"A plan to reintroduce beavers in northern Scotland has been postponed following opposition from landowners, aided by the local SNP politician, Kate Forbes."

Conservationists are racing to protect rare flora and fauna clinging to survival in the UK's last temperate rainforests.

These lush, humid woodlands, mostly along the UK's western coasts, are home to weird and wonderful lichens not found anywhere else on Earth.

The historic decline of rainforests has put some globally important plants and fungi at risk of extinction.

The reason so many of these birds were turning up – almost all of them along the west coasts of Britain and Ireland – was because of the movement of Hurricane Lee up the eastern seaboard of the US. As it progressed, it met migrant birds heading south, on their way to spend the winter in the tropics, and swept them out over the Atlantic Ocean and towards us.

[...] while birders are delighted, the bigger picture is that more extreme weather, including more frequent hurricanes, is very bad news for these birds’ long-term survival.

As the UK's climate warms, there have been noticable in the behaviours of migratory birds.

In similar news, this summer we had bee-eaters returning for the second year in a row, which are birds more common in the southern Mediterranian and northern Africa.