Click here to listen.

Autumnwatch presenter Chris Packham has written a blog in which he reckons that, in an average lifetime, you’d only get about 5 chances to see this amazing spectacle.

This video [UK readers only] shows how they managed to take the film:

Two items on this week’s excellent The Material World (Radio 4). Both items look at the past, present and future of their subjects. There’s also a brief reminder of last week’s discussion of bombardier beetles. Click on “listen again”.

Giant hyenas, giraffes and sabretooth cats roamed around Southern Spain 1.8 MY ago. A great collection of fossils have been unearthed at Fonelas in Granada.

BBC article. Scroll down the BBC page – what’s wrong with the picture of the sabretooth?

Highlight from here to the bottom of the post to read the answer: The upper canines were behind the lower canines – just like in a modern cat. This doesn’t look anywhere near as scary, so most modern pictures of sabretooths – and indeed, prehistoric images – have the big upper teeth at the front.

This story appeared on the BBC website and the national press today. What’s wrong with it? My 9-year old daughter spotted it straight away (which is obviously more than the journalists did!). Clue: you’d only have to change one letter to get a more likely explanation.

“Visitors to a Somerset stately home have been warned to keep away from a peacock – after he seriously damaged a luxury car he mistook for a mate. The amorous bird caused £4,000 worth of damage to an employee’s Lexus in the grounds of Sir Benjamin Slade’s country manor, Maunsel House, near Bridgwater. “It started when he fell in love with a Lexus, which was in a very distinct peacock blue,” said Sir Benjamin.”

A lot of you would like to get a job working with the BBC Natural History Unit. Here is a link to a set of blogs their journalists are writing during some of their projects. And there’s a weekly BBC podcast of natural history programmes you can subscribe to.

Very interesting Radio 4 programme about conservation in Scotland, around the Caledonian forest. Shows you the various sides to this particular issue. Listen again here. And while you’re there, here’s a good programme from 2006 about the badger cull/TB issue here.

When you were all babies, the amazing sight of millions of starlings swirling in the sky before roosting was a daily occurrence in British cities. With the catastrophic urban decline of this species, that’s all changed. This spectacular BBC video shows starlings roosting in Somerset reed beds.

Radio 4 programme about the difficulties faced by captive breeding programmes, in particular for the white rhino. Can be downloaded as MP3.

BBC ”From Our Own Correspondent” piece about re-introducing orphaned gorillas into the forest in Gabon.