Research focuses on rare New Forest woodcock

Volunteers examining the behaviour of rare woodcocks in the New Forest have been awarded grants of more than £12,000 from the park’s sustainable development fund to undertake research.

The New Forest Woodcock Group aims to increase understanding of the species and explore the reasons behind its national decline.

Glorious Twelfth opens British game season

Probably the most important date in the shooting man’s diary is 12 August. The date – known as the Glorious Twelfth in sporting circles – marks the beginning of the game season in Britain.

Across the country, sporting estates buzz with excitement as shooters, keepers, beaters and dogs prepare for the big day.

With luck, the moors and uplands will be looking their best, with heather flowering in its full purple glory and skylarks in full song under a blue, high summer sky.

Ash dieback taking hold in UK, warn experts

A summit on the tree disease Chalara fraxinea, also known as ash dieback, took place in 7 November.

The meeting, chaired by environment secretary Owen Paterson and attended by Government officials, tree experts and conservation NGOs, considered the findings of a nationwide survey carried out by Forestry Commission staff and agreed a course of action.

Svalbard: dogsledding at Trappers’ Lodge

I am faced by a yard full of excited huskies. In fact, the word ‘excited’ doesn’t really do justice to their state of near-frenzied anticipation.

The venue is Svalbard, Norway’s Arctic archipelago that is around a 600-mile flight north of the city of Tromsø at a line of latitude of 78°North, and I am about to try my hand at dog-sledding through the polar winter.

It is just before 4pm and it is dark. In fact, it has been dark all day. Around midday the sky flirted with a slightly bluer shade of black, but I don’t think I would have even noticed if it hadn’t been pointed out to me.

Estonia: natural wonders of Soomaa national park

I am in Soomaa national park, Estonia, standing in the middle of one of Europe’s largest peat bogs, with what look like red tennis rackets strapped to my feet.

And I’m conscious that one false step could lead to me ending up to my chest in cold, muddy water.

‘I don’t know about that bit. It looks a bit too wet,’ Algis Martsoo’s warning comes just in time. I still have chance to change direction and skirt around a sinister-looking patch of black mud splashed with sporadic greenery.

Still, if one must be in the middle of a bog, Martsoo is a good person to be with. As a ranger, ecologist and guide at the national park, he is something of an expert in local habitats and to spend an afternoon in his company is to take a crash course in one of the continent’s rarest landscapes.

The konik horses of Wicken Fen

A horse is eating my trousers. It sounds like something from a school French phrasebook of the 1950s, but it’s true. I wouldn’t mind, but I’m still wearing them.

The animal in question is one of 44 dusty-grey coloured konik ponies living at the Wicken Fen nature reserve in Cambridgeshire.

The word konik means ‘little horse’ in Polish and the breed is one of the most ancient in the world – genetically close to the herds that would have roamed Europe 4,000 years ago.

The animals are inquisitive, using their noses, lips – and teeth – to find out more about anything new – and that includes strange people who happen to wander into their vicinity.