Q & a

DANGEROUS ANIMALS

“There are too many women traveling luxuriously in ‘Darkest Africa’. Eskimos of Disco, Greenland, are publishing a newspaper,” Charles Fort wrote in New Lands. So I checked whether there were still ne

B ecause it’s the school summer holidays, it’s ...

It’s 9pm in late april in an area of the Isle of Man known as the Ballaugh Curragh, and a most unusual nocturnal migration is taking place. As darkness descends on a 2km² area of wet woodland, an esti

Asian or yellow-legged hornets (Vespa velutina) can deliver a very painful sting widely described as being “jabbed with a red-hot needle”. However, as with our native European hornet (Vespa crabro), t

From a heroic long-distance swimmer to a producer of spectacularly eerie sound effects, the seabirds seen swooping and diving over British waters have all manner of singular skills, says John Lewis-Stempel