Nature Hub

     From - BBC World NEWS  By - India Bourke -  Edited by -Amal Udawatta Share Getty images Messerschmidt 109 and scuba diver at Ile de Planier, Marseille, France (Credit: Getty images) Among the 80-year-old sunken D-Day wrecks that line the coasts of Britain and France, wildlife is thriving on the wreckage of war. Stretching for miles along England's Devonshire coast, between the sea and a patchwork of hills, lies the shingly expanse of Slapton Sands.  Humpback whales  can occasionally be spotted offshore. A thatched pub at the far end sells fish and chips in an oak-beamed bar. And each year, at dawn on 27 April, hundreds of dead soldiers rise up out of the waves and march across the fields. Or so goes a local ghost-story. The tale has its roots in tragedy. In the spring of 1944, the coastline had become a training area for American troops. Their mission was to complete a  secret, full-scale practice  of the upcoming D-Day invasion of Utah Beach in Nazi-occupied France – part of

     From - Knowable Magazine    By  -  Boyce  Upholt   Edited by  - Amal Udawatta  N ew Zealand has long been known as a place for the birds — quite literally. Before people arrived 700 years ago, the archipelago hosted an idiosyncratic ecosystem, nearly free of mammals. More than 200 bird species filled a food web all their own. Rather than cows or antelopes, there was a family of flightless birds known as moa. And in place of apex predators like tigers, New Zealand had Haast’s eagle. Ever since a group of farm workers drained a swamp in the late 1860s and uncovered its buried bones, this eagle has captivated researchers. Julius Haast, the explorer and geologist who published the first notes on the species, described it as “a raptorial bird of enormous dimensions.” Today, biologists estimate that the eagles weighed up to 33 pounds — roughly 50 percent more than any raptor known today. But with a wingspan of only two to three meters — just beyond the range of a bald eagle — this was a