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We were swept away by the response to this competition. Letters arrived from rivers across the world – the Thames, the Mississippi and many more unnamed waterways – each one brimming with personality, passion and a genuine love of the natural world. You gave your rivers voices that were worried, hopeful, playful, mysterious and downright indignant, and you filled their worlds with real creatures: pearl mussels and otters, beavers and dragonflies, herons and grass snakes. Thank you to every single reader who picked up a pen and let the river speak.
The River's Hidden Task
A Note From the River
"Dear humans, I am writing to you from my banks, as my currents flow past, to say thank you. For so long, I was heavy with things that did not belong to me – plastic wrappers, old tyres, and invisible poisons that made my fish sluggish and my weeds sickly. I felt slow, and I was choking. But lately, I have felt a difference. You have taken out the plastic and took out the annoying poison! I have never felt so good in my river-flowing life! But if you can, stop taking my pearl mussels off me; they filter my water about 50 litres a day! And I would like to thank the beavers for making dams to stop currents going out of control. Thank you to the volunteers who spend their Saturday mornings wading into my shallow edges to pull out trash. When you take away that plastic, I can breathe again. Thank you for the help, it is flourishing my currents!
Keep cleaning, the River"
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Somewhere beneath a grassy field right now, a tiny insect is building an underground loudspeaker. Male mole crickets engineer horn-shaped burrows that amplify their calls hundreds of metres into the night air – and your child can recreate the same science at home using nothing but cardboard and a phone. This hands-on experiment explores sound, shape and natural engineering in a way that is genuinely surprising. No screens, no special equipment, just a brilliant idea borrowed from nature.
Our Risky Moment competition invited young explorers to capture a risky moment in the wild – a split second when animals must make bold choices to survive. From daring leaps across rocky cliffs to dangerous river crossings, we received many hair-raising entries showing just how adventurous life in nature can be.
A huge thank you to everyone who entered our Winter Explorer competition. You proved that winter is not ‘empty’ at all – it’s full of clues, if you know how to look.
