When framing the shortlist for the 2023 bird of the year, we opted for familiar Aussie birds that hold a special place in our hearts
The Australian bird of the year poll launches today, 25 September 2023
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Those of us who work at Birdlife Australia get asked a lot of questions about birds. Usually, it’s to ID a mystery back yard bird. (Nine times out of 10 it’s a butcherbird!) Occasionally we get thrown a much curlier question such as “Is a cassowary a bird?”, “Do birds have penises?” or “What’s your favourite bird?”.
The answers are: “yes”, “females don’t, but neither do males of most species – they have a cloaca, which is a topic for another day”. And the last question is almost impossible to answer. How can you possibly choose?
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Sean Dooley is national public affairs manager for BirdLife Australia
You can vote in the bird of the year poll from 6am Monday 25 September to 11.59pm Thursday 5 October
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
09/24/2023 - 15:00
09/24/2023 - 15:00
Some of Australia’s most recognised feathered denizens have been flying under the popularity radar for far too long
This year’s Guardian/BirdLife Australia bird of the year poll runs from 25 September to 6 October. Nominate your favourite for the shortlist
Is there anything more thrilling than seeing an underbird soar? Keep that in mind when casting your vote in this year’s Guardian/Birdlife Australia bird of the year poll.
Previous polls have revealed a shocking bias. Support for some of Australia’s most recognised birds has been consistently weak. Let’s ruffle some feathers and give these underbirds a chance.
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09/24/2023 - 06:00
Militant pensioner says a majority want a traditional feature but project leaders call row an attack on democracy
Ilkley is an affluent, leafy town, one point of Yorkshire’s “Golden Triangle” where average house prices top £560,000. Last year it was named the best place to live in the UK, and its tree-lined streets hark back to the days when it was a spa town where wealthy Victorians took the waters, Charles Darwin among them.
Now the peace and quiet of this favourite municipality of the middle-classes is being rocked by a row between the, often older, traditionalists in the town and a charitable body of volunteers who were hoping to give it just a flick of a modern makeover. The fight centres on the proposed design of a fountain, to be built at the heart of the town at the junction of its two wide shopping avenues.
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09/24/2023 - 05:00
The lungfish arrived in San Francisco on a steamship along with 230 other fish. Today, she’s the only living aquatic animal from that vessel
She’s super-gentle, and doesn’t get overly excited. She enjoys eating earthworms, fruits and vegetables, and slowly moving around her tank. Her favorite food – at least for what is in season now – is a fig.
If Methuselah sounds like a grand old dame, it’s because she is: she is the oldest living fish in captivity, aged somewhere upwards of 92 and potentially as high as 101 years. She arrived on a steamship from Australia along with 230 other fish to the Steinhart aquarium in San Francisco in 1938 as a young, small fish. And Methuselah’s story unfolded in a typical way, for a fish in an aquarium: she grew. Humans came to look at her. She peered back through glass at humans.
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09/24/2023 - 03:00
Former Cop26 chair says emissions cuts must be made elsewhere and ministers must show how they plan to achieve this
Alok Sharma, the former Tory cabinet minister who chaired the landmark Cop26 UN summit in Glasgow, has warned Rishi Sunak that he will now have to find other ways to cut emissions if the UK is to meet its international climate obligations, following last week’s dramatic U-turns on green policy.
In his first comments since Sunak’s announcement on Wednesday, Sharma told the Observer that “rolling back on certain policies will mean we need to find emissions reductions elsewhere, if we are to meet our legally binding near term carbon budgets and our internationally committed 2030 emissions reduction target”.
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09/24/2023 - 03:00
Dismay as mogul’s successor nominates Tony Abbott, a climate change sceptic, to board of Fox Corporation
Six years ago the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott argued global warming may benefit populations, noting that more people died from cold weather than heatwaves.
The speech in London, to climate-sceptic thinktank the Global Warming Policy Foundation, is now under renewed scrutiny after it was announced on Friday that he had been nominated to join the board of the Fox Corporation, part of the Murdoch family’s global media empire.
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09/23/2023 - 17:13
John Caudwell, who gave party £500,000 before 2019 election, did not rule out supporting Labour
Billionaire John Caudwell, the biggest donor to the Conservative party before the last election, has said he will not back Rishi Sunak after the “madness” of his U-turn on green policies.
Caudwell said he was now thinking about switching to Labour instead.
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09/23/2023 - 09:31
Group tasked with overseeing initiative to insulate homes and upgrade boilers was only set up in March
‘The worst kind of culture war’: Tories attack Rishi Sunak’s reversal on net zero
The government’s energy efficiency taskforce, charged with reducing the UK’s energy use by 15% by 2030, has been scrapped months after it was established.
The group, which was overseeing an initiative to insulate homes and upgrade boilers, was announced by the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, in his autumn statement last year as part of plans to boost investment in energy efficiency.
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09/23/2023 - 09:10
A new law allows councils to impose on-the-spot fines for emitting smoke
People who live on narrowboats and barges – many on low incomes – say they may struggle to stay warm this winter because an increasing number of councils are planning to fine people burning wood on moored vessels.
Under the Environment Act, which came into force in 2021, council enforcement officers can issue on-the-spot fines of up to £300 to boat dwellers emitting visible smoke from wood burners. Only Sandwell council, in the West Midlands, has so far approved plans to enforce smoke controls along its 41 miles of canals. But three other councils – Liverpool, Newham and Cannock Chase – are planning to start fining houseboats.
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09/22/2023 - 23:00
Six Portuguese young people claim inadequate policies to tackle global heating breach their human rights
Europe live – latest updates
A key plank of the UK government’s defence against the biggest climate legal action in the world next week has fallen away as a result of the U-turn by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, on green policies.
The UK is one of 32 countries being taken to the European court of human rights on Wednesday by a group of Portuguese young people. They will argue in the grand chamber of the Strasbourg court that the nations’ policies to tackle global heating are inadequate and in breach of their human rights obligations.
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