Great eared nightjar

Britain is a country mercifully bereft of threatening fauna–or so you might believe. John Lewis-Stempel provides a miscellany of our otherwise benign land’s more fearsome critters

PHOTOS, LETTERS, TWEETS, QUESTIONS – HAVE YOUR SAY

These enormous storks are just one of Costa Rica’s many avian attractions, writes Ruth Miller

Unfairly maligned as a sneaky troublemaker, the quicksilver ferret is a characterful, curious and highly intelligent creature–with fascinating regal and cultural trappings to boot, writes Octavia Pollock

On being told that they had been bitten by a venomous snake, most eight-year-olds would panic. Not Nicholas Jubber; he was not terrified but disappointed by a diagnosis that contradicted his own. Nich

The need to know what they’re up to drew ecologist Jonathan Briggs deeper into birding…