 "If you doze off, and open your eyes as the aircraft flies low over western Holland, you may imagine you have woken up in a child's paintbox – and your eyes will feel instantly refreshed by bold, beautiful stripes of colour flaming across the land."  For 43 years, Professor Lynn Rogers has studied wild bears, walking and playing with them...as peaceful, playful creatures, which even hum when they are content.
 The lotus provides foodstuffs, medicines and natural chemicals (such as those that ensure the seed's astonishing longevity) which have long sustained indigenous peoples and now...  "Wind back the clock to the seventh century, however, and the scene would be very different. Instead of shipping, you would watch the passage of great whales on their northward migration from African wintering grounds to Arctic feeding areas."
 "That strongly suggest that the dragonflies take advantage of the moving weather systems and monsoon rains to complete an epic migration from southern India to east and southern Africa, and then likely back again, a round trip of 14,000 to 18,000km."  "The survey is the first to assess the global health of any order of insects. Compared to vertebrates, the dragonflies and damselflies are not doing badly...less threatened than the mammals..."
 "It's an invisible ingredient, really, palm oil. You won't find it listed on your margarine, your bread, your biscuits or your KitKat. It's there though, under 'vegetable oil'..."  "Looking at grasslands, the researchers said it was widely recognised that an increase of chemical nutrients in an ecosystem led to a loss of diversity…"
 The Way of Ģebedu, (Ģebedu is the Old English word for bead) is wisdom extracted from ages, scribbled in a notebook (do not remember where I got it) years ago – to follow a trail with...  "Nobody knows exactly what impact the current decline in honey bee populations is having on these figures and on the supplies of these foods..."
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 In Europe in the 19th century, birds of paradise were thought to be ethereal creatures that never alighted on earth and, lacking legs, were destined to spend their lives in the sky...  "Dragonflies may have hovered and hunted across the planet for the last 325m years, but their modern relatives are staring extinction in the face..."  They live in herds that are too large to depend on a single location for food, so as the seasons change, and rainfall drifts or snow melts, new...  "So, a cottagey garden might brim with whimsical birdhouses, found objects, old things from flea markets, pots and pans, even an old window frame or two. A more classical garden might have a single large urn..."
 "Wudang Mountain, located near Shiyan city in north western Hubei Province, is more than just a famous scenic spot. Wudangshan is the home of internal martial arts and a spiritual centre for Chinas native religion, Daoism."
 "Another unusual tale involves the dandelion, a wildflower planted on Earth by the sun to honor an Indian girl who fell in love with it and loved it until her hair turned white, fell out and blew away."
 "...flowers, like vegetables, are particular about when they germinate: just as spinach, peas and onions need to be planted now, larkspur, corn poppies, wallflowers and many other flower seeds do best if planted early."
 "The island of Borneo, a fragile treasure house of rainforests, rare animals and plants, is under threat from plans for..."
 "The luminous colors of Cézanne's paintings had inspired us to seek out the source of ochre, the impure mineral used as a pigment for millennia. Four hundred miles northwest of Rustrel..."
 "This beautiful little butterfly is one of our rarest and most threatened species. There are less than 100 colonies left and many have only a few individuals. I only found the duke of burgundy..."
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