check 3,200 randomly selected 1km squares around the UK twice each year. But other data is included in the index published by environment department Defra, which makes figures for species decline slightly different. These figures are not yet online.

Teenage drivers: why whales smash into boats

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19213-teenage-drivers-why-whales-smash-into-boats.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

China's Three Gorges dam resists surging Yangtze floods

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2010/jul/21/three-gorges-dam#/?picture=365062666&index=0

Curious liaisons: Nature's weirdest sex lives

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727671.100-curious-liaisons-natures-weirdest-sex-lives.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news


ONCE upon a time, sex in the animal kingdom seemed pretty simple. Flamboyant male met coy female, male courted female, male deposited spermatozoa in the vicinity of an ovary, then headed out to do it all again elsewhere.

Then biologists began to look more closely, at what really happens. They found that being the biggest and brashest male doesn't always win you mating rights. Among weaver fish, for example, it is good fathers, the ones who will take care of the fry, who get the girl. Females don't always conform to type either. The female bean weevil, for instance, would rather drink her mate's ejaculate than use it to fertilise her eggs. Reproduction, it turns out, is a complex affair.