Animals news

• Creature comforts in times of grief | Letters

  30-01-2026 17:48
  Readers respond to Amy-Jane Beer’s Country diary about bird visitations after her sister’s deathI can empathise very closely with Amy-Jane Beer (Country diary, 27 January) and her moving encounter with a singing robin. Thirty years ago, on the night when my father died, we returned to the family house and were greeted by the unmistakable sound of a robin’s song.This threnody that greeted our return from the hospital was heard in bitterly cold February conditions
  
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• Artists can’t buy into these fantasy houses | Brief letters

  30-01-2026 17:44
  House price fantasies | Coyote confirmation | Premier Inns | Longevity advice | ApostrophesI always regard the house prices in your fantasy house hunt feature with wry amusement. After all, it is supposed to be fantasy. However, last weekend’s selection made my blood boil (Homes for sale to inspire artists in England – in pictures, 23 January). In 2024, the Guardian reported that the median income of visual artists had dropped to £12,500, a fall of 40% since 2010. Even the most
  
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• ‘Her name was Mothball and she changed my life’: the true story behind Diary of a Wombat

  30-01-2026 15:00
  Jackie French was used to the quirks of wild animal behaviour – and then she met a carrot-mad wombat with an appetite for destruction. A bestseller was bornVote for the best Australian children’s picture bookGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailHer name was Mothball and she changed my life.We met almost 30 years ago. She was a young wombat that had been badly bitten by dogs, then rescued by Wires and reared by humans. And me, a woman who had lived with wild animals for two deca
  
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• Week in wildlife: a rescued owl, a brave blackbird and Fukushima boar babies

  30-01-2026 09:00
  This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...
  
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• Country diary: Bit by bit, bird by bird, our wildlife is waking up | Josie George

  30-01-2026 06:30
  Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire: No finches yet and only a single thrush, but tuning into January’s sounds has revealed that nature is beginning to stirIf my teenage son hadn’t mentioned it one grey morning this week, I’m not sure I’d have noticed, having been too caught up in the January doldrums. But he was right: there’s a new fullness to the soundscape here on our urban housing estate. “The birds just sound louder,” he said, scanning the rooftops, &ldq
  
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