I love taking photos of the natural world all year round. Here I have brought together some of my favourite winter shots. I don’t have a fancy camera – it would be wasted on me. I have been using a Google Pixel 4a camera for the last couple of years. I did a bit of research before buying it and I am very pleased that it lived up to its billing as one of the best smartphones for taking pictures. And it’s a whole lot cheaper than an iPhone. Anyway, here are some of the winter photos I have taken...

Fewer animals hibernate than you might think in the UK, but all animals have ways to adapt to the colder weather of winter. In fact only three mammals hibernate. They are bats, dormice and hedgehogs. They spend the autumn building up body fat and then they find their winter hiding places when the weather turns cold. Here, they enter a state of almost complete shutdown, lowering their heart rate and body temperature. How do mammals that don’t hibernate survive winter? The mammals that don’t...

Winter can seem endless when it looms over the last warm days of autumn. But in reality, almost as soon as the skeletons of trees have been revealed, the first signs of new life make their presence felt. While most of us think of January as the darkest, most lifeless month, really it’s December, which is perhaps why we distract ourselves with Christmas. By January, the earth is already renewing. Here are six signs of life that will make you revise your perception of winter as a season where...