gracious/nature

Taranaki Daily News photographer Mike Scott is focusing his camera on Antarctica during a 10-day stint in November, as part of Antarctica New Zealand's media program. While he's staying at Scott Base, his blog creates a picture of what makes this land of ice, penguins, scientists and ordinary Kiwis tick.

Baby bats whose colony has been destroyed by poisonous ticks are being raised in a sanctuary in northern Queensland.

Remember that cute video of the sweet little otters floating and holding hands?

"Awww," you said, "aren't they adorable!"

That's exactly what Susan Martin of Merrit Island, Florida, said about the otter in her yard. She noticed its cute little face and how innocent it seemed to be. Then while she was looking at it, it bit her - twice!

Yup, all that sweetness & innocence, it's all been an act.

Another otter attacked poor little Taz, the 10-year-old Westie who fought off the frothing otter to keep it away from the Linnett family.

The dog came out bloody, but Animal Control got the otter. "Took 'em a while. He was mean."

Environmental Graffiti follows up on a previous article on non-native species in the UK, with a list of the 5 worst non-native animal species worldwide.

So, who's number one?

Scientists reported in September that the population of Southern Rockhopper penguins on Isla Noir, the most important colony for the Eudyptes chrysocom family in all of South America, has risen to 316,000. This is a highly positive sign, given the significant drop in the species' population in previous decades.

Best known for their large, yellow crests, the Southern Rockhopper has been able to live on Isla Noir in relative isolation due to the heavy rain and winds that are typical of the island.

Polar bear love

If you're expecting to see the usual crowds of blue tits in your garden this winter, you could be in for a disappointment.

Wildlife experts say millions of the young birds starved or drowned during the storms and floods of May, June and July.

Numbers of great tits, whitethroats and reed warblers are also dramatically down after their worst breeding season in a generation, it is claimed.

In a good year, David Hackenberg can make a $100,000 profit from beekeeping, but this past year has been a financial disaster. And it all began one afternoon last November when he checked on some of his hives in Florida.

"When I pulled into a bee yard in Florida, there was 400 hives of bees that three weeks before that looked great. And all of a sudden, here we got roughly 400 beehives that are totally empty," he recalls.

The bees were gone, and Hackenberg says he doesn't know where they went. "I mean, I literally got down and crawled around. I mean, seriously, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled around. And there's no dead bees. There are no dead bees anywhere. I mean, you can't find any bees. They flew off someplace," he recalls.

The bees, Hackenberg says, never came back. It's something he says he'd never seen before . . .