Pair of bird books offer fascinating insight into the avian world

These two newly-released bird books couldn’t be more different. Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane’s The Book of Birds is artful and poetic; Louis Lefebvre’s A Bird’s IQ is analytical and academic. Each would make an attractive addition to the libraries of people interested in birds — but not without certain provisos.

The subtitle of The Book of Birds is deceptive — it’s not really a “Field Guide” in the usual sense, too substantial and beautiful to carry along on a bird outing. In hardback with a blue cloth spine and a blue-ribbon page-holder, it’s more like a church song missal than toteable identification helper. It’s best kept inside, protected from wind and weather and damp fingerprints.

The Book of Birds is a follow-up to Morris and Macfarlane’s previous collaboration The Lost Words. When the Oxford Junior Dictionary dropped a bunch of words connected to the natural world (such as acorn, otter, fern, newt and wren), the renowned artist and celebrated author created a “spell book” to conjure back 20 of those words and bring increased awareness of the things the words describe. It proved to be immensely popular.

Here they focus on 49 birds, presented alphabetically from avocet to kestrel to sparrow to yellowhammer, that are in danger of disappearing completely from the natural (European) world. Morris provides the spectacular bird illustrations, and Macfarlane waxes poetic on each of them in the hopes readers will not just identify birds, but “identify with them.”

Saskatchewan seeding delayed by cold temperatures, wet soil but farmers undeterred

When you ask Brett Halstead what challenges he expects to see with seeding at his farm in Saskatchewan, his answer is simple.

"Everything."

Seeding in Saskatchewan has been delayed because of cold temperatures and stubborn spring snow, particularly in the north and east of the province.

On top of the common issue of moisture, farmers in Canada's breadbasket are dealing with war-driven commodity pricing.

Parade of ghostly icebergs brings joy and wonder to Newfoundland and Labrador

ST. JOHN'S -

At the top of Signal Hill in St. John's, N.L., on Tuesday afternoon, a steady stream of people walked around a rocky cliff and gasped.

Some cheered, some took out their phones to capture the moment — a rush of awe as an iceberg floated in the ocean below, cleaved off from a Greenland glacier and delivered by the Labrador current on a cloudless spring day.

It's a banner year for icebergs in Newfoundland and Labrador, where tourists and residents alike are gathering on shores across the province to welcome the ancient visitors.

Astronomers believe they’ve detected an atmosphere around a tiny, icy world beyond Pluto

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A new study suggests that a tiny, icy world beyond Pluto harbors a thin, delicate atmosphere that may have been created by volcanic eruptions or a comet strike.

Just 300 miles (500 kilometers) or so across, this mini Pluto is thought to be the solar system's smallest object yet with a clearly detected global atmosphere bound by gravity, said lead researcher Ko Arimatsu of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

“This is an amazing development, but it sorely needs independent verification. The implications are profound if verified,” said Southwest Research Institute's Alan Stern, the lead scientist behind NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto and beyond. He was not involved in the study.

The finding offers fresh insight into our solar system’s farthest, coldest objects in a region known as the Kuiper Belt. Researchers used three telescopes in Japan to observe the object in 2024 as it passed in front of a background star, briefly dimming the starlight.

Project brings seniors, students together over love of gardening

Seniors and high school students in North Kildonan are growing vegetables and community through a unique indoor gardening project.

Seeding clock ticks loudly on Prairie fields

If the forecast holds, Manitoba fields will be crawling with equipment this week, as the race to seed this year’s crop begins.

An early-May start to seeding is right on track by historical standards, but still feels late this year, partly because it’s been so cold. Seeding dates have been edging earlier over time, especially for crops such as wheat, as farmers discover they can get away with super-early seeding under the right circumstances.

Due to the compressed growing season characteristic to this part of the world, it’s well-documented the later the crop is seeded, the lower it yields. However, seed too early and there’s a risk that a late-spring frost will force farmers to reseed some fields.

For most, it’s a gamble worth taking.

Local garden centres rev up even as cold temperatures delay outdoor planting season

Colin Rémillard is obsessed with the weather.

When he and his family opened Winnipeg gardener’s staple Jardins St-Léon Gardens for the 2026 season on Wednesday, it came after weeks of chilly weather. But with staff itching to go — and customers waiting — they decided to open the doors after a “mad dash” to bring in produce and tag every product in the store one day earlier.

“Everything seemed to roll fairly well. We’re in good shape. It’s going to be a colder spring, that’s just reality,” Rémillard said from the garden centre Friday.

“We’ve had really nice springs for the past one or two years. We always remember only one year in the past, so we think this is unusual, but it is pretty normal to have this amount of cold.”

Thorn in their side: Assiniboine Park asks for help to remove invasive plant

Assiniboine Park Conservancy is rallying the troops to stop the invasion.

Saturday will be a bad day for European buckthorn at the park, as forestry staff are hoping 100 volunteers will show up to help clear the problematic plant.

“It’s a big issue and there’s a lot of it,” said Barret Miller, the park’s manager of education and programming.

This is the first time the conservancy is asking for help from the public to remove the invasive weed from the Winnipeg green space. The section being targeted is in the heart of the park, just south of the cricket fields.

Innocuous critter or varmint to vanquish? Debating best approach to Richardson’s ground squirrel long a Prairie predicament

A peculiar debate brewed in the pages of Saskatchewan’s newspapers in 2001.

It did not concern post-9/11 security or squabbles over federal gun and environmental policies, though it did evoke other perennial Canadian political tensions.

It had to do with gophers.

Saskatchewan’s NDP government was choosing an animal to symbolize the province, and the suggestion of a gopher was driving some squirrelly.

The blunt — and massive — cost of forest fires

It’s a total that’s bound to go up — because all of the costs aren’t clear yet, and even when they are, not every cost can be quantified.

Solar ranch in Tennessee aims to prove grazing cattle under the panels is a farmland win-win

CHRISTIANA, Tenn. (AP) — From a distance, the small solar farm in central Tennessee looks like others that now dot rural America, with row upon row of black panels absorbing the sun's rays to generate electricity.

But beneath these panels is lush pasture instead of gravel, enjoyed by a small herd of cattle that spends its days munching grass and resting in the shade.

Silicon Ranch, which owns the 40-acre farm in Christiana, outside of Nashville, believes cattle-grazing is the next frontier in so-called agrivoltaics, which mostly has involved growing crops or grazing sheep beneath the panels.

The solar company debuted the project this week and will spend the next year working to demonstrate to farmers that much larger cattle also can thrive at solar sites. If successful, advocates say, that could jump-start new projects to meet the soaring electricity demand driven by rapidly expanding data centers — without contributing climate-warming carbon emissions — and help cattle producers hold onto their land and livelihoods.

AI smart glasses will help visually impaired runners take on the London Marathon

LONDON (AP) — Running past Buckingham Palace during training, Tilly Dowler is closing in on a goal she once thought out of reach.

Dowler, who has Stargardt disease and says she has about 10% useful vision, only began running last year, starting with a couch to 5K program before building up to marathon distance. She is now preparing to run the London Marathon with her boyfriend as her guide, using AI powered Oakley Meta Vanguard smart glasses to help her navigate and track her progress.

“They are AI assisted,” she said. “While running, I can ask for live cues, such as what landmarks are around me and how far I have run.”

She said the glasses allow her to combine audio feedback with guidance from her running partner.

St. Vital Park duck pond to get new design before $3-M rehabilitation in 2027

A new design is set to spruce up the duck pond at St. Vital Park, making it deeper, more naturalized and less prone to algae.

Family donates 636 acres of peatlands near Elma to nature conservancy

A Manitoba family is doing their part to support the ecosystem by making a deal with the Nature Conservancy of Canada to protect 636 acres of peatlands in perpetuity.

Syrup season in swing

Louise May has been tapping the trees at the St. Norbert Arts Centre for 37 years, extracting the nectar that becomes maple syrup.

May began making syrup as a way to connect with the trees and continue in the footsteps of the Trappist monks who originally planted the maple trees more than a century ago.

Recently, the endeavour has taken a more spiritual turn as May began collaborating with kookum Christine Cyr and sharing the syrup for a strawberry heart medicine used during Sundance ceremonies, which include a four-day fast.

“This is a really powerful medicine,” says Cyr. “It physically and spiritually helps people to get through” the ceremony when it is typically taken on the third day of the fast. At the beginning of the season, community members drummed, sang, and offered tobacco to each tree as May put the taps in.

What to do with inconvenient wildlife

Their flocks darkened the skies, over a mile wide and hundreds of miles long. It would take hours or even days for them to pass over a fixed spot. They were a common Manitoba resident, nesting as far north as York Factory. In the 1860s, one hunter trapped 80 dozen in a net near St. Andrews.

Former chief psychiatrist legally challenges Manitoba’s detox detention laws

Manitoba’s former chief psychiatrist is challenging the constitutionality of a controversial law allowing the province to incarcerate intoxicated people for up to 72 hours, claiming that it will harm those suffering from mental illness or disabilities.

Dr. Jim Simm, an outspoken critic of the Protective Detention and Care of Intoxicated Persons Act, said in an exclusive interview on Sunday that he is seeking leave from the Court of King’s Bench to challenge the law violates provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“We’re talking about human beings who are suffering,” Simm said. “They may be acting badly but to be putting them in solitary confinement — it’s just wrong.”

As it stands now, the legislation allows someone who appears intoxicated to be held for 24 hours at a “detention location,” and then held for up to 72 additional hours at a “preventative care centre.”

Former minister Catherine McKenna blasts the heads of Canadian oil companies

MONTRÉAL - Former environment minister Catherine McKenna says the leaders of Canada's oil industry are figures close to American President Donald Trump who are "taking us for fools" and putting both the economy and environment at risk.

Canada's official greenhouse gas inventory was published last week. It showed that in 2024, oil and gas production was the only sector in the country to have increased its greenhouse gas emissions.

"In Canada, we expect, Canadians expect everyone to step up and do their parts. But instead, we have oil and gas, which is largely foreign-owned, largely U.S.-owned, who aren't doing their part. All they're doing is increasing our emissions and demanding subsidies," McKenna said in an interview while at Montreal's climate summit last week.

She adds that oil companies are "demanding that Canadian taxpayers pay the bill for cleaning up the pollution they cause and building pipelines they won’t risk their own money on."

Manitoba puts up $4 million to protect Seal River watershed

Six years after a coalition of four northern Manitoba First Nations banded together to conserve the province’s last major undammed river, the Seal River watershed is “on the cusp” of permanent protection.

On Friday, the Seal River Watershed Alliance and the provincial and federal governments released a joint proposal to designate the 50,000-square-kilometre ecosystem — one of the world’s largest intact watersheds — as an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area.

“This announcement is an absolutely historic moment in time where we have all different levels of government (and) … the nations coming together to preserve some of the most beautiful areas in the world,” Manitoba Environment Minister Mike Moyes said Friday.

“I am so proud to be part of a government that is moving forward on this historic agreement that is going to protect seven per cent of Manitoba.”

B.C. ‘chemical fingerprint’ scheme to track illicit drugs is likened to DNA tests

VANCOUVER - Tucked in the basement of the chemistry building at the University of British Columbia, an arm-sized robot carries out the repetitive task of collecting and weighing colourful vials as machinery whirrs in the background.

It's part of a unique blend of robotics, chemistry and artificial intelligence aimed at helping police and health officials trace the path of batches of illicit drugs.

Police hope the "chemical fingerprinting" program is a game-changer in B.C.'s battle against toxic illicit drugs, with one senior officer likening it to DNA testing.

The provincially funded program will use technology developed at UBC by Aidos Innovations that looks at the chemical makeup of drugs and calculates their method of production, which police say could help them learn how drugs move over time.

‘Extraordinary’: Back on Earth, Jeremy Hansen describes his long journey in space

HOUSTON - When Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen first floated to the window after the Orion capsule's bone-rattling launch into space early this month, what he saw and felt left him grasping for words.

He saw the sweep of the ocean first, and then, drifting into view, the rich, dusty red of Australia. And behind it all was the vastness of space, with the edge of Earth's atmosphere shining like a bubble of blue glass in the black.

"It was pretty extraordinary," Hansen told The Canadian Press at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston Thursday.

The enormity of what Hansen and his Artemis II crewmates experienced is still settling in a week after they returned to Earth, splashing into the Pacific Ocean following a 10-day lunar fly-around.

Gatorade, inventor of the sports drink, is getting a rebrand targeting non-athletes

Sixty years after it invented sports drinks, Gatorade is making a surprising pivot: It’s no longer focusing primarily on athletes.

PepsiCo, Gatorade’s parent company, said Thursday that the brand wants to broaden its reach to non-athletes who are looking for ways to hydrate, whether they’re on a long flight, going for a walk or nursing a hangover. New packaging highlights the specific ways Gatorade’s various drinks and powders work and the research behind them.

The change reflects U.S. consumers’ booming interest in beverages with perceived health benefits. Jack Doggett, a food and drink analyst with the consulting firm Mintel, said his research indicates 60% of consumers who buy sports drinks aren’t athletes but want the functional ingredients those drinks provide, like electrolytes for hydration and carbohydrates for energy.

“People are using these drinks more for wellness and daily maintenance,” Doggett said. “It’s easy to say that the wellness consumer is the young consumer, but older generations are also drinking these drinks for hydration.”