A couple had a surprise when they found a tree frog nestling in some asparagus tips they bought in a supermarket.

This musician-turned-naturalist finds via his fieldwork that calls and cries can be matter of wild life and death.

TheWind in the Willows offers humour and escapism but above all Kenneth Grahame’s classic is a hymn to the joys of childhood, says Griff Rhys Jones

Joe Cole insists he has embraced life in France - even down to eating frog's legs.

Politician faces quiz over expenses

Chemicals in plastic may cause obesity

Much of Britain's wildlife, from dragonflies to water voles, face a difficult summer because of the drought, the Environment Agency has warned.

Bolton footballer in critical condition

Exceptional dry spell threatens species from trees to tadpoles

Kelner's view

J.Edgar - starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Judi Dench, Naomi Watts W.E. - starring: Abbie Cornish, Andrea Riseborough, James D'Arcy, Oscar Isaac

Steven Spielberg's interest in the sentimental is well documented. The man could buy the rights to a trigonometry text book and find a way to wring a tear from its pages on the silver screen.

Who knew that, before she became a child pop sensation at 15, Billie Piper's guilty pleasure was throwing animals? For a while in the early 1990s, it was literally raining cats and dogs in Swindon. "I used to pick up animals on the street," she confessed in a questionnaire, "and launch them as far as I could."