I'm driving in heavy traffic along the A13 towards Canvey Island in Essex. A summer downpour has reduced visibility to near zero and the shock of my five o'clock alarm has only just started to recede. Yet I'm bubbling with excitement. Through a break in the weather I've just caught my first glimpse of the flaming vents and cooling towers of Coryton Refinery. I know that within a few hours I'll be handling some of the freshest seafood in London.

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The mystical allure of the truffle spans the centuries. Greeks and Romans associated the fungi with sex and power, attributing to it therapeutic and aphrodisiac powers. Brillat Sauvaurin, the 18th-century French gourmet, once remarked that truffles aroused erotic and gastronomic memories.

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Britain's butterflies are going through their worst summer for nearly half a century, a leading conservationist believes. Matthew Oates, conservation adviser to the National Trust, says the torrential downpours of summer 2007 had a knock-on effect on 2008, wiping out many eggs and caterpillars that would have become this year's adults.

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A major nature reserve is to become one of the first casualties of the rising seas around Britain.

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In the end, there was little that could be done for Colin, the baby humpback whale whose slow and sad decline ended with a lethal injection today. For nearly a week, efforts to save the abandoned calf had transfixed Australians, been discussed on internet chat rooms and made headlines around the world.

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An injured and abandoned baby humpback whale that spent nearly a week bonding with boats off north Sydney was put down after vets said it was too weak to survive.

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Officials who had planned to put down an injured and abandoned baby whale had to postpone the operation because they could not find it in the dark waters off north Sydney.

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They have survived two world wars, a sex scandal and the feet of thousands of visitors to the Berkshire country house of Cliveden, to conduct what must be the slowest invasion of Britain by an alien species.

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The Americans have come up with one of the ugliest words to describe holidaying at home – a "staycation". But as the credit crunch starts to bite, more of us are choosing to stay put. The upside of forgoing trips to Marbella, Majorca and Malawi is that we have beautiful countryside and superb wildlife on our doorstep, and one of the best and cheapest ways to see it is by camping. "Camping is one of the easiest ways to experience wildlife because you're outside all the time and that's where the wildlife is," says Tim McGrath, Avon Wildlife Trust's chief nature warden.

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Hopes are fading for a baby whale, abandoned by its mother and starved of vital milk, with experts saying it might have to be put down unless it could be tempted out to sea and paired with another pod.

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A mother gorilla clutches the lifeless body of her three-month-old child in an extraordinary, almost human display of emotion.

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They may have a brain the size of a pea but magpies have been shown to possess the intellectual prowess necessary to recognise themselves in a mirror – a feat that, until now, has only been seen in humans, apes, elephants and dolphins.

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Do animals experience grief? It depends what we mean by the word. Certainly, many mammals and even birds clearly exhibit symptoms of what has been termed "separation distress" when they are parted from a mate, a parent or their offspring.

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The growing threat from swarms of jellyfish around Britain's coast is to be investigated for the first time by British and Irish scientists. Using the latest technology, researchers are planning to tag jellyfish to explore their life cycles and movement in a project known as Ecojel.

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She is almost as famous for her green, holistic lifestyle as she is for her film roles, but Gwyneth Paltrow has become the focus of angry animal rights campaigners.

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Two of Britain's best known birds of prey are undergoing starkly contrasting changes in abundance – one very much up, and the other plummeting.

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Climate change is causing familiar British birds to lay their eggs earlier, according to a survey of UK bird populations.

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Fifteen sea eagles have been released from a secret location in Scotland. The birds of prey, which have a wingspan of 8ft, were introduced to the wild in Fife as part of a project that aims to re-establish the white-tailed sea eagle in eastern Scotland.

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Fifteen sea eagles are to be released from a secret location in Scotland.

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Invasive animals and plants which have been released or seed themselves into the wild are causing havoc on the UK's rivers and canals, according to British Waterways.

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