Bbc wildlife february 2018

MIKE DILGER’S ADVENTURES IN THE IRISH SEA

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FEBRUARY 2018

REVEALED

HIDDEN BRITAIN Nick Baker investigates an eerie glowing plant

BLOGGER R OF THE YE A WIPNageN10E6 R

FLOCK IN A MILLION Budgerigars as you’ve never seen them before

BRITAIN’S RED REVIVAL Bright-eyes and bushy tales in our eight-page photo story

WINTER WILDLIFE

Ho ow to get the very best views of our garden visitors

!

CORNWALL’S SUCCESS STORY Winterwatch’s Gillian Burke meets two important beavers

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Welcome...

This winter my bird feeders have been doing fantastic business, with a parade of finches, tits and sparrows outside the kitchen window delaying me until my washing up water goes cold. And robins, starlings and grey squirrels putting on a floor show outside the living room to rival anything on the TV. Our ground feeder even gets occasional visits from a badger and, in summer, the spilled seed attracts hedgehogs and field mice.

Sadly, I have no chance yet of seeing beavers or red squirrels pattering across my Lincolnshire lawn, but they are becoming easier to see around the UK. When I was growing up you mainly had to go to the Highlands to see a squirrel that wasn’t grey. Now, reds like the ones we feature on p78 can be found in pockets of woodland all over the country, and beavers are becoming stars in places as far apart as Inverness-shire, Kent and Cornwall, as BBC natural history presenter Gillian Burke writes on p22.

Sheena Harvey Editor sheena.harvey@immediate.co.uk

Contributors GILLIAN BURKE Gillian visited the Cornish Beaver Project while filming BBC Two’s Autumnwatch.

“It was really exciting to see how quickly these charming animals set about rewilding the landscape,” she says. See p22

February 2018

ROSS PIPER Ross is a zoologist and explorer. “We know next to nothing about life on Earth,” he says. “Not only how many species we share the planet with but how they all live and interact.” See p32

HELEN PILCHER Author Helen was inspired by the neon murmurations of the budgerigar. “These brilliant birds are so much more than the cuttlefish-chomping companions of popular conception,” she says. See p46

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ON THE COVER: red squirrel: Scotland: The Big Picture/NPL; Risso’s: Sam Challenger; tit: Paul Miguel/FLPA; beaver: Nick Upton

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CONTENTS February 2018

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SAVE WHEN YOU SUBSCRIBE SEE P30

78 Photographer Neil McIntyre

Squirrels: SCOTLAND: The Big Picture/NPL; kob: Eric Baccega/NPL; petrel: Jamie Coleman; dolphins: Albaimages/Alamy; Gillian Burke: Nina Constable; illustration by Peter David Scott/The Art Agency

has spent years capturing images of red squirrel behaviour in Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park

Wild

Features

6

22 Cornwall’s success story

Top billing As the light fades, look out for feeding snipe

8

11

February highlights

32 Earth’s biodiversity

Hidden Britain

36 Stress factor

Nick Baker on magical goblin’s gold

12

Wild events Learn about whales and restore butterfly habitat

14 Winter wildlife How to observe nature in your garden Cover story

16 Latest science research Bonobos helping strangers and ‘dancing’ crabs 4

Gillian Burke reports on a beaver reintroduction project Cover story

Listen to the blood-curdling cries of vixens and cheery songs of dippers Cover story

BBC Wildlife

Agenda

How many species do we share the planet with?

Breeding grey seals react to human presence

11

A moss that amazed our ancestors

38 The One Show w afloat Mike Dilger searches for marine life Cover story

46 Flock in a million Cover story Australia’s wild budgies create a spectacle

58 See bears in Slovenia Go on an exciting BBC Wildlife reader holiday

64 Vultures of the waves Southern giant petrels command respect

70 On the move Kob antelopes are being translocated in Uganda

78 Britain’s red revival Cover story Cairngorms National Park is vital habitat for red squirrels

53 Conservation legacy Calls for large ‘no-take zone’ gains significant impetus following Blue Planet II

54 River pollution crisis High levels of pesticides found in freshwater habitats

55 Beyond the headlines Yetis aren’t real and now we have proof

56 Attitudes towards adders Increased awareness and targeted conservation efforts can help this species

59 Mark Carwardine All you need to know about coral bleaching

60 After Lillith What now for bringing lynx back to Britain?

February 2018

w southern giant petrels 64 How surv vive in a remote place

EDITORIAL Editor Sheena Harvey Features Editor Ben Hoare Environment Editor James Fair Section Editor Sarah McPherson Production Editorr Jo Price Art Editor Richard Eccleston Deputy Art Editor Lisa Duerden Picture Editor Tom Gilks Editorial Assistant Megan Shersby Contributors Wanda Sowry, Katherine Hallett, Paul Jarrold, Jenny Price, Russell Barnett, Rebecca Gibson

antelope are 70 Kob moving to a new home

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BBC One’s Mike Dilger encountered common dolphins on his voyage

Every month 21

Chris Packham Goes out in the cold

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Book reviews

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TV and radio

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Q&A

104 Your feedback 106

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Your photos

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Puzzles

114

Tales from the bush

22 Gillian Burke investigates signs of beaver activity in Cornwall

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February 2018

BBC Wildlife

5

WILD FEBRUARY Erlend Haarberg

WHAT TO SEE kk WHERE TO LOOK A smart snipe on a marshland pool. Topped up with winter rain, our wetlands look their best now, with sheets of water reflecting moody skies.

88

The percentage of 10km squares in Britain and Ireland where snipe were recorded in winter for the landmark Bird Atlas 2007–2011, making them our most widespread wintering wader. Breeding numbers are down, however.

CHRIS PACKHAM’S PACK

MUST-SEE MUST Q BEHAVIOUR

DON’T MISS

WINTERWATCH Airing on BBC Two from 29 January to 1 February.

TOP BILLING

T

he collective noun for snipe is a ‘wisp’, surely among the most poetic for any British bird. It specifically describes snipe in flight; you will seldom spot a tight flock of these waders on the mud of a marsh, floodplain or fen. As the light fades on winter afternoons, small groups of snipe may venture out from cover into open water, but generally they are birds seen feeding in ones or twos, probing the squelchy margins for hidden invertebrates.

Those extraordinary beaks average 7cm long. “On an inventor’s blueprint their bill would seem unrealistically ludicrous, like a bird with a trunk,” wrote birder and author Tim Dee in Four Fields (Jonathan Cape, 2013).

He described watching snipe feed “by dipping and tip-tapping into the mud either directly or through water. Most tip-tapped once every five seconds, and roughly once every three tip-taps they got something. They would then pull their bill halfway from the mud or the water and draw up whatever they had caught in little nibbling actions.” At times, Dee noticed, the snipes’ dipping went up to their eyes.

“Sometimes they dipped deeper still and their heads submerged entirely.”

GET INVOLVED World Wetlands Day is 2 February: www.worldwetlandsday.org

`

A SNIPE WILL PLUNGE ITS ASTONISHING BEAK INTO SOFT OOZE RIGHT UP TO THE HILT, FEELING FOR BURIED WORMS.”

BBC Wildlife

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WILD FEBRUARY RUARY Q RED FOX

CALL CA ALL A LL OF OF THE THE WILD WILD It’s 350-odd years since wild wolves were heard in Britain, and the screams of female foxes on winter nights serve as a spine-tingling reminder of what we lost.

Foxes typically breed between December and February, or perhaps later in the northern half of the country. Vixens utter blood-curdling cries to attract dog foxes, while both sexes use quieter, throaty ‘wow-wow-wow’ barks to stay in touch. If you spot two foxes together at this time, it’s probably a dog fox sticking close to his mate to try to guard her from rivals.

FIND OUT MORE www.thefoxwebsite.net

Q DEVIL’S MATCHSTICKS

LICHEN TROOPS This fabulous lichen sprouts dense clusters of tiny fingers up to 2cm high, which resemble old-fashioned red-tipped matches. With a bit of imagination, they also recall Red Coat infantry from a bygone age, hence the species’ alternative name ‘British soldier’. These are the fruiting bodies of the lichen, with reproductive structures located at the end. Search for devil’s matchsticks in the rich peat of heaths and moors, or on decaying tree-stumps.

Q DIPPER

ROCK STAR Cheery birdsong coming from a rocky river or stream might be a dipper. As Jim Crumley writes in The Nature of Winter: “There is no season of the year, no intensity of cold, no lash of wind or weight of downpour, no blizzard, no fog, nor dazzle of midwinter sun… none of these things can stifle the male dipper’s desire to sing.” The surprisingly musical song, like a thrush or warbler, carries well over the sound of torrents in spate. Dippers breed early and are the only British songbirds to swim underwater and walk on the streambed.

FIND OUT MORE Watch short films of dippers at www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/ White-throated_Dipper

GET INVOLVED Take part in a lichen survey: www.opalexplorenature.org/airsurvey www opalexplorenature org/airsurvey

UK K

The essential wildlife events to enjoy this month, compiled by Ben Hoare.

Fox & catkins: Colin Varndell; dipper: Paul Hobson; celandine & fly: John Bebbington; parakeet: David Chapman; rook: Mike Lane; lichen: Laurie Campbell

Q ROOK

STICKY SITUATIONS Winter is a great time to enjoy rooks, among our most under-appreciated birds. Like dippers (above), these characterful corvids breed early in the year and by February their rookeries can be a hive of activity. Look for pairs carrying sticks to repair nests or build new ones. Some invariably try to steal from neighbours, sparking treetop tussles that may descend into a tug-of-war as two birds pull opposite ends of the same stick. Pairs mate for life, so also keep an eye out for more affectionate displays, such as mutual preening, cawing duets and courtship feeding between males and females.

FIND OUT MORE www.bto.org/rook-survey

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BBC Wildlife

February 2018

WILD FEBRUARY Q ALDER

CATKIN CASCADE Alders like wet feet, usually growing beside water or in soggy, flood-prone woods where they do an important job fighting erosion. Whole trees can appear red-purple due to the catkins festooning their branches. There are both male and female catkins. Hardened female ones lingering from previous seasons look more like ‘pine cones’. This year’s developing catkins are short and stubby if female, or much longer if male. As spring arrives, the latter open to reveal pretty yellow insides.

GET INVOLVED Download the free Tree ID app at www.woodlandtrust.org.uk

ALSO LOOK OUT FOR… FIRST FLOWERS

By February lesser celandine, a member of the buttercup family, should be its unfurling its first bright yellow blooms.

It can be abundant in urban areas – often around street trees, in cemeteries or along paths – as well as in the countryside. The flowers are popular with bumblebees and flies.

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN One non-native species making its presence felt this month is the grey squirrel. In late winter, males chase females up, down and around trees, hoping to mate. Listen too for their loud, sneeze-like calls.

Q GREENBOTTLE

STIRRING INTO LIFE

m TWEET OF THE DAY

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/tweetoftheday

The sudden, welcome warmth of February sunshine can rouse a variety of insects that overwinter as adults, frequently including greenbottles. Give these flies a proper look.

Their huge, conker-coloured eyes and brilliant bronzy-emerald thorax, with its contrasting black ‘acrostichal’ bristles, are simply stunning close-up.

Greenbottles are as likely indoors as out, happily buzzing around your kitchen or living room.

Fermenting food waste, compost heaps and farmyard dung invariably attract them too.

FIND OUT MORE www.buglife.org.uk

BUNTING BOOM This year’s Winterwatch is reporting on one of Britain’s big farmland conservation success stories: the cirl bunting comeback in Devon and Cornwall. Winter is often a good time to spot small flocks of these handsome birds at RSPB Labrador Bay, near Teignmouth, Devon.

BOXING CLEVER Within a month, tits and other garden birds will be singing and looking for nest-sites. So there’s not long left to put up nestboxes: National Nestbox Week (14–21 February) is a great opportunity to get involved.

PARROT FASHION Jolly green giant of winter birdfeeders, eders, or a green menac ce? Either way, ringnecke ed parakeets seem to be here to stay in south-east England. bers shot up Numb 1,455 per cent in 1995– –2015, according to the latest Breeding Bird Survey report: www.b bto.org/bbs

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What’s Belize all about?

What to do while you’re there?

Despite its small size, Belize is bursting with history and culture, and is a true haven for wildlife, both in its crystal-clear waters and plentiful parks and reserves.

Central America’s second smallest nation offers a fascinating mix of cultures, and is also home to the best-known classical civilisation of Mesoamerica – the ancient Maya. With the second largest barrier reef in the world, Belize boasts amazing marine life. On terra firma, dense jungle covers many parts of the country and is home to abundant flora and fauna, from Baird’s tapir (Belize’s national animal) to the colourful Keel-billed toucan.

Head to the Cayo District for waterfalls, birding and butterfly watching (keep an eye out for the iridescent Blue morpho); head out to the cayes, Belize’s small Caribbean islands, for a tropical beach escape; discover fascinating history at Lamanai’s spectacular rainforest-clad Mayan ruins.

Adventurous visitors will find plenty to get the adrenaline pumping in Belize – from ziplining and rappelling to hiking and horse riding; a unique experience is exploring Central America’s largest cave system.

When to go and how to get there?

The best time to visit is December to May. As British summertime is typically wet in Belize, this is the ideal place for some post-Christmas or springtime sun!

Rainbow Tours is an expert in responsible wildlife travel to Belize. Our Travel Specialists can create a bespoke itinerary to your exact requirements, using first-hand knowledge and in-depth experience of the country. www.rainbowtours.co.uk 020 3588 6126

American Airlines operates a twice daily direct service from London to Miami. From there, hop on a two-hour flight to Belize City to start your adventure.

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WILDLIFE

ENCOUNTERS Belize’s reef is home to over 100 types of coral and 500 species of tropical fish; nurse sharks, eagle rays, manatees, pufferfish and barracuda are just some of the abundant marine life you could spot here. The Blue Hole is a world-famous marine sinkhole, and offers the chance to dive with sharks!

On land, Belize’s wildlife includes howler and spider monkeys, iguanas, agoutis and big cats including ocelots, pumas and the elusive jaguar – Rainbow Tours recommends visiting Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, the world’s only designated jaguar preserve. Belize is a birder’s paradise, and is home to more than 500 species, including the jabiru stork, the scarlet macaw and the rare orange-breasted falcon.

WILD FEBRUARY The sublime glow of ‘goblin’s gold’ amazed our ancestors and continues to delight us today.

Hidden

BRITA AN I

t’s there and then gone, a momentary twinkling in the gloaming. As you peer into a deep crevice between the rocks, a strange goldengreen luminescence seems to emanate from the darkness.

Its form is difficult to make sense of: tiny grains of light like a distant city. You reach in, fingers groping for the treasure, but when you bring it out into daylight you’re left with nothing but a smear of common dirt.

Were you tricked by the light?

No: look close at what remains on your fingers and you’ll see a tangle of green shreds. What you’ve just experienced is more magical than even the existence of fairies. You’ve met one of the most unusual mosses in the world: Schistostega penata, also known as goblin’s gold, dragon’s gold or rabbit’s candle.

It’s responsible for many fairy tales concerning pixies and mischievous magical little folk.

Apparently, goblin’s gold is quite scarce, though that may simply be a product of under-recording. Few of us find ourselves peering into the sort of eerie damp, dark recesses that this remarkable plant calls home. In fact, it is so specialised that it cannot compete with the

ANCIENT MYSTERY

NICK BAKER

REVEALS A FASCINATING WORLD OF WILDLIFE THAT WE OFTEN OVERLOOK. GOBLIN’S

robust, light-hungry mosses of the outside world. Instead it has found a niche betwixt daylight and dark, becoming supremely adapted to harnessing the liminal illumination of deep crevices, caves and burrows.

GOLD To understand how this dull smudge of soil on your fingertip plays such tricks with the light, you need to lean in even closer.

The moss comprises two distinct structures. When the spore, on finding the perfect DID YOU combination of moisture and KNOW? luminosity, Goblin’s gold is possibly germinates it forms the only moss to have a shrine dedicated to it – a filamentous mat Hikarigoke Cave on of cells called a Hokkaido, Japan. protonema. From this emanates an arched, fern-like frond, which is the reproductive structure.

Eventually it will form the stalks and capsules that produce the next batch of spores.

Illustrations by Peter David Scott/The Art Agency

Did warriors use goblin’s gold moss to gain supernatural power?

Remains of Schistostega have been found in the shaft hole of a spear-head from om the late Bronze Bronz Age found at Aylsham sham in North is is miles from Norfolk. Thi his any known location lo with edrock the acidic be conditions su uitable h for the growth of this moss.

February 2018

So how did it get there? Perhaps the traces o of moss are the result of a cache of spearo heads being stored h he in a cave before being transp ported to Norfolk?

Or perh e’ haps the ‘green fire of this mo oss was well known to those mining g the copper required for mak s. aking the weapons

GLIMMER OF LIGHT Although the leafier parts catch the eye, it is the less remarkable-looking protonema that holds the secret to the ethereal glow. Through a microscope, you’ll see it consists of hundreds of large cells arranged in a single layer, each transparent bauble the shape of an upside-down pear.

Nestled in the narrow end,

fu furthest from the light, is a cluster of chloroplasts.

In the gloom, there is barely a flicker of sunlight; most of the su un’s energy is filtered out by th he world above. But here is the cllever bit. Schistostega doesn’t aask for much: this faint glimmer iss enough. Each large, clear cell aacts like a lens, focusing the meagre light hitting it from the m vvery specific angle of the crevice’s entrance onto its cluster of ch hloroplasts. One name for the moss was ‘emerald light bender’. m The reflective function is siimilar to that performed by the taapetum in the eyes of nocturnal mammals. It is so directional m th hat the ‘sparkle’ of reflected liight coming back at your own eyyes can only be registered from the very direction of the fr in ncidental light. This is why th he ‘gold’ (the green pigment of the chlorophyll) vanishes in o bright multidirectional daylight. b Itt’s also why if you lean in too cllose to investigate it in situ, you in nevitably block the light from th he one direction the moss has grown to operate with. g Small wonder that this lowly liittle moss seemed to be the stuff of mystery and magic. o N NICK BAKER is s a naturalist, author and TV presenter.

BBC Wildlife

11

WILD FEBRUARY

EVENTS

Meet a celebrity cetacean: the ‘Thames whale’ is on display at London’s NHM.

EVENT SPOTLIGHT

Whales of the world Dive in and discover one of the planet’s most compelling evolutionary journeys in this new cetacean exhibition at London’s Natural History Museum. More than 100 specimens from the museum’s collection will be on display for the first time, including parts of a blue whale and a harbour porpoise. Visitors to this family-friendly event can get up close to the ‘Thames whale’ (a northern bottlenose whale that swam into the River Thames), listen to a whale jukebox and see what lies inside a sperm whale’s stomach.

O Until 28 February, Natural History Museum, London, adult £12.50,

Redstarts (male is pictured) breed at Gilfach Nature Reserve, Rhayader.

child £8.50, www.nhm.ac.uk/visit/exhibitions/whales.html

Go green

Whale skeleton: Trustees of NHM, London; Biking Birder: Gary Prescott; marsh fritillary: Tony Cox/Butterfly Conservation; beech tree: Wildlife Trust of Birmingham and the Black Country; shark: Elias Levy; curlew: Alex Hillier

Gary Prescott, also known as the Biking Birder, will present a talk on Green Birding to the RSPB Basingstoke local group. In 2016 Gary gained the European Green Birding crown, recording 318 species in a year while using pedal power to get around. He will talk about visiting every RSPB and WWT nature reserve in the UK. O 21 February, The Barn, Hampshire, RG21 7QW, free for members, visitors £3.50, http://bit. ly/2Ar36b7

RESTORE BUTTERFLY HABITAT

Get involved with practical conservation work on this habitat management day run by the South Wales Branch of Butterfly Conservation and Brecknock Wildlife Trust. By clearing scrub at Ystradgynlais, Swansea, you will be helping the threatened marsh fritillary butterfly (below). Hand tools will be provided, but participants can bring their own if they prefer.

O 10.15am, 2 February, Ystradgynlais, free event, http://bit.ly/2hY9ZsR

ID winter trees

Learn how to identify trees in winter by attending this illustrated talk and guided walk, organised by The Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country. You’ll be taught how to spot key features of deciduous trees in winter and will have the chance to practice your identification skills in the field while looking out for species such as beech and silver birch. The event is suitable for beginners.

O 10 February, Moseley Bog and Joy’s

Learn how forensic experts help investigate wildlife crimes.

Wood, West Midlands, free event, booking required, http://bit.ly/2iLmpBA

FEBRUARY EVENTS IN BRIEF FABULOUS FUNGI

CELEBRATING SHARKS

BUTTERFLY UPDATES

Join a local group of the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust in Boston for an evening talk by Dr Vin Fleming on the range of wild fungi found in the UK. 8 February, http:// bit.ly/2mVPz5p

Marine biologist Olivia Orchart will present a fascinating overview of sharks and discuss their representation in the media at this Avon Wildlife Trust talk in Keynsham.

9 February, http:// bit.ly/2ApxbI7

Join Butterfly Conservation for an evening of short talks in Belfast.

Presentations will include the re-discovery of the small blue and a look into the Ulster Museum collection.

15 February, http://bit. ly/2A4NOWd

12

BBC Wildlife

WADER WORKSHOP Do you know your golden plover from your grey plover? Join this workshop at WWT Caerlaverock, Dumfriesshire, to see a variety of wader species and learn from wardens.

3 February, http://bit.ly/2A2CwUU February 2018

WILD FEBRUARY

MIKE DILGER

WILDLIFE WATCHING In a winter garden If you need a cheap, carbon neutral and easy wildlife fix this winter, then look no further than your closest nature reserve, which also happens to be cunningly disguised as your own back garden.

DILG ER’S DOS A N D D O N ’ TS DON’T FORGET TO PRACTISE GOOD FEEDER HYGIENE by giving the dispensers a regular wash. You wouldn’t like mouldy, stale food and the birds don’t either.

The only real advice when watching wildlife in your garden should be to sit back and enjoy the show. February weather is so wildly unpredictable but a happy hour observing the ebb and flow through your green real estate can be done without having to step outside.

Using your house (the world’s most luxurious hide) keeps you warm and dry, and minimises wildlife disturbance. Find a comfy seat that offers a good view of your garden – preferably with the kettle and biscuit jar within easy reach!

When you look out through the window it may appear that winter is the least profitable season for a ‘gardenwatch’ session, yet during a cold snap it is quite the opposite. As food in the countryside dwindles or becomes difficult for species to access, the shy become shameless and the quiet find their voice.

Most mammals, reptiles and invertebrates are either still hibernating or keeping a low profile, so although you can see foxes, badgers and squirrels in late winter, it is unashamedly a time when birds take centre stage. On a crisp, clear day, and from dawn until at least lunchtime, stocked feeders become very popular amongst the avian community – feeding perches have to adopt a strict ‘one in, one out’ policy as the birds jostle for a calorific lifeline.

Feeders offer a fascinating insight into the pecking order.

The group which tends to show

this most readily are the tits – great tit is ‘top dog’ and the second in command is undeniably the petite but pugnacious blue tit.

Faced with such feisty competition, the timid coal tit will often be relegated to adjacent bushes, until they can dash in for a beakful.

NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) estimate that a single garden feeding station can attract as many as 200 individual blue tits in a single day. Despite this, you rarely see more than one or two on a feeder even at the busiest times. Blue tits form roving bands with other bird species to work a regular ‘beat’, moving from feeder to feeder within a neighbourhood.

In addition to the tits, finches and robins attracted by the free handouts, it is also worth keeping an eye out for special guest appearances from brambling, siskin and blackcap, which are guaranteed to brighten up any armchair viewing.

MIKE DILGER is a naturalist and TV presenter. Read about his wildlife voyage for The One Show on p38.

DO REMEMBER TO MELT DRINKING WATER on frosty Fox: Brian Bevan/ardea.com (controlled conditions); feeder: Mike Dilger; siskin: Alan Williams/naturepl.com; blackcap: Gianpiero Ferrari/FLPA

days. With snow on the ground it can be a case of “water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink”.

`

AS FOOD DWINDLES, THE SHY BECOME SHAMELESS AND THE QUIET FIND THEIR VOICE.”

14

BBC Wildlife

February 2018

WILD FEBRUARY Use a camera-trap to capture the behaviour of mammals that may visit your garden to forage in the cold months, such as foxes.

T HE K I T Easy access to a pair of

binoculars is simply essential. A whole thesis could be written on which feeders are most effective and what to put in them. Sunflower hearts and fat blocks attract a good range of bird species – your avian visitors will also be appreciative of a fresh water supply. For those who prefer fur to feathers, mammals can

be best spo otted with the deployment of a camera-trap.

While posittioning the trap will ne ecessitate a brief spell in the cold, check king the memory ca ard can be carried out back in the e comfort off your home e!

C H O I CE LOCAT I ON S Feeders

Camera-traps

Many feeders work effectively from the lower branches of trees to give the birds somewhere to perch and provide cover from predators. In the absence of suitable trees, poles placed close to shrubbery will elevate the feeders away from cats, while still providing access to cover. Moving the feeders around every month will also let the ground recover.

Camera-traps get the best results close to the ground, as badgers and foxes keep a low profile. The edges of habitats are fruitful hunting grounds, such as along the line of a hedgerow.

It’s also worth looking for any obvious animal highways in your garden, such as a hole under a fence. Don’t forget animals use our footpaths too!

K EY W I L D LI F E Blackcap Traditionally a summer mmer visitor to Britain, since the 1960s blackcaps have been observed with increasing frequency. Excitingly, ringing studies are showing that these birds come from Germany and seem genetically distinct from those fair-weather blackcaps solely coming here to breed.

Brambling ‘Checking chaffinches’ should be a mantra for any garden birdwatcher as you never know when a brambling or two will be Some blackcaps choose to stay in the UK in winter.

COMING UP NEXT ISSUE:

O Mike is watching wildlife in a city

February 2018

hiding in amongst the ‘chavs’. Standing out due to their orangebuff ff coloration and white rump, most bramblings seen in British gardens in winter will be from Fennoscandia.

Siskin Smaller and streakier than the chunky greenfinch, the siskin (above) has seen an upturn in its fortunes due to both the spread of new conifer plantations and its ability to take advantage of garden feeders.

Fox Active all winter, foxes should be coming to the end of their breeding season in February, meaning any pregnant vixens will be eating for five or six. Their cautious demeanour will slip a touch as dawn and dusk become productive feeding times – on the dreariest day a glimpse of ginger is enough to cheer anyone up.

BBC Wildlife

15

WILD NEWS

DISCOVER RIES The latest in scientific research from all over the animal kingd gdom.

Written by STUART BLACKMAN

Good samaritans: like humans, bonobos will go out of their way to help another in need.

Q PRIMATES

YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND IN ME

UNLIKE CHIMPANZEES, BONOBOS ARE “PROSOCIAL” – THEY WILL HELP A COMPLETE STRANGER IN NEED.

Fiona Rogers/naturepl.com

H

umans are usually only too happy to help – even complete strangers, and even to our own inconvenience.

Chimps aren’t. Chimps rarely tolerate the presence of strangers, let alone go out of their way for them. But their closest cousins, bonobos, are more like us, according to new research.

Experiments conducted at Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo show that bonobos are willing to put themselves out to help strangers gain access to food even though they get none of it for themselves.

The researchers hung a piece 16

BBC Wildlife

USA. “In return they of fruit from a rope DID YOU KNOW? had no immediate in one room that Q Bonobos and selfish benefits.” could only be released chimpanzees diverged Such “prosocial” from an adjacent about a million years ago following the behaviour sits well room, separated by a formation of the with the image of fence. Bonobos in the Congo river. Chimps bonobos as peacesecond room would live to the north of the loving egalitarians. make considerable river, bonobos to the south. Both species Chimps are far less efforts to release are poor swimmers. socially spirited. Tan the food for an says that they behave unfamiliar individual so aggressively to strangers that in the first room. it’s not even possible to perform “They gave up playing-time, these experiments on them. walked across the room, Bonobos seem to play a climbed up, held their body longer game, which involves with one arm and reached making a good first impression. through narrow mesh to help “All relationships start between with the other arm,” says two strangers,” says Tan. “But Jingzhi Tan of Duke University,

you may meet them again, and this individual could become your future friend or ally. You want to be nice to someone who’s going to be important for you.

“Human cooperative behaviour is still much more flexible, more risky, more complicated and at a larger scale,” Tan told BBC Wildlife.

“But we have more similarities with our great ape cousins than we previously thought, in terms of our prosocial predispositions.”

SOURCE Scientific Reports LINK http://go.nature.com/2BTheY6

February 2018

WILD NEWS Q INVERTEBRATES

Q CRUSTACEANS

Strictly crab dancing: Perisesarma eumolpe intimidates rivals with a victory display.

Fly: Floris van Breugel/Caltech; crab: Marut Sayannikroth/Shutterstock; hare: Daniel Trim/Getty; bush cricket: Andrew Baker

DIVING FLIES Marine insects are a striking rarity. But one species is perfectly at home in water far saltier than any ocean.

Mark Twain wrote about California’s Mono Lake flies in 1872: “You can hold them under water as long as you please – they do not mind it – they are only proud of it.

When you let them go, they pop up to the surface as dry as a patent office report.”

It’s no mystery why the flies enter the water – there are no predators and a bountiful supply of algae and bacteria to graze on. But how do they keep the caustic, salty water off? Researchers have found that the fly’s cuticle is particularly hairy and covered in hydrophobic waxes. This allows them to dive almost entirely enclosed within a bubble of air. Only the fly’s eyes are not encased, allowing unimpaired underwater vision. Meanwhile, the buoyancy of the bubble is resisted by large claws that help anchor the flies to the lake-bed.

The

EXPLAINERR 6FLHQWLĶF WHUPV SXW LQWR SODLQ (QJOLVK IRU WKH UHVW RI XV

COPROPHAGY

PUTTING ON A SHOW It might be undignified, but gloating works in the long term. Biologists have been studying the rather unsporting contests between the males of Perisesarma eumolpe, a little crab from Singapore’s mangrove forests. They have found that, by rubbing a defeated opponent’s face in it with an ostentatious dance of victory, a winner can keep him out of his own face in the future.

Following a fight between rival males, the victor is prone to launching into a

vigorous display of colour, motion and sound, in which he rubs his ridged claws together. Experiments suggest that these “browbeatings” intimidate rivals, keeping them in their place, should they meet again.

“Losers are less likely to enter into another contest with winners after victory displays,” write the scientists behind the research.

Ultimately, this may save the victor precious time, energy and reduce the risk of injury or death.

The world would be a pretty unappealing place were it not for the flies, beetles and other animals that specialise in eating dung. Few coprophagous species eat the poo of their own species, as it risks transmitting disease, but there are exceptions. Elephant calves, for example, eat the faeces of adults – it’s a way of seeding the gut with essential bacteria. And rabbits and hares eat their own faeces, because certain nutrients are only released when food passes through the gutt twice.

There are benefits to eating poo - honest!

SOURCE Ethology LINK http://bit.ly/2AEeb5T

Mono Lake saltwater can’t burst the bubble of this foraging fly.

NEW SPECIES

SPOTLIGHT

TYPOPHYLLUM SPURIOCULIS WHAT IS IT? The splendid wings of this new bush cricket are multifunctional: they have flight, camouflage and communication covered. A filelike structure on the left wing and a plectrum on the right combine to produce its call.

This is further amplified by a resonating right forewing.

SOURCE PNAS LINK http://bit.ly/2B8pqCm

February 2018

WHERE IS IT? Hailing from Ecuador and Colombia, the insect is named after the paired orange eye-spots at the base of their front four legs (eight in all).

These are deployed with a wingflick to startle predators. “When viewed from behind, the spots and abdomen resemble a bird’s eyes and beak,” write the scientists.

Leaf or bush cricket? This katydid is a master of mimicry.

SOURCE Journal of Comparative Zoology LINK http://bit.ly/2zVykmP

17

WILD “Just say ahhhhh.”

Bryde’s whales open wide in the Gulf of Thailand.

WILDLIFE UPDATES EXTREME EXFOLIATION It may not be only food that brings bowhead whales to Cumberland Sound in Nunavut, Canada, each summer. PLoS ONE E reports that the shallow waters offer excellent exfoliation opportunities. Drone footage shows the whales rubbing themselves on rocks to remove dead skin from their chin, head, back and sides.

BIRDS

BOBBING FOR A BITE TO EAT Bryde’s whales have come up with a novel way of taking life easy. Like other rorquals, the d actively l cetaceans llunge ffeed, chasing schools of fish before taking an enormous mouthful of water and filtering out the prey.

But in the Gulf of Thailand they also have a more leisurely way of taking meals, which involves little more than “treading” water with their

heads above the surface, and opening wide.

“We were surprised to find that h Bryde’s d whales h l feed f d on small ll fish by opening their mouth until the lower jaw contacts the sea surface and waiting for the prey to enter,” says Takashi Iwata of the University of St Andrews.

“Similar behaviour has never been reported in other rorqual species,” he told BBC Wildlife.

It may suit the particular conditions in the gulf, where pollution concentrates prey at the h surface. f Iwata says local l l fishermen have reported the whales doing the same at night.

The biologists observed 31 individuals “tread-water feeding”, including eight adult-calf pairs.

SOURCE Current Biology LINK http://bit.ly/2iwVMzz

Whales: Takashi Iwata; flower: Kobe University; crab: Pete Oxford/NPL; mammal illustration: Mark Witton 2017

Q FOSSILS

DORSET DENTAL DISCOVERY Two teeth unearthed from a cliff-face in Dorset have turned out to be the oldest fossils of a line that gave rise to modern mammals.

The 145-million-year-old fossils are the earliest known placental mammals, the group that includes all living species except marsupials and egg-laying monotremes.

The teeth belong to different species of small, rat-like creatures. Durlstotherium and Durlstodon are named after Durlston Bay, where the teeth were found. Durlstodon newmani also bears the name of a local pub landlord and prolific amateur fossil collector.

According to University of Portsmouth palaeontologist Steve Sweetman, they “are undoubtedly the earliest yet known from the line of mammals that lead to our own species.

18

BBC Wildlife

Fossil find reveals new data on our mammal ancestors.

“The teeth are of a highly advanced type that can pierce, cut and crush food. They are also very worn which suggests the animals to which they belonged lived to a good age for their species. No mean feat when you’re sharing your habitat with predatory dinosaurs!”

SOURCE Acta Palaeontologica Polonica LINK http://bit.ly/2hlI19Z

FUNGUS FLOWER Aspidistra flowers emerge from so low down on the plant they look like exotic mushrooms pushing straight up through the soil. It may not be a coincidental likeness. Ecology y reports that their main pollinators are fungus gnats.

RIGHT LEANING Feeding blue whales lunge to the right 90 per cent of the time. Current Biology reports that they become re le eft-“handed” when hunting at the surface.

By rolling to the left, they B ke eep their dominant right ey ye on the target. But vision is helpful only near the surface.

U UPS AND DOWNS Co oconut crabs climb trees fo or more than coconuts.

Frrontiers in Ecology and the En nvironment documents a Chagos Islands crab creeping up on a cr roosting red-footed booby, breaking its wings and then killing and eating it on the ground.

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It’s a natural spectacle like no other, and a life-changing experience to witness.

The wildebeest follow an age-old route across the plains of the Masai Mara in Kenya, south into Tanzania, through the Serengeti and almost all the way to the Ngorongoro Crater. The route remains unchanged, but the timing can vary from year to year.

Thankfully, Asilia Africa makes it easy to stay close to the action whenever it occurs. Its three mobile migration camps move location up to three times a year to ensure they are located in the best possible position to witness The Great Migration.

The rains heavily dictate the progression of the herds. In fact, it’s said that the wildebeest can sense the arrival of the rains from 50km away. The rains will in turn yield fresh, new shoots and optimal grazing for the herds, and

so the cycle continues, with the wildebeest constantly on the move in search of food.

But the migration isn’t only about placidly grazing herds as far as the eye can see (although it is a magnificent spectacle).

The time of year you choose to go on your migration safari will influence what you’re likely to see.

Between June and November, for instance, the herds are usually moving from the Masai Mara into the Northern Serengeti. The wildebeest cross the Mara and Talek rivers, where hungry crocodiles with snapping jaws lie in wait in the shallows.

December and March herald calving season, where the herds begin to give birth, en masse, at an impressive rate. An estimated 500,000 calves are born during a 2-3 week period, which in turn attracts a staggering number of predators, eager to prey on the vulnerable newborns.

Be sure to check out Olakira Camp, Ubuntu Camp, and Kimondo Camp, and include at least one in your next trip to East Africa!

BOOK YOUR UNMISSABLE EXPERIENCE NOW AT ASILIAAFRICA.COM

Notes from an

English wood

OPINION

From CHRIS PACKHAM

IN THE DEEP MID-WINTER WE VENTURE OUT TOGETHER AND FIND 15 SLOW-GRAZING DEER AND A FLUFFED UP ROBIN IN THE COLD.

Illustration by Owen Davey/Folio

O

ut in the yard our walk is instantly defined, underfoot by crisp grass, overhead by a clear sky, and in the air by the cold.

I scuff the milky tarmac, he treads black paws, we leave trails, and we brace ourselves for an hour in the company of the cold.

On top of the silvered gate post, split and strangled by gnarly worms of ivy, the frost crusts rust and scalds my fingers as I wrestle the codger closed, rustling as it rakes f lakes of tree, and it’s here that I shake hands with and greet the cold.

The droveway beyond is paralysed and bleached, its spellbound ground hard as hell, my feet chiming like clogs on cobbles, on the hoof-pocked mudstone, on the marble clay, on the tractor rucks, on all the fossilised sludge that yesterday slopped but today skids. And as I turn to look for my friend, my cheek is smartly slapped by the cold.

Overnight a great unkindness has fallen here. A torture, a punishment wrought by the fickle physics of temperature. So simple – turn it down, turn on the pain. That unique pinch to the nostrils, cuff to the ear, bruise to the lips, that nip of metal in the mouth and white scorching in the roof of the nose, that lick of a tear that crests quickly over the cheek and tickles the chin, that you nod to touch the scarf, as you begin to sniff and notice the chill of the snivel that you swallow. Hands harden, fingertips fizz and soon you become aware of your toes. You haven’t felt them since they squeezed hot sand in the summer, but now all ten are shouting at the cold.

But there is a comfort too: it’s restful in the absence of colour, in the cold spectrum of blues and all their blacks and greys and in the way they wash the palette down to its raw skeleton of hues. Basic is easier to visually digest. With soft

`

contrast and all the detail smothered in a crystal coat, the woods are less complex, easier to see, easier to draw in the mind.

Then there’s the luxury of the wounded quietude – the sound is not dead, but it limps to the ear and whispers apologies for the hush and for the theft of echo, the kidnap of noise. Even scent has f led. The earth, normally so fragrant and telling, so bold a perfume, offers not an essence of mood, so that when you draw a long breath to cool the lungs all you can smell is the cold.

We scratch a trail to where the brambles force our turn and look like ripped-up broderie anglaise, a filigree of brilliant white, crocheted on leaves of black maroon, sad and sparse, hollowed to the heart where the blackcap’s nest sags. It had eggs but they went before we peered at anything pink, and the tornup cup told us the magpie story we’d missed in the six

YOU HAVEN’T FELT THEM SINCE THE SUMMER, BUT NOW ALL TEN ARE SHOUTING AT THE COLD.”

February 2018

hours between our curious peepings.

The puddles crunch like light-bulb glass, I stamp, he sniffs, I like the crackle, he likes the lick of ice water beneath the smashed agates of concentric grey rings. We cut through the apron of hazel which hems the field edge and I tweak the barbs strung with strands of crystal hair. I count 15 slow does, heads down on the slope, so close I can hear the grass rips as they tug their lips from the turf, so close I can see their eyes f licking and their tails blinking on their careless rumps in the cold.

He’s fixed on them. A year ago he’d have bolted and given them a scarpering call, but now he just tail-down watches.

What they need is a wolf to sharpen their senses, but what they’ve got is an old poodle, so I twang the fence and they startle, stare, and then shuff le away, melding with the cold.

A robin flits up from the scuffed brown earth that girdles the badger set, shivers its tail and fluffs up, briskly preens its pinion, mumbles a rattle and levitates into the waxy muff of yew. The latrines are ripe and sigh wisps of white into the cold.

He leads on the home stretch; he spied me straightening his sheepskin and lighting the fire. He’s had enough of the cold.

At the door I kneel and press my nose into his nape and draw a long breath through his coat. I love it when he smells of the cold.

CHRIS PACKHAM is a naturalist and TV presenter.

Watch him on Winterwatch from 29 January to 1 February on BBC Two. See a preview on p88.

BBC Wildlife

21

Xxxxxxxxx Beaver: Nick Upton; Gillian Burke: Nina Constable

The Eurasian beaver was once widespread in Europe and Asia but hunting drastically reduced its numbers and range. Now a series of reintroductions in the UK and other countries have enabled it to return.

C

d e

y

For more British wildlife, don’t miss

WINTERWATCH Airing on BBC Two from 29 January to 1 February.

B E AV E R S BITE THEIR WAY B A C K One of the largest rodents in the world is big news in British conservation.

Gillian Burke of BBC Two’s Winterwatch has been inspired by the latest beaver reintroduction project in Cornwall.

Gillian Burke explores a reintroduction site with farmer and beaver champion, Chris Jones.

eeping up with farmer Chris Jones proves to be trickier than I thought it would be when we set out. He’s still in shorts despite the late autumn chill, and thanks to his trusty walking stick one of his friends suggests that he bears more than a passing resemblance to Christopher Robin from Winnie-the-Pooh.

A charming thought, but this Christopher has a surprising turn of speed that forces me to shape up, as we pick and squelch our way through ankle-deep mud.

Autumn is well underway and in the crisp mid-morning light I’m not expecting to see the animals I’ve come here to learn about – they’re nocturnal after all – but there are plenty of signs of them everywhere. Chris delights in pointing out the gnawed branches, felled trees and saplings and, of course, the dams and ponds for which these creatures are so well known. It’s clear that this is his passion project as he declares: “I can’t get enough of this. It’s like a drug!”

Then Chris lowers his voice and explains that, despite all of the beavers’ busyness, he has still seen no sign of their hideaway, or lodge. “It’s a mystery!” he whispers, while

K

carefully scanning the scene. I get the sense that he’s not going to rest until he has found it.

Last summer this small farm, tucked away in a quiet corner of mid-Cornwall, became the unlikely focus of a frenzy of media attention. Local and national press gathered to capture the moment when a single pair of Eurasian beavers was released into a five-acre enclosure.

A small step for these two mammals, but a giant one for the Cornwall Beaver Project.

CHANGING THE LANDSCAPE The beaver release programme at Woodland Valley Farm is the latest in a handful of schemes across the country, but this Cornish project has one very important difference.

Incredibly, for the first time ever, anywhere, scientists will be able to gather crucial ‘before-and-after’ data to produce the most detailed picture yet of how these ecosystem-engineers influence and shape ape their environment. wing body of evidence that beavers could There is a growing ral allies as we try to turn the tide on a be powerful natural ord of man-made problems. Among the whole smorgasbord

Beaver(x2), lodge & canal: Nick Upton; Gillian, trees & dam: Nina Constable

BEAVERING AWAY SIGNS TO LOOK FORR

24

CHEWED TREES

DAM

Distinctive pencil-shaped stumps with 3–4mm wide toothmarks are one of the most iconic signs of beaver activity. Mature trees are felled to create the bases of dams, while younger trees are felled for food.

d, Dams are constructed out of mud, stones, logs and branches. They maintain a constant water level around the lodge for protection against e predators and increase the space available for foraging.

BBC Wildlife

Above: beavers are well adapted to a semi-aquatic life, perfectly at home in a variety of of freshwater habitats. They employ their broad tail as a rudder while swimming.

STRIPPED BARK The beaver’s primary food source is bark, which is effortlessly stripped off both felled and standing trees with the large, curved incisors.

This is often done in characteristic rings, a behaviour known as girdling.

February Fe Feb ruarry rua ry 2018 201 018 01 8

BRITISH BEAVERS

“BEAVERS COULD BE NATURAL ALLIES AS WE TRY TO TURN THE TIDE ON MANMADE PROBLEMS.”

many environmental ills they may help cure are flooding, soil erosion, habitat and species loss, agricultural runoff entering waterways and freshwater pollution more generally. Not bad for a bunch of rodents.

Beavers are semi-aquatic mammals that need deep, still water to feel safe from predators and raise their young. If there is no suitable habitat in the area, they simply engineer it thems themselves. Thousands of years of evolution have seen to it that beavers will compulsively dam up fast flowing streams if no agreeably deep water is available.

Above: beavers are nocturnal and favour the bark of aspen, hazel, birch, alder and willow (pictured). The rodents store food in underwater piles to sustain them through the winter months.

LODGE LO

CANALS

Be Beavers sometimes prefer to use natural holes or burrow into banks. Elsewhere, including ba where the water is too fastwh moving, they build lodges from mo sticks and branches. sti

These narrow channels are cut into the riverbank to connect several different areas of beaver activity.

They are often used to transport food and building materials to the dam or lodge.

Armed with powerful jaws and impressive, chisellike incisors, they do this by felling trees whose trunks are driven vertically to create the initial framework of the dam. The beavers work quickly and methodically to reinforce the structure with small branches, twigs, rocks and even mud that they knead into the smallest gaps.

The slightest sound of trickling water sends them into a flurry of activity as they locate and plug up any leaks.

The result is a quiet, still beaver pond in which they can build their lodge. At first glance, it looks like a chaotic tangle of branches and twigs, but there is method in the ‘madness’. The structure is like a thatched mesh, laced with a muddy paste to strengthen it. An underwater entrance, which can be accessed only by the beavers, is the final line of defence from predators and the elements. Once they’re safely inside, the snug lodge provides shelter through the winter and a place to have kits.

At one time the Eurasian beaver, along with its North American counterpart Castor canadensis, was widespread across much of the Northern Hemisphere.

Numbering in the millions, beavers had a huge impact, buffering the flow of water and nutrients through the landscape and keeping aquatic systems stable and healthy. But the animals were valued instead for their fur and castoreum, an anal secretion that you might be surprised to learn was – and still is – used as a vanilla flavour enhancer. Demand fuelled a lively trapping industry that caused populations of both species to crash. In the British Isles, beavers were driven to extinction by the 1500s.

Today the hope is that the Cornish Beaver Project will mark another successful step towards a future where BBC Wildlife

25

BRITAIN’S BEAVER REINTRODUCTIONS

AIGAS FIELD CENTRE, INVERNESS-SHIRE STATUS: Licensed release (fenced) INTRODUCED: 2006 POP: 2

Aigas has a popular education centre, which created a fenced enclosure around its forested 8-acre loch (featured on Autumnwatch) to demonstrate how beavers modify habitat.

Visitors can view the beavers from a purpose-built hide.

Our map shows the various beaver reintroduction trials now underway or proposed, as well as private projects and unofficial (illegal) releases.

KNAPDALE FOREST, ARGYLL STATUS: Licensed release (unfenced) INTRODUCED: 2009 POP: at least 9

Twelve beavers from Norway were introduced on Forestry Commission land for the high-profile Scottish Beaver Trial. In October 2017, a new licence was issued to release up to 28 more beavers (not included in above total) to boost genetic variation.

TAYSIDE, SCOTLAND STATUS: Unlicensed release INTRODUCED: 2001 POP: up to 250

No one is quite sure where this population of beavers originated from, but it is thought that they escaped from private collections. Between 2003 and 2015, they built 500m of canals, an acre of freshwater ponds and 195m of dams.

COTSWOLD WATER PARK, GLOUCESTERSHIRE STATUS: Licensed release (fenced) INTRODUCED: 2005 POP: 4

FOREST OF DEAN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE STATUS: Licensed release (fenced) INTRODUCED: Due 2018 POP: 4

The Forestry Commission will release two adults and two kits into an enclosed area, in the first beaver trial funded by the UK government. It’s hoped they will help prevent major floods like the one in the local village of Lydbrook in 2012.

Six beavers were originally introduced to Flagham Fen Lake in this popular countryside park.

They produced kits in their very first year, since when their effects on the local environment have been closely monitored.

HAM FEN, KENT STATUS: Licensed release (fenced) INTRODUCED: 2001 POP: 7

CARMARTHENSHIRE, WALES STATUS: Licensed release (fenced) INTRODUCED: 2013 POP: 6 adults, plus young

The Bevis Trust has a small captive beaver population, with two bookable hides, while it waits for the outcome of its 2015 proposal to release 10 pairs of beavers along the River Cowyn and Nant Cennin in Carmarthenshire.

This rare example of Kent fenland near Sandwich is managed by Kent Wildlife Trust, with no public access to protect its beavers, which originally came from Norway. Guided evening events take place in spring and summer.

RIVER OTTER, DEVON STATUS: Unlicensed release, since given official status

WOODLAND VALLEY FARM, CORNWALL

INTRODUCED: 2010 (or maybe as early as 2007) pop: 27

STATUS: Licensed release (fenced) INTRODUCED: 2017 POP: 2

This population began breeding in 2013. To prevent the beavers’ removal, a trial was set up in 2015

by Devon Wildlife Trust, which also has a separate fenced project.

Last June a pair of beavers were released into five acres of private farmland upstream of Ladock village, near Truro. It is hoped they will breed in 2018.

26

BBC Wildlife

February 2018

Gillian: Nina Constable; Aigas: Laurie Campbell/NPL; Nick Upton x 5

Below: the beaver’s broad torso and stubby legs are ideal for building dams and lodges (above). A beaver lodge consists of logs, branches, sticks and stones and has wellinsulated walls.

Feb Fe F February eb e brrua ru u ua ary ry 2018 201 2 018 01

these industrious mammals are once more an intrinsic part of our landscape. The project is a partnership between Chris Jones, the Cornwall Wildlife Trust and a team of scientists led by hydrologist Prof Richard Brazier from the University of Exeter. But calling it a partnership doesn’t quite do it justice. The collaboration has developed into friendship; trust and good communication are the hallmarks of an ambitious scheme that has taken hard graft to get off the ground.

The Trust had wanted to organise a beaver project for some time, but had been drawing blanks when it came to finding a suitable release site. At the same time, the small village of Ladock, just 1.5km downstream from Woodland Valley Farm, had been hit hard by repeated flooding after a barrage of winter storms. Chris saw a potential solution, approached the Trust, and the rest is history. One balmy evening last June, after an absence of over 400 years, beavers were finally back in Cornwall.

It is hard to overstate the significance of this conservation milestone. Together with the trials on Devon’s River Otter, at Knapdale in Scotland and (soon) in the Forest o of Dean, this p pr oject will produce data that could inform in project policymaking in Westminster and Ho Holyrood. But, for now, I’m keen to see how the Cornish p pa ir are settling into their ne pair new digs.

Th T his is my second visit to C This Chris’s ffa arm and and I am stunned by h farm how quickly th he be b avers have set about m the beavers making alterations to their enclosure. In the six weeks between my visits, the b beaver pond has doubled in size and more tha than doubled in depth. In a year or two, we will almost certainly need waders.

Beavers offer an attractively natu natural, lowcost solution to many landscape and an water-

“THIS BEAVER PROJECT WILL PRODUCE DATA THAT COULD INFORM POLICY-MAKING IN WESTMINSTER AND HOLYROOD.” management problems but it is important to note that they aren’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Much of the Southwest, particularly Cornwall, is ideal beaver territory since there is little by way of low-lying farmland or forestry.

The same cannot be said of many other lowland areas in England, including much of Somerset or Norfolk.

FIRST STEPS Speaking to Cheryl Marriott, head of nature conservation at the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, it is clear that amid all the excitement around the beaver release there is a need to tread carefully at this early, fact-finding stage of the project. The Trust recently sent some of the key players to south-east Germany, where beavers were introduced in Bavaria in 1966. By looking at longer-running projects like the one in Bavaria, the Trust can spot potential problems before they arise.

Cheryl emphasises that the Trust has yet to decide its formal position on further beaver reintroductions until it has evaluated the Woodland Valley trial, and its wider impact. “It would be remiss of us to ignore the possible negative impact on some individuals or communities,” she says.

In Bavaria, as in this country, it is farmers who have most concerns about beaver reintroductions. Crucially, Chris joined the team on the Bavaria trip so that he could talk farmer-to-farmer about the reality of living alongside BBC Wildlife

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“WITHIN A FORTNIGHT OF THEIR RELEASE THE BEAVERS’ HANDIWORK WAS HOLDING BACK 1,000 CUBIC METRES OF WATER.” high densities of beavers. Many of the Bavarian sceptics have slowly been won over. In fact, farmers in low-lying areas around the River Danube have found that during droughts their cereal crops have fared better in areas where there are beaver dams.

For me, an even more encouraging story is that of the golden-ringed dragonfly. This stunning insect was thought to need fast-flowing water to breed, so the assumption in Bavaria was that it would vanish as damming activity increased. Researchers were startled to find that, far from disappearing, the dragonfly started to breed in the dams themselves, where the species made use of the microhabitats of fast-flowing water.

There are other positives to be taken from the experience in Bavaria. As mature beaver habitats have begun to silt up, vegetation communities that haven’t been seen in living memory have started to appear. It is rewilding in action.

Beavers: Nick Upton; Gillian: Nina Constable

KEYSTONE SPECIES Closer to home, the Devon project has seen a mind-blowing increase in the local common frog population. Researchers counted 10 clumps of frogspawn when the site was first surveyed in 2011. Just five years later, that total had risen to 580. At the Cornish release site, ponds have expanded more than two-fold since June 2017. “The frogs returning this spring to spawn are in for quite a surprise,” Cheryl reckons.

Cornwall’s pair of beavers have already exceeded all expectations. They were released on a Friday evening, Chris tells me. “They had the weekend off. Started to dam-build on the Monday, and haven’t had a day off since.” Within a fortnight of their release, the beavers’ handiwork was holding back 1,000 cubic metres of water.

Chris’s family has farmed here for three generations.

Together with his father and brothers, he personally planted up the mixed woodland that now forms the beaver enclosure. The land, he explains, was a wet and waterlogged pasture that was never really any good for grazing. So they February 2018

Above: beaver tug of war. Kits may stay with their parents for up to two years. Right: the moment Chris and Gillian discovered the beaver lodge.

planted the wood for timber, firewood and to create a habitat for wildlife. It strikes me that you might expect Chris to be really sentimental about his woodland, yet he is not at all bothered about it being redesigned by the newcomers.

The beavers only fell a few of the larger trees, Chris points out. And, even then, they don’t actually kill the trees.

They are effectively coppiced, which, in turn, creates fresh microhabitats for birds, invertebrates and other species. “In a hundred years’ time,” he tells me, “these ponds will silt up and this will all be deep, fertile soil.” I’m bowled over by Chris’s long-term thinking. That he is willing to manage his land for wildlife in this way, knowing he won’t see the full returns in his lifetime, is truly admirable.

As I ponder this thought, Chris notices something different on the little island in the middle of the pond. Not quite believing his eyes at first, he realises that he has finally caught sight of the beaver lodge. Overcome with emotion, he immediately reaches for his phone to share the news with Cheryl and his partners at the Cornwall Wildlife Trust.

He has his proof that the beavers have + FIND OUT MORE made themselves right at home. And O More about the project: www. now there’s the promise of the pittercornwallwildlife.org.uk/beaverproject patter of tiny feet come spring.

O Brett Westwood presents a

programme about beavers for BBC Radio Four’s Natural Histories series: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05k6fjj

GILLIAN BURKE is a biologist and wildlife TV presenter. See her on BBC Two’s Winterwatch.

BBC Wildlife

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SEEING G REDS

Cairngorms National Park in the Sccottish Highlands is a stronghold for our native red squirrels. Neil McIntyre has visiteed its Caledonian forest throughout the seeasons to photograph the behaviour of o these lively little crowd-pleaserrs.

A red squirrel sits in a lichen- and snowcovered oak tree in December. Scotland is home to about 120,000 red squirrels, 75 per cent of the total UK population.

Contrary to popular myth, these hardy mammals do not hibernate. In the autumn they store surplus food either just below the ground or in the gaps of tree trunks to feed on in the colder months.

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BBC Wildlife

February 2018

talking

POINT

THE SPICE OF LIFE New research suggests we could share Earth with six billion other species. Entomologist Ross Piper asks if we have radically underestimated our planet’s biodiversity.

Main illustration by Patrick George/Debut Art; sediment illustartion by Phil Miller

B

illionaire technologists and futurists who have read too many comics fuel the human ego with visions of interstellar travel and terraforming the cold, dead dust of Mars. Theirs is a jaded view of the Earth, a planet that has nothing left to offer, from which all the mystery has been wrung. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have barely scratched the surface of understanding our beautiful world, including how many species we share it with.

To date we have formally described around 1.6 million species of living things, broadly divided between three domains: bacteria; archaea (single-celled microbes distinct from bacteria); and eukaryotes (animals, plants, fungi and protists like slime molds). How many more are there? This question is one of the most fundamental in science, but answering it is far from straightforward. The closer we look at life on Earth, the more confusing it becomes. Under scrutiny, even the term ‘species’ is a bit flaky.

Regardless, answering this question has become something of a cottage industry in biology. For some reason, recent estimates of around 10 million species seemed to be meaty enough to satisfy the masses. But they make enormous assumptions and more or less disregard the most diverse groups of organisms.

Using a new approach, a team at the University of Arizona has now come to the following conclusion: “There are likely to be at least one to six billion species on Earth. The new Pie of Life is dominated by

February 2018

bacteria (approximately 70–90 per cent of species) and insects are only one of many hyperdiverse groups.” This whopping estimate embraces the enormous bacterial diversity we find wherever we look, not to mention parasites and the hyper-diversity of insects, mites and nematodes. Animals account for 163 million species.

There are plenty of reasons why the University of Arizona estimate is nearer the mark. For starters, Earth is big. We tend to forget just how big. Not only that, but popular maps of our planet stretch and distort, so that the landmasses are not shown as they really are. The standard

WE HAVE BARELY SCRATCHED THE SURFACE OF UNDERSTANDING OUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD.

Mercator projection shows Greenland and Africa roughly equal in size, but Africa is actually 15 times larger and, like everywhere else, has many overlooked areas where few biologists have ever been.

Changing scale, now think about the structural complexity of a forest – the waterbodies, soil, roots, detritus, stems, boughs, leaves, bark and seeds. The variety of niches in a forest is mind-boggling.

Some of my work in Peru involves getting a handle on this – exploring the extraordinary diversity of animals that live in the unfurling leaves of a couple of species of understorey plants.

O

ceans are a huge unknown, as BBC One’s Blue Planet III recently showed to dramatic effect, but even there we underestimate.

It’s often said that we’ve explored around five per cent of the ocean, yet this refers to the seabed and anyway is probably an exaggeration. In fact, the whole volume of the ocean is a habitat, and we’ve explored less than one per cent of it.

Not only is Earth enormous, but most animals are small. Take the constellation of sub-1mm animals that live between and on the sediment grains on the seabed: the meiofauna. In one handful of this habitat there might be thousands of individuals and representatives of more animal lineages than in an entire tropical rainforest. Our appreciation of life on Earth is completely skewed Left: marine by our own size, sediments are but size has little or alive with a no bearing on constellation of biological importance. enigmatic animals.

BBC Wildlife

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talking

POINT

Calleremites subornata has only ee times been seen three since it was first described in 1894.

As parasitologist Bob Kabata,, once said said: “Had the copepod [a small crustacean] been the size of a cow, the tip of its first antenna would have become a topic for exhaustive studies.”

Getting to grips with animal diversity is further confounded by the fact that we’re drawn to species with which we feel an emotional attachment. Typically, these are mammals with cute wet noses, doe eyes and so on. However, many animals are faceless; lots don’t even have a head. The appearances and lifestyles of most animals are very alien indeed. It’s easier to identify with a lioness and the challenges she faces nurturing her cubs than it is to form any sort of emotional link with a faceless crustacean that spends most of its life attached to the eye of a fish.

The often very strange outward appearance off animals i l also l impedes i d our attempts tt t to t work k

out what’s what. In part th is linked to the common this preco conception of how evolution works. To o many people, evolution is a one-way, linear l process where simple forms give riise to increasingly complex ones, so it has beccome ingrained that simple forms must be pri primitive. In reality, evolution just as easily moves mov in the other direction.

In adapting to a particular niche, an animal can progressively lose many (sometimes all) of its complex features. These so-called degenerates – charming characters such as tongue worms, slime animals and thorny-headed worms – had generations of zoologists scratching their heads. It was only the ability to sequence DNA that revealed their true heritage.

H

eaped on top of this secondary simplification – to make things even more complicated – nature can trick us at every turn with a huge variety of doppelgangers and deceivers. Many animals look very similar even though th h they th aren’t ’t closely l l related, l t d either ith because they happen to live in similar ways or because there’s some mimicry going on.

There’s also a huge amount of cryptic diversity, where something that looks like one species is actually several identical-looking

ones. Only by delving into natural history and DNA can we reveal the true extent of cryptic diversity. This is a burgeoning area of research in all fields of zoology. A beautiful example of how much diversity is hiding in plain sight is a parasitoid wasp from Costa Rica that was assumed to be one species. Entomologist sts looked at its DNA and ecology – exactly where and how it lives – to reveal it is actually a complex of 36 outwardly identical species, all living distinct lives.

Tropical forests and coral reefs fs are where we find the greatest concentrations ent of life, but going to these places and documenting their fauna in a systematic way is often difficult. For me, the canopy of a primary tropical forest is most tantalising of all – it’s there within easy reach, yet exploring it freely without disturbing it excessively is next to impossible. Some regions are out of bounds because of war and d political liti l strife, t if while hil others th are just j t extremely remote and hostile once you’ve managed to get there. And exploring the deep sea is as challenging as going into space, with a similarly hefty price tag.

Even if you manage to reach your

The canopy of primary tropical rainforest is full of life but difficult to explore.

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BBC Wildlife

February 2018

Most animals are small, but we have to remember that size has no bearing on biological importance.

destination, there’s no guarantee you’ll find much of interest. Most species are rare or conspicuous for only a small proportion of their life. This seems to be at odds with what we see: we’re surrounded by animals you might say. True, but look a little closer. The reality of this ubiquity is vast numbers of a few extremely common species.

A mantisfly I found in the forests of northern Burma turned out to be a new genus, and I’d happily wager that I could spend a month in that same forest and never see it again. Likewise, a moth I found in the same location was first described in 1894, but in over 120 years has been n seen only three times. I think the truth is that many species ies just live at extremely low w population densities.

E

ven if you find lots lot of interesting thing ngs, this is just the thin end en of the wedge and where ere the fun begins. These specimens ns need t b to be compared d tto what h t else l exists i t iin the th disparate collections around the world db by someone who has spent years working on that particular group of organisms. Looking at the outward appearance of an animal is all well and good, but we need to go deeper.

We need to read some off its DNA, and we need to know where and how it lives. It’s this latter part th hat is the real sticking point.

The vast majority of the 1.6 million formally described species are little more than a name. Very few people are working at the front line of discovering species and understanding rst how they live. Apart from the he difficu difficulties of accessing them, as previously d described, there’s not much funding for this th sort of work, it can be extremely ly painstaking and it can be seen as an a academic backwater, which is a real travesty.

Just to give you an idea of the scale ale of the problem, there are more species of weevil evil and rove beetle than the here are species of vertebrate, and we’ve only nibbled the edges of these beetle families. The mites and nematodes fare even less well. Their an diversity perhaps surpasses that of insects, b t worldwide but ld id there th are still till only l a handful h df l of scientists studying their phenomenal diversity and ecology.

Numbers aside, we need to remember that the Earth is still full of mystery and that’s something we should all find

hearttening and exciting. We’re living g in a new golden age of disccovery, as technology is enabling us u to look at the natural world in new ways, w but with every bit of habitat that faalls to the chainsaw or disappears under the plough or dredger or concrete, species are lost to us forever, most before we ever got a chance to describe and understand them, impoverishing nature and ultimately ourselves.

Pragmatically, every species is a component of the natural systems that keep us alive and we can only understand these systems when we know the components.

Evolution has solved the greatest of problems and by studying life on Earth I believe we will find solutions to many of the challenges that face humanity. More intrinsically, as intelligent beings it is our duty to protect and understand our fellow organisms – not only for their own sake but also because of what they tell us about the phenomenon of life. In a cold universe, we are the privileged inhabitants of a beautiful, li i planet. living l t It is i thi this we need d to t cherish h i h above all else.

ROSS PIPER is the author of Animal Earth (Thames & Hudson, £19.95), an introduction to animal diversity.

Rainforest: Nick Garbutt/naturepl.com; moth: Ross Piper; mollusc: Arthur Anker; nematode: Jon Eisenback; sea butterfly: Alexander Semenov

IT’S EASIER TO IDENTIFY WITH A LIONESS THAN IT IS TO FORM ANY SORT OF EMOTIONAL LINK WITH A FACELESS CRUSTACEAN THAT SPENDS MOST OF ITS LIFE ATTACHED TO THE EYE OF A FISH .

February 2018

BBC Wildlife

35

DON’T MISS

WINTERWATCH Airing on BBC Two from 29 January to 1 February.

FOCUS

GREY MATTER

How GREY SEALS deal with stress depends on their personality, discovers the BBC’s Chris Howard.

For grey seals, breeding is stressful. Leaving the sanctuary of the water, females haul out for a month, giving birth and raising their pups as quickly as they can, before mating with the big, boisterous males that chance their luck through the whole season. The resulting pups will be born a year later. Now, as seal watching becomes more popular in the UK, a team from Durham University and the University of St Andrews’ Sea Mammal Research Unit is investigating whether human disturbance adds to the seals’ stress. Their study site is the Isle of May, a craggy outcrop in the Firth of Forth, home to the largest breeding colony of grey seals on Scotland’s east coast.

The team is noting stress responses in female seals to both natural stimuli, for example the arrival of a large male at the colony, and man-made stimuli, such as the approach of a researcher or unfamiliar noises played by a remote-control car driven into the colony. For each stressful situation, the behavioural and physiological responses are

recorded by means of observation and heartrate monitors. Full analysis of the data will take time, but a few things are becoming clear.

First, seals seem to get as stressed by anthropogenic stimuli as they do by natural ones. Lead scientist Sean Twiss points out that even though seals may appear calm when approached by a well-meaning tourist, there is a good chance they are not, because “observed behaviour doesn’t always reflect the stress state of the seal.” Second, the team have noticed that seals react differently to stress. “Some are inherently more responsive, others less so,” Twiss says.

In other words, they have personalities.

The research may eventually show that the personalities of seals in this population are changing. The simple presence of humans may be affecting which seals breed and thus which behavioural traits are passed on – something to bear in mind on your next trip to the coast.

O Chris Howard is series producer of Winterwatch. See a preview on p88.

IN FOCUS

Wild Wonders of Europe/Geslin/NPL

Appearances can be deceptive: a calm-looking grey seal doesn't necessarily mean a stress-free one – it depends on its personality.

38

BBC Wildlife

February 2018

criss

Last summer Mike Dilger of BBC’s The One Show joined a scientific voyage off Ireland and Scotland in search of marine megafauna. Here he shares the highlights.

A THE ONE S H OW

Due to air in January

Illustration by Chris Andrews/agencyrush.com; Dilger: Josh Forwood

DON’T MISS MIKE'S TRIP ON

s a rule BBC One’s The One Show doesn’t do long wildlife film shoots – the luxury of being able to spend weeks filming carefully crafted sequences is usually confined to landmark series such as Blue Planet II. So when we were offered four berths on a scientific voyage taking in a huge chunk of the Atlantic Ocean, we decided to go for it. Just this once we wanted to, as it were, push the boat out.

Our home for three weeks would be the Celtic Explorer, a research vessel owned by the Irish government and run by the Marine Institute, based in Galway on Ireland’s west coast.

Designed to enable scientists to monitor everything from fisheries stocks to climate change, she is a 65m-long floating laboratory with state-of-the-art equipment. The production team was taking a gamble… but I could hardly wait.

OUR MISSION We would be joining an expedition of more than 2,000 nautical miles along a predetermined route following east–west transects between Ireland and Britain and the margins of the continental shelf, at which point the seafloor quickly falls away from

around 250m to over 2,000m. After completing each transect, collecting fisheries and oceanographic data along the way, the Celtic Explorer would zigzag up the western side of Ireland and Scotland. Finally, we would reach the Butt of Lewis, the northerly tip of the Outer Hebrides. Only then would we head back to our final destination of Dublin via The Minch, the narrow strait of water between the Inner and Outer Hebrides.

This ‘drop-off’ at the edge of the continental shelf is of huge interest to anyone keen on cetaceans. Difficult to reach in north-west Europe, due to its remote nature, this linear and meandering feature is where the prevailing wind pushes away the surface waters to allow the upward movement of deeper, colder water that’s rich in nutrients. The upwelling of food in turn attracts leviathans such as blue, fin and sperm whales – we would be on ‘red-alert’ to film any cetaceans, sharks and other marine megafauna spotted during the voyage.

4 JULY: FAREWELL TO DRY LAND At last we slipped out of Galway Harbour on what the Irish call a “soft day” – the type of weather when you still get wet even though it doesn’t feel like it’s raining. I duly stationed myself on the roof of the BBC Wildlife

39

The Celtic Explorer is a multi-purpose research vessel run by the Marine Institute.

Welcome distraction: common dolphins interrupted Mike’s dinner by riding a bow wave.

bridge. For the first hour of my first day of 20 days onboard, I alternated my admiring gaze between compass and blue jellyfish slipping past in our wake and the terns, guillemots and puffins seeing us off the premises.

The nuts and bolts of camera assembly took up most of the rest of the day until dinner time, when we retreated to the mess with our new shipmates. No sooner had we sat down to eat when the call of “Commons!” crackled through on the ship’s radio. Racing up to the bridge roof with our binoculars and filming gear, we were treated to terrific views of these extrovert, enchanting dolphins as a small pod rode our bow wave.

The most abundant of all cetaceans in the north-east Atlantic, the common dolphin makes up for its diminutive stature with astonishing agility, frequently leaping clear of the water. No other cetaceans in British or Irish waters are as adept at showing off their characteristic features, which in this case are pale flanks, a dark back and a hooked dorsal fin. In essence, these dolphins are 2m-long show-offs!

As the Celtic Explorerr steamed towards the setting sun and deeper water, we should have reminded ourselves that watching wildlife can sometimes be 40

BBC Wildlife

like waiting for proverbial London buses… you see nothing for ages, then everything turns up. Will – one of the Marine Mammal Observers (MMOs) on board – spotted a frenzy of diving gannets over a kilometre metre away on the port side. Food tends to be patchily distributed throughout the world’s oceans, meaning diving seabirds frequently represent the most visible tip of a ‘feeding iceberg’ lurking just below the surface.

Sure enough, in addition to splashes from the plunging seabirds, we picked out flashes of common dolphins as they tucked into what was obviously a large shoal of fish. Next, a huge blow from a whale erupted in the middle of the meleé. The exhalation of a whale as it surfaces to empty its lungs is a wonderful sight, and consists of

moisture laden air being ejected at over moisture-laden 300kph before quickly condensing when it hits the cooler air. “That’s 100 per cent humpback,” Will shouted.

Even from great distances, the shapes of these blows can be distinctive enough to identify the heavy breathers. Will went on to explain that dense, mushroom-shaped blows are usually diagnostic for humpbacks.

Unfortunately, our sighting was too far from the ship to persuade the captain to change course for filming purposes. We returned to our now-cold dinner, happy in the knowledge that there would be more to come.

5 JULY: THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY First order of the day after breakfast was an interview in the crow’s nest with ‘Humpback Will’, where he revealed the tricks of his Mike jumps cetacean-spotting trade. At behind the lens 18m above sea level, the for a change while on board the ship.

February 2018

MARINE LIFE

RV CELTIC EXPLORER A FLOATING LAB

A minke whale swims past the ship. Left: the crow’s nest provides the best view of the surrounding ocean.

Common dolphins: John Power; crow's nest, filming & boat: Mike Dilger; minke: John Power; gannets: Michel Poinsignon/naturepl.com; boat aerial: Sam Challenger

Diving gannets can often be a sign that megafauna are feeding below the surface.

crow’s nest offers a commanding view of the surrounding ocean. From our vantage point we were flanked on both sides by ubiquitous gannets and fulmars. Then, while waiting for a mid-interview battery change on the camera, our eyes suddenly caught an object at the surface 50m to starboard.

I assumed this would be marine debris floating past, but it was still worth a quick check with the binoculars. As the object came into focus, I caught sight of a couple of flippers raise momentarily above a large carapace, distinctively marked with a series of longitudinal ridges running from head to tail.

I instantly knew I was looking at a ‘mega’ and was so gobsmacked I momentarily lost the ability to speak, leaving Will to articulate its

identity. In soft Irish tones he revealed that we were looking at a leatherback turtle.

To my knowledge, no film crew has ever managed to film a leatherback turtle in British or Irish waters. As pandemonium ensued, we made the cardinal mistake of taking our eyes off the beast before either getting it on camera or accurately noting its last position before it slipped below the water. All the time, the ship was steaming ahead at a steady 10 knots, so by the time a panicked message had got through to the captain to slow the ship and deploy the quicker, more mobile RIB, the turtle must have been a couple of miles away. We cut very dejected figures as we returned to the mother ship empty-handed, having failed to locate this reptilian needle in a haystack.

“I CAUGHT SIGHT OF A COUPLE OF FLIPPERS RAISED ABOVE A LARGE CARAPACE. I WAS SO GOBSMACKED, I LOST THE ABILITY TO SPEAK.” February 2018

Since entering service in 2003, this smart research vessel has been providing vital data about the health of the North-east Atlantic and Irish Sea. She provides a base on voyages of as long as a month for up to 22 scientists, who have an array of sophisticated monitoring equipment at their disposal, including trawl cameras, winches that can take sample cores from the seabed and a deep-water ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle). Crucially, the Celtic Explorerr is also designed to be ultra-quiet to minimise disturbance to fish or interference with her underwater recordings.

Together with her smaller sister ship, the RV Celtic Voyager, she has given us important insights into the state of fish stocks, including of cod and monkfish, has helped to map the seabed, investigated wrecks and explored thick seafloor sediments that have built up over thousands of years.

Marine turtles are extremely rare in our waters, though the leatherback is the most often seen here. The species’ sheer size and metabolically generated heat make it perfectly comfortable in the cold waters of the North Atlantic, roaming the high seas in search of jellyfish prey. Very occasionally, one of the turtles is photographed by a bemused tourist, probably unaware of its Endangered status.

The undoubted low population density of these true open-ocean wanderers means they will only ever be located totally by chance – and hopefully next time by a film crew better prepared than we were.

8 JULY: DICTATED BY THE WIND After a couple of days filming the scientists at work in inshore waters, we headed westward, back out towards the continental shelf. When filming on dry land, it must be at least 10 times easier to find wildlife when the sun is shining. At sea, however, the principal meteorological factor that dictates success tends to be the wind.

Zero on the ‘Sea State Code’ equates to an absence of even a breath of wind, which transforms the water into something akin to liquid mercury, in turn making it far simpler to spot anything breaking the surface – even BBC Wildlife

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SELF-DRIVE SAFARIS

MARINE LIFE from afar. But a sea state of 3 or more makes an emerging dorsal fin or whale’s blow far more challenging to pick out among the countless breaking waves. Due to the limited time the Celtic Explorerr would be spending along the continental shelf, we were desperate for conditions at these key locations to be as calm as possible. Today, with a sea state of around 6, we were faced with another prime opportunity lost.

Unable to pick out any cetaceans amongst the waves and swell, I contented myself with marvelling at the Manx shearwaters rapidly alternating black and then white as they skimmed above the waves. Suddenly, in among the flickering flock was another, slightly bulkier shearwater. water. It instead switched between blaack and black: sooty nomenal globetrotter shearwater! This phen breeds on a small num mber of islands in the South Atlantic and d South Pacific, before wandering far and wide for the rest of the year. A ‘sooty’ is guaranteed to brighteen up any birder’s day, including g mine.

After several days of rough weather, when we saw w

Making waves: a Risso’s dolphin breaches. The species’ white markings come from tussles.

little of note beyond a single minke whale, common dolphins and the ever-present fulmars and gannets, the wind finally was beginning to relent as we steamed out once again to thee continental shelf edge. Would this be the mom ment when conditions and location happily coiincided?

12 JULY: THE BIG ONE As we head ded west, the flattening seas enabled uss to pick out half-a-dozen hooked dorsal finss coming our way. Even from a conssiderable distance, it was obvious th hey were too large for commons,

and the animals’ pace seemed too leisurely for bottlenose. They came closer. Finally, we could see pale backs as they surfaced – a tell-tale identification feature of a much more unusual dolphin.

Risso’s dolphins start life grey, but their proclivity for tussling with each other leads to many mature animals slowly turning white as a result of extensive scarring. Without warning, as the small pod passed by the ship, a couple of individuals leaped clear of the water, revealing an ivory hue and bulbous heads. For an instant, they looked more like beluga whales than battle-scarred dolphins.

A zero on the ‘Sea State’ code (still water) makes it easier to spot marine life.

Inset: a sooty shearwater brightened up Mike’s day.

Risso's: Sam Challenger; shearwater; Buiten-Beeld/Alamy; boat: Mike Dilger

February 2018

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Mike had his binoculars out (right) but luckily another crew member photographed the ‘flying’ thresher shark.

20 JUULY: FINISHING WITH A FLOURISH Two d days earlier, perfect conditions in the North h Minch had at one point produced no fewer than three minke whales around our ship, iin addition to Risso’s and common

Thresher & fin whale: Jo Thre John hn Power; P Dilger Di lger:: Sam S Challengerr

Buoyed B d by b the h Risso’s Ri ’ and d our proxxim imiity to the shelf, I decided to devote extra ef effort to my sea watching. Almost immediateely I was rewarded as a massive blow caug ghtt myy eye 2km away to port side. This was mu much taller than the humpback’s bushy blow w:: it resembled an 8m fluted flower vasee.

“Blow!” I yelled, following up with a shout s of “either blue or fin!”.

I was delighted and relieved in equal measure when Catherine, the other MM MO O, latched straight onto a second blow, wh hicch she suspected belonged to a fin whale. Al All

those hours spent staring at a seem minglly em mpty sea were recompensed in on one wo onderful moment. My delight att haaving found the second-largest an animaal on n the planet was soon replaced wi with an nxiety as to how we would get th hiss leeviathan on camera. Fortunately, y, we were ahead of schedule, so Captaain w n Dennis was only too happy to tak D ke a detour from our transect to “fo ollo ow tthat whale”.

Known as the ‘greyhound of the the oceans’, the 20m-plus fin whale iss o rrenowned for moving at a terrifi fic lick li kb beefore f vanishing. But after a nervou us 30 minuttes of constant scanning, we weree gifted d anotheer blow less than 100m in front of th the bow. A nod from cameraman Sam reveealed ed that he had indeed managed to film a co ouple le of blow ws, as well as the whale’s astonish hingly long b back and small, hooked dorsal fin.

d dolphins and thousands of lion’s mane jjellyfish. Today, however, as we approached Rathlin Island off the north-east coast of Ireland, the final leg of the expedition still had one o ne more m surprise in store.

Whiile staring out to sea with John, one of the fisheries scientists, we caught a o g glimps se of a big splash out of the corner of our respective eyes, some 200m away to starrboard. Another breach. A thresher shark! This remarkable shark has seldom been o observed in British and Irish waters.

But so o distinctive is the whip-like, upper lobe off a thresher’s tail fin that we knew its identitty even before it had splash-landed.

The sh hark deploys its unique hunting weapo on in a flick-like motion to stun any fish, before returning to devour them.

My g gear of choice for enjoying this improm mptu spectacle was my binoculars, but luckilyy John had selected his camera. And what a series of photos he managed to bag from th hat one moment of drama. A fitting finale tto our trip: The One Show wildlife wager had most definitely paid off.

MIKE DILGER is a nat natura uralis listt and a wildlife pre p senter for BBC One ne’s s The One Show.

Show His films of the Celtic Exp xplore err voyage are expected to air in January. + FIND OUT MORE Discov ver more about Ireland’s Marine Institute at www w.marine.ie and about cetaceans in Irish waters s at www.iwdg.ie

“ALL THOSE HOURS SPENT STARING AT A SEEMINGLY EMPTY SEA WERE RECOMPENSED IN ONE WONDERFUL MOMENT WHEN WE SAW A FIN WHALE BLOW. ”

“There she blows!” A fin whale was a highlight of Mike’s voyage. The species turns up off Ireland from July, and numbers peak in August–December,

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All photos by Roland Seitre/na Seitre/naturepl.com turepl.com

Photos by Roland Seitre

A MILLION ‘PRETTY BOYS’ When conditions are right, Australia’s wild budgerigar populations explode and form gigantic super-flocks – a far cry from a talking parakeet in a cage. Helen Pilcher investigates.

During times of drought land surface temperatures in the Australian outback can reach above 45°C. When this happens budgies form huge ocks to survive and search together for places with enough residual water to allow their food to grow.

BUDGIES

t first it was quiet. In the heart of the Australian outback, the waterhole lay silent and still; an undisturbed oasis in the vast expanse of scorched, terracotta earth. All around it the unforgiving desert stretched as far as the eye could see, peppered only with the occasional parched shrub or straggly coolabah tree. Then, as the sun began to rise, it appeared as if from nowhere.

In the distance, cutting through the early morning haze like a twisting gymnastics ribbon, a strange cloud rose and fell, twisted and turned, casting a series of sinuous silhouettes against the cloudless sky. Ever-changing, never still, the bizarre shape-shifter danced its way out of the distance towards the waterhole. As it came closer, the blue sky turned green, and the amorphous mass resolved into the tiny bodies of hundreds of thousands of colourful birds. They wheeled wildly, screeching chaotically. The collective beating of a million wings was almost deafening.

Sitting quietly near the water’s edge, naturalist and wildlife photographer Roland Seitre found himself immersed in one of nature’s most impressive and underappreciated spectacles; a super-flock of wild budgerigars.

“I was totally surrounded,” he says. “I was in the flock.

There were birds maybe a metre away from me, but they took no notice at all. The air was electric.”

When we picture budgies we tend to think not of wild

A

Above: males and females can be told apart by the colour of the cere (the fleshy covering at the base of the upper beak, surrounding the nostrils). In adult males it is blue and in females it is brown. Below right: budgies are highly intelligent birds that remember food and water locations and when to visit them.

“IT WAS THE MOST FANTASTIC NATURE SHOW I’VE EVER SEEN,” SAYS ROLAND. “A ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME EXPERIENCE.” 48

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birds but of captive companions. They are the world’s third most popular pet after dogs and cats, best known for chomping on cuttlefish ‘bones’, their cheeky, loquacious nature and their rhetorical enquiries, such as “Who’s a pretty boy then?” But this highly social species is native to Australia, where it can be found flying wild and free across most of the continent.

When we think of murmurations – those mesmerising displays of avian acrobatics – we tend to think, not of budgies, but of European starlings. Who knew that budgies can murmurate too?

SPECIAL SPECTACLE It is, perhaps, one of Australia’s best kept secrets. Indeed, most Australians have never heard of, much less seen, the he aerial antics of a budgie super-flock. With some flocks containing ontaining a million birds or more, you’d imagine they’d bee hard to miss. Yet Roland ound gatherings of this found ze frustratingly hard to size find. nd. One year, he received a tip-off from a local farmer in n Nullarbor, Southern Australia, ustralia, who told him about bout a super-flock that was visiting siting his waterhole twice a day. But by the time Roland rrived, both the cloud of birds arrived, and nd the water had evaporated.

With no idea where to go ext, Roland followed another next, p that led him to Western tip Australia, ustralia, where he finally took he photographs you see here. the February Feb F Fe ebru eb rrua ua u arry y 2018 20 20 201 0118

UV: Albert Lleal/Minden Pictures/FLPA

BUDGIE BLING As if budgies weren’t brightly coloured enough, certain parts of their body also reflect UV light and fluoresce in response to it. In the male, this includes the blue area around the nostrils (the cere), certain feathers around the throat, and the white downy chest plumage. With ultraviolet light making up 10 per cent of the sun’s rays, and budgie eyes containing special ultraviolet sensing cells, it means there’s a whole extra layer of budgie bling that humans just can’t see. Females are thought to use these cues as fitness signals to help guide mate choice.

suite of features that the small parakeet has evolved to o help it survive in one of the world’s most extreme eenvironments: the hot, dry deserts of central Australia.

When times are good and resources are plentiful, wild budgies live in much smaller groups of 10–50 w birds. During the day, when the mercury rises, they reest, preen and socialise with one another in the shade of the trees. They are most active during the early morning, when they set out in search of sustenance. m Th hey feed on the ground, picking fallen samphire seeds frrom the earth or standing on tip-toes to reach the seeeds of grasses or plants known as galvanised burrs.

Glow show: UV light helps budgies to attract a mate.

It was the culmination of a search that at spanned two decades, but it was worth it. “It was the most fantastic nature show I’ve ever seen,” Roland says, “a real once-ina-lifetime experience.” He sat with his camera as a superflock of around 500,000 budgies wheeled all around him.

The producers of BBC Two’s Wonders of the Monsoon, which aired in 2014, didn’t take quite so long to find and film a super-flock of their own, but they also reported that tracking it down was one of their toughest ever assignments. Part of the problem is that budgie murmurations don’t happen as predictably as their starling equivalent. During winter months, starlings murmurate at dusk before settling into large communal roosts. Although no guarantee of success, all a wouldbe spectator has to do is head to one of their favoured locations at sunset, and look up.

Australia is, however, 30 times larger than the UK, and its wild budgies lead a nomadic life. They have no fixed abodes, reliable roost sites or defined migratory routes. These behavioural adaptations are among a

GOING THE DISTANCE G Above: an Australian goshawk plucks an unfortunate victim from the crowd. A budgie buffet such as this is a rare chance to refuel during harsh drought conditions, and predators must grab the opportunity while it lasts.

Often small groups of budgies come together to plunder the same resource. So thousands of birds can pl sometimes be seen feeding in the same place, but this is not a super-flock – just a lot of hungry birds. Then, when the food is exhausted, the birds split back into their original parties and move on.

If they’re lucky, food will be found nearby. If not, the birds may be forced to travel thousands of kilometres in search of water and seeds. In summer, they often head north to catch the monsoons, only to return south in time for the winter rains. Indeed, one explanation of the budgerigar’s name is that it is derived from the Aboriginal word betcherrygah, or ‘good parakeet’, so-called because in the past the birds led thirsty native Australians to water.

Opportunistic breeders, budgies synchronise their nest building with the arrival of rain. Monogamous by nature, pairs build their nests in the nooks and crannies of trees and fence posts, and in tiny holes in the ground. Females take one to two days to produce a clutch of three to eight eggs, but incubation doesn’t start until the final egg is laid.

It’s a strategy favoured by all parrots, which leads to the BBC Wildlife

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Taking a quick dip: budgies may land on water for a couple of seconds to drink but can’t hang around because their plumage isn’t waterproof.

synchronous hatching of budgie chicks 18 days later. As a result, the similarly sized youngsters all consume food and grow at a broadly similar rate, meaning there are no runts and, in theory at least, they all have an equal shot at fledging.

It’s the female’s job to incubate the eggs while her partner goes off to feed then when he returns, the pair flit off to a nearby branch where the male regurgitates food for the hungry mother. This might be the ultimate display of devotion… if you like regurgitated food. Fortified and ready to feed her rapidly growing chicks, the female can then resume her maternal duties and, after six to eight weeks, the youngsters are ready to leave the nest.

BABY BOOM

temperature in the Australian outback can reach over 45°C (113°F). Grasses shrivel and die, and the only way budgies can survive is by sticking together. Small groups will merge, which in turn will morph with other groups to form progressively larger flocks, then search en masse for water and food. It’s in these conditions, perhaps after a bumper breeding season, that super-flocks form and the elusive emerald murmurations are seen.

One time, John witnessed a super-flock so big that it took 45 minutes to stream past. “It was mind-blowing,” he says.

“There is no other bird in Australia that flocks like this. They just kept coming.” Another time, he witnessed the bare branches of the Simpson Desert’s coolabah trees turn green overnight when a super-flock of a million or more budgies came to settle on them. “It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up,” he says.

With such large numbers of birds on the wing at once, it’s intriguing that they never seem to bump into one another mid-air. Biologist Mandyam Srinivasan from Australia’s Queensland Brain Institute and colleagues

If resources are plentiful, the pair won’t wait long before nesting again, and wild budgies have been known to produce up to five broods in a single season. Numbers can thus grow rapidly. John Young, senior ecologist for the Australian Wildlife Conservancy, who has more than 40 years’ experience in the field, estimates that a population of 20,000 budgies can swell to one of 2–3 million in as little as 12 months. “These are birds of boom and bust,” he tells me. “Last Wild budgies have two types of pigment year, it started raining molecule: eumelanin, which is black; in January and carried and psittacofulvin, which is yellow. When on until October. The their feathers are doused in sunlight, the budgie population eumelanin molecules reflect only the blue just exploded.” part of the spectrum, which then passes It makes sense through the yellow pigment layer to give for wild budgies to the wild budgie its characteristic green make hay when the colour. Through 150 years of selective sun shines – or eggs breeding, budgie enthusiasts have made when the rain falls – the most of 30-plus naturally occurring because, in their world, mutations in colour-related genes, to rainfall and therefore create a dazzling palette of budgies, in food are inherently shades varying from yellow to grey to unpredictable. Drought blue to purple. There are, however, no red is a perennial hazard, budgies as the birds lack the pigment that and when it comes controls that colour. the land surface

CAPTIVE COLOURS

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BBC Wildlife

Due to over a century of captive breeding, budgies can be a variety of colours.

BUDGIES

Above: budgie super-flocks can travel hundreds of kilometres to find standing water.

Left: although the size of flocks may change, bonded pairs always stay together.

particular budgie when the super-flock it flies into is able change direction so swiftly and seamlessly.

As Roland sat and watched them, the budgies seemed to land at the waterhole in wave after wave, with groups of birds taking it in turn to drink. As each bird departed, another was always ready to take its place. Some sipped from the water’s edge, while others touched down briefly on the surface to quench their thirst. “They can land on the water for one to two seconds,” Roland says. “Along with an unusual species of Australian pigeon called the flock bronzewing, they’re the only land birds I know that can do this.”

Budgie feathers, however, are not waterproof. So if a bird lingers on the water too long and is pushed under by an incomer, its plumage can become waterlogged and the bird struggles to take off. As they haul themselves onto dry land they are sitting ducks (pardon the pun) for the large monitor lizards called goannas, feral cats and Australian ravens that wait opportunistically on the shore to seize them.

Overall, this ‘collateral damage’ makes little difference to the size of the already swollen population. For wild budgies, when times are harsh, there really is safety in numbers. Nor are the birds thought to be suffering any ill-effects from climate change. Although the total wild population is unknown – it’s tricky to estimate because numbers fluctuate so wildly – the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) believes that the population as a whole is increasing.

Budgies have survived the harsh conditions of Australia’s outback for millions of years, and they’re not showing any signs of buckling now. It means that one of the continent’s best-kept and most spectacular secrets will be around for some time to come.

WILD BUDGIES HAVE TWO SET FLIGHT SPEEDS THAT THEY SWITCH BETWEEN ABRUPTLY. TOP SPEED IS SAVED FOR USE IN CLEAR, OPEN SPACES. have filmed budgies flying towards each other in a wind tunnel and found that, to avoid collision, the birds follow an unexpectedly simple rule. They always veer to the right.

Moreover, wild budgies appear have two set flight speeds that they switch between abruptly. They either fly fast, at around 9.44 metres/second, or slow, at a more leisurely 5.44 metres/second. Top speed is saved for use in clear, open spaces, while ‘second gear’ is reserved for cluttered environments. It’s a technique that Srinivasan thinks helps them to judge distance and avoid crashes.

SHAPE SHIFTERS By flying at the appropriate speed, and always swerving in the same direction, the budgies are able to orchestrate their amazing aerial displays without collision or catastrophe. But why do it? Surely there’s more to these manoeuvres than just the joy of flying or showing off?

Scientists think that the budgies perform their swirling murmurations in order to confuse the predators that are inevitably drawn to this enormous avian buffet. It is hard for a whistling kite or Australian goshawk, say, to target a February 2018

+ FIND OUT MORE Watch budgies in this BBC clip: www.bbc.co.uk/ programmes/ p028f7qv

HELEN PILCHER is a science writer. Her book Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-extinction (Bloomsbury Sigma, £16.99) is out now.

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AGENDA ii UNDERSTAND THE ISSUES | BE PART OF THE SOLUTION

ANALYSIS

AFTER LILLITH: WHAT NOW FOR BRINGING LYNX BACK TO BRITAIN? O ARE WE READY TO REINTRODUCE THIS KIND OF LARGE CARNIVORE? P60

The South Sandwich Islands are a nearly pristine marine environment – one island alone has half of all chinstrap penguins.

BLUE PLANET’S PENGUIN PICK-UP

THE HUGELY POPULAR NATURAL HISTORY PROGRAMME COULD BEQUEATH A SIGNIFICANT CONSERVATION LEGACY.

Jan Vermeer/Minden Pictures/FLPA

C

alls for one of the world’s largest ‘no-take zones’ to be created around the South Sandwich Islands – one of 14 of the UK’s Overseas Territories (OTs) – have gained significant impetus following the conclusion of Blue Planet II at the end of last year.

A coalition of conservation and environmental groups, under the banner of the Great British Oceans (GBO), says the legacy of the BBC series could be even greater than that.

It is pressing the British Government to protect some 4m km2 of ocean – an area larger than all of India – in territories including Ascension Island, St February 2018

Georgia together hold a quarter Helena and Tristan da Cunha, of all the world’s penguins.” all in the South Atlantic.

As BBC Wildlife went to press, But the South Sandwich 216 MPs had backed its calls Islands are regarded as the jewel for this to be declared a fully in the crown because they are protected marine reserve with all still a near-pristine environment, commercial activity according to Simon such as fishing and Reddy of the Pew fossil fuel extraction Bertarelli Ocean prohibited. As Legacy, one of the GBO envisaged, the reserve coalition partners.

South Georgia would cover 0.5m “They are so remote and the South km2, an area twice the and inhospitable, no Sandwich Islands are considered one one ever goes there,” size of the UK. of the world’s top he says. “One island The islands wildlife hotspots, alone is home to half (together with South home to 95 per cent the world’s chinstrap Georgia) were declared of all Antarctic fur seals and more than penguins, and the a Marine Protected half of all southern South Sandwich Area in 2012, with elephant seals.

Islands and South sustainable fishing

DID YOU KNOW?

permitted, but GBO wants the Government to go further.

The campaign was launched using #BackTheBlueBelt, and according to GBO, someone was tweeting about it every 1.8 seconds during the last episode of Blue Planet II. “We are leveraging Blue Planet to see this once-in-a-generation opportunity realised by making the biggest public noise possible, one our MPs can’t ignore,” GBO says. James Fair

+ FIND OUT MORE Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands: http://bit.ly/2D675I4

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UK RIVERS POLLUTION CRISIS

Owl: Simon Litten/FLPA; Caroline Lucas: Mark Thomas/Alamy; otter: Arterra/Getty

Monitoring carried out in 2016 found high levels of pesticides in our freshwater habitats.

Monitoring of 23 rivers in the UK has revealed massive contamination of our freshwater systems with the pesticides known as neonicotinoids.

The data was obtained by Buglife but not released by the Environment Agency, which carried out the work, or the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), which is responsible for policy.

Nearly 90 per cent of sites in Britain were contaminated with neonicotinoids, with eight rivers exceeding recommended levels.

The Waveney, on the NorfolkSuffolk border, and the Wensum

CONSERVATION ON

in Norfolk were the two most polluted rivers, probably because of the use of neonicotinoids on sugar beet, Buglife says.

“We have known there’s been a problem with neonicotinoids in our rivers since 2009,” says Buglife’s Matt Shardlow.

According to Shardlow, the use of these pesticides in arable fields is not the only problem – contamination coming from greenhouses and pets treated for flea control is also a big issue.

There is a glimmer of hope, Shardlow says. The River Ouse, in Bedfordshire – which is largely surrounded by fields used for oilseed rape – has low levels of pollution. The EU banned the use of neonicotinoids on flowering plants, such as rape, in 2013.

BARN OWL RESERVE E

BBC Wildlife

The value of a single black-backed oriole in Pennsylvania, in the US, has been calculated at $223,000 (£166,000) by a team of scientists lead by a Phd student from the University of New South Wales in Sydney.

That’s because the oriole was a vagrant, spotted some 5,000km from its usual home of Mexico in January 2017, and an estimated 1,800 birders came from the US and Canada to see it over 67 days, spending $3,000 a day on travel, food and accommodation.

Some birdwatchers contribute “significant time and financial resources” to viewing rare or vagrant birds, notes author Cory Callaghan in the journal, the Human Dimensions of Wildlife.

+ FIND OUT MORE Read Buglife’s report: http://bit.ly/2Bl3NTZ

This oriole was worth £166,000, say academics.

briefing

The Hawk and Owl Trust is looking to expand its Sculthorpe Moo or reserve in Norfolk after receiving grrant money to help it develop plans for the purchase of two new pa arcels of land. The reserve currently covers 18ha and is home to barn and tawny owls and breeding marsh m harriers in the summer.

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“This suggests if you stop using them, they stop coming down the river,” he says.

Neonicotinoids are highly toxic to aquatic insects such as mayflies, thereby impacting on both fish and birds.

The Environment Agency says it has not taken any action to reduce neonicotinoid pollution in England since the work was carried out. “We monitor for pesticides annually at 18 sites, and the data is issued to the EC, Defra and the Health & Safety Executive to inform policy decisions,” it says in a statement. James Fair

ORIOLE'S VAGRANT VALUE

`

A SCREECHING U-TURN AND A HUGE WIN FOR CAMPAIGNERS." The reac ction of Green MP Caroline Lucas to Michael Gove’s announc cement that the Government would pass legislation forcing m ministers to consider animal welfare and sentience in all new w policies. It followed political controversy when MPs rejected the same idea while considering an amendment put forward b

by Lucas to the EU Withdrawal (Brexit) Bill.

February 2018

Mayflies: Catalin Eremia/Shutterstock; oriole: Ricardo Medina/Shutterstock; hawfinch: Fernando Sanchez de Castro/Alamy

Most British rivers may now be contaminated with new pesticides, hitting freshwater species such as mayflies.

AGENDA NEWS Conditions both here and on the Continent brought an influx of hawfinches.

BEYOND BE THE

headlines h

SEPARATING FACT FROM FICTION

NATIONAL TRUST DETECTS ALL-YEAR SILLY SEASONS Weird weather impacting species in both positive and negative ways, Trust says.

Freak weather conditions and strange seasonal episodes contributed to some bizarre wildlife events in 2017, the National Trust has said.

On the plus side, the autumnal crop of berries, nuts and seeds (and a correspondingly poor return in mainland Europe) saw a huge influx of hawfinches to Britain, with flocks as large as 50 reported in some areas.

80%

Bluefin tuna were spotted off Cornwall, drawn back to UK shores after an absence of more than 50 years by returning herring and mackerel, while purple emperors were discovered at the Trust’s Sheringham Park, the first time they’ve been seen in Norfolk in 40 years.

On the minus side, a dry winter led to a lack of breeding pools for natterjack toads at Sandscale Haws, and autumnal storms contributed to a high mortality rate of grey seal pups in Wales and the south-west.

The proportion of voters who say pesticides that harm bees and other pollinators should be completely banned, according to a new poll. Environment secretary Michael Gove has recently committed the UK Government to further restrictions on the use of neonicotinoids.

GLAND TO MEET YOU

February 2018

What did you do?

A paper published in 2014 analysed two samples purported to be from Sorry, but yetis aren't real – and now yetis and claimed they we have the proof. actually came from a brown-polar bear hybrid, while the mountaineer to live on in the Himalayan Reinhold Messner, who was region and local folklore, as obsessed with unravelling similar myths do in many the identity of the yeti, had other cultures. Besides, previously suggested that even if there is no proof yetis were really bears. We for the existence of these looked at 24 samples from creatures, it is impossible both bears and creatures to completely rule out that claimed to be yetis. they live or have ever lived.

And, of course, people What did find? love mysteries!

We concluded that all the samples were indeed from Did your research reveal ursids, but none of them anything else? were polar bear hybrids.

Yes, we showed that We found they belonged Himalayan brown bears to Himalayan, Tibetan and appear to be from an ancient lineage that Eurasian brown bears and Asian black bears. may have been isolated from other brown bear So, the yeti is a myth? populations – including the Our results from this relatively close ones living research strongly suggest in the Tibetan Plateau – for that the belief in yetis has more than 600,000 years. its roots in biological facts So the Himalayan bears and is closely connected have special significance, to bears that still live in the and since their population region today. Personally, is dwindling, this suggests I have no doubt that the they should be of high existence of a primateconservation priority. like cryptic species in the DR CHARLOTTE LINDQVIST Himalayan-Tibetan region is is an associate professor of indeed a myth. biological sciences in the Is that it for yetis?

I’m sure they will continue

University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.

O Want to comment? Email wildlifeletters@immediate.co.uk

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Chronicle/Alamy

Otters in Britain have different odour dialects, according to new research carried out at Cardiff University’s School of Biosciences.

Otters use scent glands to communicate with each other, and the study suggests that individuals with different odour profiles might struggle to understand each other.

THE TRUTH IS OUT – DNA ANALYSIS OF 'YETI' PELTS HAS SHOWN THEY REALLY BELONG TO BROWN BEARS AND ASIAN BLACK BEARS, SAYS CHARLOTTE LINDQVIST.

AGENDA NEWS Q EXPERT BRIEFING

CONSERVATION

INSIGHT ADDER

BRITAIN’S ONLY VENOMOUS SNAKE IS DECLINING BUT INCREASED AWARENESS CAN TURN ITS FORTUNES AROUND, SAYS JIM FOSTER.

Adder: Jason Steel; map from Britain’s Reptiles and Amphibianss by Howard Inns (Princeton WILDGuides)

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hough adders appear to be widespread across Great Britain and are found from Cornwall to northeast Scotland, the truth is they are rare or absent in many areas of the country, and have disappeared entirely from whole counties, including Hertfordshire, Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire.

Globally, they have a huge range, and are found right across Europe and Asia, as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far east as Russia’s Pacific coast. They live in a variety of habitats, including heathland, acid and chalk grassland, open woodland, moorland, mire and coastal areas.

South-west Scotland and coastal South Wales have large areas of good adder habitat.

They require open areas receiving sunlight for basking, vegetation that provides shelter overnight and for winter hibernation and a healthy supply of prey, mainly small mammals (voles) and common

Adders have been recently recorded Within species’ range but few recent records No adders

lizards, and occasionally nestling birds and amphibians.

There are a number of reasons why adders are declining. Loss of habitat is one factor, but adder habitat also deteriorates where it is unmanaged because it becomes too shaded, and problems develop if it is overgrazed or subjected to extensive burning.

Disturbance, predation by cats and pheasants (the birds are known to kill young adders) and genetic impoverishment may all be issues too.

The situation can be turned around, but we need to act quickly. Greater awareness is needed (including in the conservation sector), plus better data on the factors affecting them.

Where habitat enhancement work is done – such as at the Amphibians and Reptile Conservation Trust’s Town Common reserve in Dorset – they do well. It would also help if negative public attitudes and misconceptions could be corrected.

`

ADDER HABITAT DETERIORATES WHERE IT IS UNMANAGED – IT BECOMES TOO SHADED.”

JIM FOSTER is the conservation director of the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust (ARC). ( )

+ FIND OUT MORE Xxxxxx

ARC adder fact file: www.arc-trust.org/adder

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Snake in the grass: the secretive nature of the adder and its camouflaged markings often means that it goes unnoticed.

February 2018

FACT FILE

ADDER

VIPERA BERUS

HABITAT Heathland, grassland, open woodland, moorland and coastal areas DIET Small mammals, lizards, nestling birds THREATS Loss of, and poorly managed, habitat; predation by non-native species; small, fragmented populations

!

February 2018

IUCN RED LIST STATUS

LEAST CONCERN

BBC Wildlife

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READER HOLIDAY

E XC LU S

IVE

Go on a w weekend ild long to beaut iful Slovenia !

Lake Cerknica provides a home for a huge range of species.

Brown bear extravaganza

Seek out brown bears in unspoilt Slovenia S with BBC Wildlife on this fantastic four-day trip.

MEET YOUR GUIDE

stay in a traditional guesthouse he Dinaric Alps region of Slovenia 25-28 will on the forest’s edge run by local is one of Europe’s great wilderness MAY naturalist Miha Mlakar, where you areas that has remained largely 2018 will enjoy delicious meals. unchanged for 50 years. This exclusive This carefully chosen region of BBC Wildlife four-day reader holiday takes Slovenia is renowned for its fascinating you to view the area’s thriving European karst landscape that offers a plethora of brown bear population from specially designed natural wonders to explore. A morning’s hides, just a short distance from where you birding could include a visit to Lake will be staying. Throughout the trip you will Cerknica, one of the largest lakes in Europe be accompanied by specialist guides and a that is dry for part of the year. This Wetland member of the BBC Wildlife staff. of International Importance provides There will be great opportunities to search habitat for 276 species of birds, including in the forests for impressive Ural owls and corncrakes and white-tailed eagles. an exciting range of woodpeckers (three-toed, On return to Ljubljana you will explore black, grey-headed and middle spotted) the remarkable Krizna Jama cave, where it’s with help from bird expert Domen Stanic. possible to see some endemic cave species After spending afternoons and evenings aand Ice Age fossils of cave bears. bear and bird watching you

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HIGHLIGHTS OF YOUR TRIP ● Observe European brown bears from purpose-built hides ● Discover one of Europe’s great wilderness areas ● Stay in a traditional guesthouse on the edge of the forest with meals included

The Dinaric Alps is home to Europe’s highest density of breeding Ural owls.

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● Travel with local naturalist Miha Mlakar, bird expert ˇ and Domen Stanic a member of the BBC Wildlife staff ● Find Ural owls and woodpeckers ● Explore the region’s karst landscape

MIHA MLAKAR Growing up on the edge of the forests of Sneznik inspired Miha to develop an interest in wildlife in the region.

He has been observing brown bears for many years using a network of viewing hides.

READER HOLIDAY TO SLOVENIA 25–28 MAY 2018 COST

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Not included: Drinks outside of mealtimes, tips, travel insurance and other items of a personal nature

O The full itinerary for this trip is available at www.discoverwildlife.com/reader-holiday/bears-slovenia

February 2018

AGENDA OPINION

Mark Carwardine’s 25

AT A GLANCE...

CORAL BLEACHING

WHAT IS CORAL? It may look like a plant but it is an animal, related to sea anemones. A tiny, soft-bodied creature called a ‘polyp’, it lives with thousands of other polyps to form a colony.

So-called hard coral polyps extract calcium carbonate from the seawater and use it to build exoskeletons to protect themselves. They build on the exoskeletons of their ancestors and, as the centuries pass, the coral reef slowly grows.

WHAT ABOUT THE FAMOUS ‘SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP’?

Reef-building corals would not survive without singlecelled algae living inside their tissues. In this remarkable symbiotic relationship, the coral provides the algae with a home and nutrients for photosynthesis (from its own metabolic waste) and, in return, the algae provides the coral with food (to supplement the food it scoops out of the seawater).

It is these extra nutrients that enable the coral to build reefs.

Jurgen Freund/naturepl.com

WHAT IS SO SPECIAL ABOUT CORAL REEFS? It would be hard to exaggerate their importance. Teeming with life, they support more species than any other marine environment and even rival rainforests in their biodiversity. They act as natural barriers, support fishing industries and communities, provide employment through tourism, and much more. Yet all the coral reefs in the world February 2018

together cover an area no bigger than France.

WHY ARE THEY UNDER THREAT? Coral reefs are fragile ecosystems. Major threats include pollution, fishing with cyanide and dynamite, overfishing, coastal development, collection for the pet and curio trades, coral mining for building materials and sedimentation. According to WWF, roughly one-quarter of coral reefs worldwide are already considered damaged beyond repair, and most of the rest are under serious threat.

WHAT ABOUT CORAL BLEACHING? The symbiotic algae are highly susceptible to changes in their environment – it doesn’t take much for them to stop producing food and die. Then they are ejected from the coral. If they go, so do their vibrant colours and all that’s left is the coral’s white skeleton. This is ‘coral bleaching’. Many environmental issues cause it, but the single biggest factor is rising sea temperatures due to global warming. Coral reefs are already operating very near to their upper limit of heat tolerance, so small rises of just 1–2ºC above the norm for a few weeks at a time is enough to cause bleaching.

HOW BAD IS THE PROBLEM? Very bad. Over the past 30 years bleaching has become

more frequent, more intense and more widespread, leading to massive die-offs around the world. As well as a shocking amount of regional bleaching, there have been three Global Bleaching Events – in 1998, 2010 and, most recently, June 2014 to May 2017. Experts predict that if greenhouse gas emissions are not drastically reduced, these events will become routine.

When corals expel the algae living in their tissues, they turn white.

SMALL ` RISES IN

TEMPERATURE FOR A FEW WEEKS AT A TIME IS ENOUGH TO CAUSE CORAL BLEACHING.”

MARK CARWARDINE is a frustrated and frank conservationist.

Every month he demystifies some of the most important issues affecting the world’s wildlife and assesses the organisations that protect it.

O Would you like to comment? Email wildlifeletters@ immediate.co.uk

HOW IS THE GREAT BARRIER REEF DOING? The Great Barrier Reef – the world’s largest living structure – has experienced its worst ever mass bleaching events in the past two years, and these are believed to have killed at least half the coral.

CAN CORAL REEFS RECOVER? Yes and no. The polyps can catch their own food and survive for a short time without the algae, but they ultimately die themselves if they can’t find replacements.

The problem is that they need time – full recovery can take as long as a decade. If the temperature is too high for too long, or it peaks too often, the chances of survival are slim. And, if the reefs die, everything else dies with them.

+ FIND OUT MORE National Ocean Service website: http://bit.ly/2zLZrDy

BBC Wildlife

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AGENDA ANALYSIS

An application to release six lynx into Kielder Forest, Northumberland, is being considered by Natural England.

Lillith the lynx escaped from captivity and ended up in a caravan park. Some experts dismiss claims that she was ever a public threat.

THE CASE W FOR THE MISSING LYNX THE ESCAPE OF A LYNX FROM A ZOO IN WEST WALES REVEALED HUGE DIVISIONS OVER OUR ATTITUDE TO LARGE CARNIVORES. HAS LILLITH SPOILED THE CASE FOR BRINGING PREDATORS BACK TO THE UK OR SHOWN WE ARE FINALLY READY TO J S FAIR. DEAL WITH THEM, ASKS JAMES 60

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hen a young female lynx escaped from Borth Wild Animal Kingdom in Mid Wales in late October, nobody could have foreseen the scale of the outrage that was unleashed.

First, it was the turn of local farmers when the carcasses of seven sheep were found in a field, suggesting Lillith had used her new-found freedom to practise her hunting skills.

Post mortems revealed the sheep had been killed by a single bite to the neck. Two had been partially eaten, but the other five were otherwise untouched, all suggesting a lynx – rather than feral dogs, as had also been mooted – was the culprit, claims the National Sheep Association (NSA).

“There cannot be a clearer warning of the damage lynx could do if they were released into the wild,” says Phil Stocker, chief executive of the NSA, an organisation resolutely opposed

to lynx reintroduction in any area of the UK. Lillith, it seems, had unwittingly scored an own goal, putting back the case for the reintroduction of her own species into the wild.

DANGER CAT After Borth zoo spent two weeks trying and failing to recapture Lillith, council officials decided she had to be destroyed because of the danger she posed to the public, which was described as having “increased to severe” after she took up residence in a caravan park. When this was carried out there was a backlash, especially on social media.

“Since the disgraceful slaughter of poor Lillith, lynx are back in the news,” reads one Facebook post. “Please support these guys to bring this beautiful cat back to the UK.” By “these guys”, the poster was referring to the Lynx UK Trust, which currently has an application being considered by February 2018

AGENDA ANALYSIS LYNX: GLOBAL RANGE AND NUMBERS

Confirmed lynx range

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Lilith: Borth Wild Animal Kingdom/PA; kielder: Getty

THERE CANNOT BE A CLEARER WARNING OF THE DAMAGE LYNX COULD DO IF RELEASED INTO THE WILD.” Natural England to reintroduce six lynx into Kielder Forest in Northumberland. The Trust’s Paul O’Donoghue believes the outcry over Lillith’s death has boosted its case for bringing the species back to Britain.

“People are aware that lynx are not big cats and are disgusted the council took the decision to kill this animal,” he says. “It has been inexperienced, poorly advised and out-of-step [with public opinion] in dealing with this issue.”

O’Donoghue maintains there was no evidence the sheep were the victims of a lynx attack, suggesting that for a single animal “to have killed seven sheep in one night is biologically unprecedented”.

Indeed, the Lynx UK Trust has consistently maintained that lynx are not a threat to livestock, saying evidence from mainland Europe suggests a single animal takes, on average, 0.4 sheep a year. “For our six February 2018

Possible lynx range

In general, the lower the population density in a country, the healthier the lynx population. Finland has the equal lowest number of people per km2 of any EU country and the highest number of lynx. Germany has a high population density and only a small, reintroduced lynx population. There are exceptions – Norway doesn’t have many lynx despite being sparsely populated. The UK has the highest population density of any EU country and – as yet – no wild lynx.

lynx, that’s 2.4 sheep a year,” O’Donoghue says. “No one can argue that’s a significant threat, particularly compared with background mortality rates.”

SERIAL KILLERS But John Linnell, a lynx expert who works for the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, says lynx are capable of “multiple killings” and could dispatch large numbers without eating them. His study of radio-collared lynx in northern Norway revealed one case of eight sheep being killed by one animal in a single incident.

Lynx can also be major predators of sheep over a

Finland

2340-2610 16

Germany

23 232

Romania

1200-1500 84

France

108 116

Sweden

1400-1900 22

Human population per km 2

Norway

384-408 16

Total lynx population

UK

271 0

500

1000

1500

prolonged period. A separate study, carried out in the south of Norway, found (during the summer) sheep represented 64 per cent of ungulates killed by 24 lynx monitored over a fiveyear period. (Ungulates – sheep, goats, moose, red deer, roe deer and reindeer – represented 80 per cent of their kills, with beavers, hares, squirrels, foxes and grouse and other birds the other 20 per cent.) Males and females with kittens were more likely to target sheep. One individual was responsible for 54 kills in a 100-day perod.

“Whether this lynx really killed those sheep [in Wales] is not the main issue,” Linnell

2000

2500

3000

adds. “What is important is that seven sheep were found dead, and somebody believes they were killed by a lynx. If lynx are reintroduced to the UK, this type of event will be repeated again and again within a radius of hundreds of kilometres of the release site.”

These incidents will need to be responded to rapidly, and will require trained staff who can differentiate lynx kills from other predator kills and then communicate their findings to sheep farmers, the media and the public. “Who will do this?” he asks. “Who has the necessary funding, trust, skills and networks?”

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AGENDA ANALYSIS The extent to which lynx will attack and kill sheep is disputed by experts.

Reducing roe deer numbers and helping woodland regeneration would be one benefit of bringing back lynx.

PREDATORS ON THE PROWL When carnivores such as lynx and wolves escape from zoos, there’s rarely a happy outcome.

BORTH ZOO Lillith the lynx was on the run for 12 days after getting out.

Attempts to recapture her failed, and she was shot for public safety reasons.

wolf: Klein & Hubert/NPL(captive); deer: Getty; sheep: viltkamera.nina.no

DARTMOOR ZOO A male lynx spent three weeks in the wild and killed four sheep in 2016, but was recaptured after being lured into a trap with a piece of veal.

COLCHESTER ZOO Five timber wolves escaped from Colchester Zoo in November 2013, and three of them were shot later that day.

One returned to its enclosure, the other was darted.

COTSWOLD WILDLIFE PARK A female wolf got out one morning in July 2017.

Park staff ff said she was out of range to tranquilise, so she was shot later that day.

62 6 2

BB B BBC BC BC W Wiildl ld ld dllife iiffe fe

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LYNX WERE RETURNED TO THE HARZ MOUNTAINS IN GERMANY AND LEARNED TO KILL VERY FAST.” There’s also no question, he adds, a zoo animal could have been responsible. They were used in a reintroduction in the Harz Mountains in Germany, and “learned to kill very fast”.

TOURISM CONCERN According to NSA press officer Hannah Park, reintroducing lynx to Kielder would have a detrimental impact because of the fear of losing livestock to them. Farmers would move away from sheep, leading to a loss, or degradation, of the environment that attracts tourists to the area. The NSA is sceptical of the line that lynx can aid tourism because they are so elusive.

“There’s only so many times people will go to an area to look for an animal they cannot see,” she says.

Many conservationists will cheer the prospect of landscapes with fewer sheep. Of all livestock, they arguably have the most detrimental effect on biodiversity, partly because of the density with which they are farmed and partly because of the way they feed, closely

cropping i the th sward, d leaving l i little variation in plant life.

But the Scottish Wildlife Trust, which supports bringing lynx back to Scotland, does not use this to justify its stance.

Instead, it argues there is both a “moral and ecological imperative for reintroducing [lost] species” because they can be a cost-effective way of managing ecosystems and increasing their robustness. Not all predators would be suitable – there is appropriate habitat for lynx, the Trust argues, but not for wolves or bears. Lynx would have a beneficial impact by reducing roe deer numbers, thereby helping tree and scrub regeneration.

The Trust’s director of conservation, Susan Davies, says she hopes to see a licence application put forward within the next 10 years, probably from a coalition of organisations that includes landowners and communities, as well as environmental groups.

FAKE NEWS “I don’t think [the escape and subsequent shooting of Lillith] has set reintroduction back,” she says. “It shows just how much work needs to be done in terms of increasing understanding and building consensus. A lot of misinformation [came out] about what lynx can and will do.”

Whatever Wh t happens h with ith the Lynx UK Trust’s Kielder application – and the word is that environment secretary Michael Gove supports the idea of doing a trial lynx reintroduction somewhere – even some conservationists believe releases of these large carnivores should not be a priority in Britain right now.

“I don’t think, despite the hype, we are ready for lynx,” says Derek Gow, who has been at the forefront of bringing beavers back to Britain. “There is no evidence that the Lynx Trust has built any bridges with anyone else, and a complete climate of opposition to the organisation’s approach to this application – though not its principal aims – currently exists.

There is support in the north from tourist-based businesses for the Kielder proposal, but a unanimous lack of support from even the reasonable elements of the farming community.”

Besides, Gow adds, there’s a far more interesting reintroduction idea he’d like to get involved with – bringing wildcats back to England. But that’s another story...

+ FIND OUT MORE Lynx UK Trust’s trial reintroduction plans: www. lynxuk.org/publications

February 2018

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Southern giant petrel chicks are raised with a spectacular sea view.

After edging, juveniles spend their ďŹ rst few years on an extensive circumnavigation of the Southern Ocean.

Photos by Jamie Coleman

VULTURES of the WAVES Although not the prettiest birds to grace the planet, if you ever get the chance to see giant petrels in the wild they will command your respect like few others, says research scientist Jamie Coleman.

GIANT PETRELS

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hey may not be pretty but they most definitely are beautiful in their own uncompromising way. There is nothing quite like watching the coming together of hundreds of these majestic giants at a recently deceased corpse. With piranha-like efficiency, they can tear hundreds of kilograms of flesh from an elephant seal carcass in hours, with powerful tube-nosed bills strong enough to crack open a seal skull. Plunging deep into the remains, the heads and necks of these usually exquisitely preened birds quickly become coated with bright red blood and gore. It’s not a sight for the squeamish!

Equally striking is the competition for the optimal place at the feast. The birds posture with wings spread and tails fanned, moving their heads from side to side while emitting their best war songs – chillingly primitive guttural cries – to put off challengers. If this deterrent is unsuccessful the birds clash chest to chest, locking bills and slapping wings until one contender concedes. It’s a spectacular display of competitive carnage from this ultimate scavenger.

Yet, in stark contrast to this savage behaviour, these birds are resplendent in flight as they seem to follow ships effortlessly across the Southern Ocean. “Petrels are true masters of the waves with the ability to manoeuvre

FEW EXPERIENCES ARE AS HAUNTING AS BEING CAST INTO THE SHADOW OF THEIR MAGNIFICENT 2M WINGSPAN.

and thrive in some of the most inhospitable le environments of the world,” says ornithologist ogist David Steel. “It’s no coincidence that petrels ls are most numerous in latitudes with persistent winds. They make flying in thee strongest of weather look easy, as wing adaptations daptations let them exploit the wind’s energy and the he air currents that develop over steep ocean waves. Thiss allows them to travel long distances with little waste of energy. These seabirds are true pelagic species and their ir rather short broad tails and often broad-tipped wings give them the benefits of dynamic flight.”

ADMIRE FROM AFAR Most human encounters with these prehistoric-looking storic-looking birds are from a distance and it is easy to under-appreciate their true size. Side by side, they would comfortably mfortably stand taller than a human adult’s knee height. Few ew experiences are as haunting as being cast into the shadow dow of their magnificent 2m wingspan as you walk along ng a beach with them soaring over your head. The ghostly ly ‘whoosh’ sounds that accompany their flight only adds to the supernatural atmosphere.

The Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands where giant petrels breed lack native mammalian predators, so these birds have fulfilled the twin roles of top predator and top scavenger. I am currently living and working on one of these sub-Antarctic islands, South Georgia, roughly 1,390km south-east of the Falklands and 2,150km from South America. xtreme As a product of its isolated nature and extreme conditions, South Georgia has no permanent ent human residents. Instead, it boasts a conveyor belt of British

Above: giant petrels are similar in size to many albatrosses, but have narrower, shorter wings.

Below: when rearing chicks, the petrels rely heavily on penguin and seal colonies as a source of food.

Main image: Water clarity was excellent, showing in great detail this humpback. Right: Richard snorkels close to a surfacing whale.

WHAT MAKES THEIR BILL SO SPECIAL?

Feeding: Otto Plantema/Minden Pictures/FLPA; bill: David Osborn/Alamy

Giant petrels belong to an order of seabirds known as Procellariiformes. The common name that encompasses ses these flecting their birds is ‘tubenose’, reflecting prominent nostrils that at sit on the upper bill. These nasall appendages emely sensitive give the birds an extremely ng them to sense of smell, enabling locate food sources and nd breeding colonies across large distances. els are The bills of giant petrels tes, made up of horny plates, uis like the maxillary unguis at the tip, that helps e hold slippery food. The s northern giant petrels

of South Georgia are distinguished by the reddish hue of this maxillary unguis, while the southern species (pictured) has a greenish tinge.

Antarctic Survey staff, who inhabit the island for a year at a stretch, studying fisheries and Antarctic ecosystems. It is my responsibility to monitor the success of the higher predators on the island, including Antarctic fur seals, wandering albatrosses, gentoo penguins and giant petrels.

Throughout the southern summer, I spend most of my time out in the field collecting data on their colonies and monitoring their health. Throughout the winter, when the petrels have departed to their wintering grounds, my focus concentrates on the Antarctic fur seals.

My particular work with giant petrels looks at their reproductive success. I monitor the birds from when the first adults arrive at the colonies until the last chick fledges.

I record when birds initiate breeding, how many eggs hatch and when, and the size and weight of the chicks before they fledge. Good feeding by the adults results in fat chicks, February 2018

Clockwise from top: two giant petrels fight over food; the birds raise their chicks on bare or grassy ground in colonies; feeding on carcasses is a messy business; giant petrels are largely scavengers.

which have a higher survival rate than lighter chicks. This sort of study gives a reasonably accurate impression of how healthy the ecosystem is, since any large-scale shifts lower down the food chain will sooner or later affect the keystone predators, whether in a positive or negative way.

We have both species of giant petrel – southern and northern – breeding on the island. As their unimaginative names suggest, each has a geographically distinct breeding range, and they overlap in South Georgia. Northerners arrive in September, just in time for the beginning of the elephant seal breeding season. Their southern cousins appear later, just before the Antarctic fur seals breed and when penguin chicks provide prey and scavenging opportunities. The behaviour of giant petrels differs between each peninsula on the island, depending on the local food resources, since different birds in different areas specialise in different prey. And in seasons where other species fail or struggle, these birds prosper owing to increased scavenging opportunities.

Giant petrels will also feed on the wing, often with skilled precision to scoop morsels and scraps from the surface of the sea, making them particularly susceptible to the accidental ingestion of marine litter. “It’s estimated that as BBC Wildlife

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IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE THOUSANDS OF PETRELS ARE KILLED BY HOOKS ON LONGLINES.

thousands of petrels and albatrosses are needlessly killed by longline fishing fleets. Longlining is a method in which fishing lines with thousands of baited hooks attached are set over the side of a ship into the water column and left to catch targeted prey over a period of time. This practice is associated with the bycatch of many seabirds as well as nontarget fish species: the baited hooks make very appetisinglooking meals for birds, which get hooked and dragged beneath the surface where they drown.

A GLOBAL PROBLEM many as 90 per cent of seabirds have man-made items, such as balloons, in their stomachs,” says David Steel.

Both species are largely monogamous. They lay a single egg every year, which is incubated for two months. Chicks are born white-grey and downy, but before they fledge at four months old they moult this down and replace it with darker feathers. As they age, most of them gradually become paler. After hatching, the chick will be guarded by one parent while its mate finds food, but they grow rapidly and within only three to four weeks both adults can head out to forage, leaving the chick to fend for itself – very ably.

From afar the chicks may look vulnerable – but this is by no means the case. Most petrels create an energy-rich oily substance as a biproduct of digestion, which they are able to store for periods when without food. However, if required, this disgustingly pungent glop can be ejected over large distances to ward off an attack from the likes of a skua. It may not sound like much of a weapon, but the oil binds to feathers and can cause permanent damage. It also binds to clothing and skin, as I know to my cost.

Sadly, smelly glop is no defence against the impact of the fishing industry. In the southern hemisphere many tens of 68

BBC Wildlife

The good news is that in South Georgian waters, with the help of the Convention for Conservation of Antarctic Top: with their Marine Living Resources, alternative fishing methods meat-cleaver have been put in place to reduce bycatch. These have been bills, giant petrels a great success, reducing the incidental death of seabirds have presence. from thousands every year in the late 1990s to almost Above: there are two colour nil currently. Other fisheries are now being encouraged morphs, white to introduce these simple modifications. Unfortunately, and dark. Young however, many pelagic seabirds have massive ranges and of the dark so they simply end up in fishing areas that remain less morph, as here, well-policed and where bycatch is still too high. are sooty black.

Hopefully we’ll find a way to help giant petrels thrive across the Southern Ocean for centuries to come. In the meantime, I feel privileged to get up close and personal with these amazing – if somewhat gruesome – birds. After a day in the field with them I’ve often returned + FIND OUT MORE to base bleeding from multiple peck wounds and smelling like nothing on Earth, and several O South Georgia Heritage Trust: www.sght.org washes later may still be asked to sit at a table O Read Jamie’s blog post on my own for dinner. But it’s worth it. about South Georgia: www. bas.ac.uk/blogpost/life-onthe-sub-antarctic-island-ofsouth-georgia

JAMIE COLEMAN is a research scientist working in South Georgia; www.jctravelography.co.uk February 2018

Mark Carwardine/naturepl.com

Ugandan kob (Kobus kob thomasi) are mainly found in the west and northwest of Uganda, including Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls National Parks. Kidepo National Park didn’t have a population until recently.

The kob antelope is an icon in Uganda, featuring on the country’s coat-of-arms.

Mark Eveleigh investigates a project to translocate over 100 into a breathtakingly beautiful yet little-visited East African wilderness.

HOME ON THE

RANGE

Mark Eveleigh x3; sparring: Jabruson/naturepl.com; lioness: Adri de Visser/Minden Pictures/FLPA

A

s we watch a mixed herd of defassa waterbuck and newly arrived Ugandan kob grazing near a waterhole, Corrie Brits, manager at Apoka Safari Lodge, comments drily: “It seems that kob are not yet on the menu as far as the lions are concerned.”

The rock outcrop at Apoka was once a meeting place for the ancient Ik tribe, who roamed these valleys long before the nearby borders of Kenya and South Sudan were even imagined, and who now live in the nearby mountains. Even farther back in time, before the Ik arrived, this rock was a prime lookout point for local lion prides, and so it persists today. Neither the presence of tribesmen nor of tourists seems to worry the cats unduly.

As I stepped out of my stilted bungalow early in the morning, the first thing I noticed was a series of massive pugmarks crossing the flowerbeds by my back door.

The lions of Kidepo Valley National Park are known for the power that equips them to hunt the estimated 13,000 buffalo that roam here. At 1,442km2, the park covers an area that’s only slightly smaller than Greater London.

While traffic jams are unlikely (in fact, it’s rare to see another vehicle), Uganda’s secret northern wilderness can still get spectacularly congested: while exploring the previous afternoon it had taken us more than an hour to ease our Land Cruiser through a vast herd of buffalo.

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“WITH ITS SOARING MOUNTAINS AND GREAT SWEEPING VALLEYS, KIDEPO IS PERHAPS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PARK IN EAST AFRICA.” Above: Ugandan kob inhabit open and wooded savanna with access to water, as well as riverine grasslands. The antelopes from Muchison were released into the most protected and visible part of Kidepo.

and tough old askaris (guards) protected the flanks of a herd that was big enough to trample a swathe as wide as an airstrip. Even for the 120-strong lion population, divided into prides numbering up to a dozen individuals, tangling with adversaries like this would be a formidable challenge. Zebra, too, form part of the lions’ diets. But the huge numbers of waterbuck are rarely hunted, since the cats find their meat unpalatable, and the common Jackson’s hartebeest are usually too fast to catch. Kob, on the other hand, might make a tasty meal.

RECENT ARRIVALS With its soaring mountains and great sweeping valleys, Kidepo is perhaps the most beautiful park in East Africa.

It is Uganda’s third largest, after Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls. But, while Murchison is overpopulated with about 40,000 Ugandan kob, Kidepo has had none at all, until recently that is.

“In 2013, two Ugandan kob inexplicably appeared in the valley,” recalls Johnson Augustine Masereka, manager of February 2018

KOB ANTELOPE Male Ugandan kob spar at a lek to impress females.

STRUTTING THEIR STUFF Lekking is not just for birds: male kob antelopes use group displays to set up territory and attract a mate.

Above: Philip Akorongimoe (right) has been a ranger in Kidepo for 17 years and has become a friend of the Ik tribe. Right: ‘Walter’ the kob hangs out with waterbucks for protection.

Below: this lioness and kob made headlines in 2012 as the big cat seemed to ‘adopt’ the youngster.

On the face of it, kob appear to be a fairly typical African antelope – elegant, horned, agile – but one thing sets them apart from many of their cousins: they gather to lek. Usually associated with grouse, waders and other birds, lekking is a territorial mating strategy where males gather in a particular area to impress females.

The kob assemble in clusters of circular territories, each 10–15m in diameter, within a larger breeding area. Those at the centre are prime real estate and the bucks jostle for these best positions,

displaying their fitness with parallel walks and head shaking. Then, if challenged by another male for the territory, they will test their horns against the intruder in an effort to establish superiority. If two males are equally matched these showdowns may escalate into full-blown horn-locked fighting, but more often than not posturing is sufficient.

Once a hierarchy been established, females then mate with just a few of the most dominant males, ensuring their offspring inherit the strongest genes.

Kidepo Valley Conservation Area. “Most likely they’d come from the South Sudan section of Kidepo Valley.”

Kob are found in a range that extends right across sub-Saharan Africa, from Senegal east to Sudan and southwards through Uganda into the Congo.

Their habitat is threatened by human expansion and agriculture and they are now regionally extinct in Kenya and Tanzania. The newly arrived pair seemed to do well in Kidepo Valley, however, and before long there was a herd of 10. This was taken as a sign that Kidepo would be a favourable habitat for the species. In May 2017, the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) formed a team of rangers, naturalists and veterinarians to begin a carefully coordinated translocation process from a remote section of Murchison to Kidepo.

Moses Osuna, a Kidepo local from the pastoralist Dodoth tribe, was involved in the round-up as a UWA driver. “We used six off-road vehicles to herd the animals into a six-foot tall boma,” he recalls. “Some days we only caught a few, but once we caught more than 20. Mostly February 2018

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Mark Eveleigh x4; kob: Eric Baccega/naturepl.com

THE EARLY SIGNS ARE PROMISING, AND DISCUSSIONS ARE ALREADY UNDERWAY FOR THE TRANSLOCATION OF MORE KOB. it was a slow and cautious process, but occasionally there were sudden bursts of unexpected excitement that gave me a new respect for what kob are capable of.”

Osuna will never forget how one kob ewe jumped right over a pickup truck and a big male cleared the six-foot boma wall, landing with a glancing blow against the driver’s shoulder but miraculously ulously leaving him unhurt.

The round-up took about three hree weeks and then finally the animals were re loaded into a truck for the 440km drive to o Kidepo. Even then there were complications ons when some of the males started to fight.. Osuna and his colleagues were forced to wrestle restle with them to pull rubber piping over their heir rapier horns ng each other. to prevent them from hurting se of the 26 rams The location for the release d an ideal habitat in and 86 ewes was crucial and d and visible – part of the central – most protected hosen.

Kidepo National Park was chosen. th very specific security “We’re a border park with 74

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Above: female kob may have young twice a year so a herd can grow quickly. Below: lions aren’t a threat to the new arrivals… yet.

problems – sharing a frontier with South Sudan and northern Kenya’s Turkana district,” says chief warden Masereka. “But we have the support of the Ugandan People’s Defence Force to control armed dissidents in the area and we have rangers at 11 outposts. We have more than adequate manpower, and since disarmament in the Karamojong area in around 2008–2009 we have had no security issues and little poaching in the park.”

Kidepo’s Narus Valley gets its name from a local Karamojong word meaning ‘muddy’ and it is the floodplains here that help to guarantee a sustainable habitat for grazers even when the bigger Kidepo Valley has dried out completely. Kob are highly dependent on water – though one subspecies, the white-eared kob, undertakes long-distance migrations through the Sudd region (one or two have even turned up in Kidepo), kob usually try to stay close to water.

So it is expected that Narus Valley will remain their preferred range, where they will be able to benefit from the trampling and clearing effect of vast buffalo herds and a healthy population of about 700 elephants.

Because the kob were taken ffrom a particularly remote section of Murchison Falls Nati National Park, the herd was an unhabituated one. Having b been introduced into a habitat that is unfamiliar to th them, the new Kidepo inhabitants are unusually shy. S So they’re only slowly becoming used to wildlife-w wildlife-watching vehicles. On the other hand, they have arr arrived from a habitat where they were the preferred p prey of big cats and so are familiar with strategies for avoiding predators.

With luck the kob popu population will have risen to a healthy and sustai sustainable figure before the lions realise there’s n now an alternative to the dangerous buffalo buffal on offer.

One of the ew ewes that was relocated February 2018

KOB ANTELOPE Three Endangered Rothschild’s giraffes were relocated to Kidepo in 2015.

REVITALISING UGANDA’S NORTHERN WILDERNESS Kidepo Valley National Park is home to 500 bird species and 86 mammals (28 of which can be found nowhere else in Uganda, including the cheetah, caracal, lesser kudu, mountain reedbuck and Guenther’s dik-dik). Together with the largest buffalo population of any park in Africa, there’s an estimated 700 elephants and about 120 lions.

Kidepo has been the scene of several

Right: predation of buffalo ff by lions could potentially be eased now the kob have turned up.

Below: Johnson Augustine Masereka recalls when the antelopes first appeared in the valley.

successful relocation efforts. Three Endangered Rothschild’s giraffes were relocated here in 2015, bringing the total herd in the park to 35; 11 eland were brought here from Lake Mburu in 2004, since when the herd has swelled to almost 50-strong; and, most recently, the 112 Ugandan kob arrived. Now there are even discussions about relocating black rhino from Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary.

from Murchison must have been pregnant because within a month the ‘refugees’ had dropped their first young. Kob can breed twice a year and within three more months there were 25 babies in the herd.

The early signs are promising, and discussions are already underway for the translocation of more kob from Murchison. “We’re still monitoring predation pressure on the herd in Kidepo,” says UWA executive director Dr Andrew Seguya. “We’re in the planning stages and possibly by mid-2018 we’ll be ready to transport more.”

All well and good, but nature has shown time and again that the most well-meaning intervention can lead to unforeseen ripple effects. The arrival of kob on the menu could turn out to be good news for Kidepo’s buffalo, but if kob numbers and accessibility elevate them to the position of preferred lion prey then there’s a chance that the already massive buffalo population could be left with virtually no predation pressure and might grow unchecked.

Uganda Wildlife Authority ranger Philip Akorongimoe sees little reason for worry, though. “We now have about 13,000 buffalo in the park and the majority roam Narus Valley,” he says. “Numbers could rise above 20,000 and it would still be fine as long as they spread their range into Kidepo Valley as well.”

SMELLY DETERRENT For the time being, though, the Kidepo lions don’t seem to know what to make of the new arrivals. Moreover, at least one of the kob has demonstrated a seemingly cunning survival strategy.

A lone male kob – the rangers call him Walter – who damaged his leg, perhaps during the relocation, now walks with a pronounced limp. He also seems to have developed something of an identity crisis because he February 2018

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KOB ANTELOPE HOW TO VISIT KIDEPO NATIONAL PARK, UGANDA WHEN TO GO The best wildlife viewing months are during the dry seasons: June– September and December–February.

At these times, the only permanent water source is in the Narus Valley, making it a prime wildlife watching location. The rainy season peaks in March–May, when travel can be difficult.

TOUR OPERATORS Natural World Safaris (www. naturalworldsafaris.com) offers a five-night ‘Kidepo by air Safari’, priced from £2,310 per person sharing.

Great Lakes Safaris (www. greatlakessafaris.com) offers a four-night Kidepo safari from £1,367 with road transfers. Locally based Buffalo Safari Camps (www. buffalosafaricamps.com) run a sevenday Murchison Falls and Kidepo Valley tour with 4x4 transport from £742.

FURTHER INFORMATION Kidepo National Park is 840km from Kampala, a full day’s drive away, or there is a light aircraft strip at Akopa.

For more information on Kidepo, see www.safaribookings.com/tours/ kidepo and www.visituganda.com.

The sedentary nature of grazing kob and their tendency to gather in open areas make them vulnerable to hunting. But at Kidepo they are protected.

MISSED MEAL “For now, the lions simply don’t know what these new animals are,” smiles Corrie Brits. “They’ve never seen or tasted them before. So hopefully the kob population will be well established before the cats figure out just how delicious kob could be to the lion palate.”

In a village high on the mountain slopes, near the

“FOR NOW, THE LIONS SIMPLY DON’T KNOW WHAT THESE NEW ANIMALS ARE. THEY’VE NEVER SEEN OR TASTED THEM BEFORE.” February 2018

2,749m peak of Mount Morungole, I met an elder of the Ik tribe by the name of Mzee Mateus Yeya Acok. The lions might be confused, but I wondered if he would recognise the new arrivals. Peering head-to-head into the back of my camera with Mzee Mateus, I asked him to look at several random animals from the valleys below and give me their Ik names…

“Aha. We call that one dorok,” he exclaimed when I flicked to an image of a kob ram.

“I remember my grandfather’s stories about hunting those,” confirmed 60-year-old Mzee Hillary when I showed him the picture. “Of course, that was before Kidepo became a national park and we had to stop hunting and moved up here onto the mountain.”

So it seems that the Kidepo kob are not recent colonists of a new range. They might actually be the first arrivals in a long overdue homecoming.

MARK EVELEIGH is a writer and photographer: www.markeveleigh.com. His visit to Kidepo Valley National Park, Uganda, was hosted by Natural World Safaris: www.naturalworldsafaris.com BBC Wildlife

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Ariadne Van Zandbergen/Alamy

hangs out with the herd of waterbuck around Apoka Safari Lodge. But perhaps he knows it’s an ideal form of camouflage, since the fur of a waterbuck has an oily excretion that taints the meat and that’s what makes it unpopular with lions. The lodge often seems to be almost over-run with lions, yet even with his obvious mobility problem Walter has so far avoided becoming the first Kidepo kob victim of a lion attack.

A red squirrel sits in a lichen- and snowcovered oak tree in December. Scotland is home to about 120,000 red squirrels, 75 per cent of the total UK population.

Contrary to popular myth, these hardy mammals do not hibernate. In the autumn they store surplus food either just below the ground or in the gaps of tree trunks to feed on in the colder months.

P H OTO STO RY

SEEING REDS

Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands is a stronghold for our native red squirrels. Neil McIntyre has visited its Caledonian forest throughout the seasons to photograph the behaviour of these lively little crowd-pleasers.

February 2018

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All photos by Neil McIntyre/SCOTLAND: The Big Picture/naturepl.com

TOP Red squirrels inhabit both pine forest (pictured) and broadleaved woodland. Like grey squirrels, they make roughly spherical nests called dreys, and each individual may use several dreys within its home range.

Dreys tend to be built from twigs 6m above the ground in holes in trees or set between trunks and branches. They are snugly lined with moss and grass.

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ABOVE LEFT Stripped bark is collected as bedding material for a drey. Red squirrels mate between January and March and have litters of three to four kittens, which are born in the drey following a gestation period of 36 to 42 days. Females can have two litters a year.

ABOVE Often the only sign of red squirrels in winter is their prints in the snow. On the ground they move in jumps like a rabbit, placing their front feet ďŹ rst, and then the hind feet in front of them.

Pawprints are 3–4cm long, and about 2cm wide.

February 2018

PHOTO STO RY

LEFT In winter red squirrels hunt for food buried in the snow. Their varied diet consists of spruce and pine seeds, hazelnuts, acorns, berries, fungi, bark and sap tissue. In spring and summer, they will also take insects and occasionally birds’ eggs and young.

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PHOTO STO RY

ABOVE Spring is in the air for this red squirrel as it leaps between tree stumps in March. The species can jump more than 2m and has double-jointed ankles that allow it to climb down trees head-ďŹ rst.

The rodent’s bushy tail is an aerofoil that also provides balance and warmth.

RIGHT Mineral-rich deer antlers provide an extra source of calcium and phosphorus for squirrels, as well as helping them to sharpen and trim their incisors. This antler, cast off by a red deer, is covered in teeth marks from the gnawing rodents.

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ABOVE During the summer months red squirrels lose their characteristic ear tufts, and many sport a streamlined blond tail, which returns to the more familiar rufous coloration in autumn.

RIGHT Two young red squirrels leave the natal drey to explore their surroundings. Summer litters are weaned in August to early October.

The juveniles are capable of breeding at around 10 to 12 months and most females will wean their ďŹ rst litter when two years old.

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LEFT Sessile oak leaves and acorns on moss. Red squirrels can recognise ripe food by smell: squirrelling away food is a waste of effort if it is not nutritious. The rodents will reject acorns and hazelnuts that have been hollowed out by weevils, acknowledging that they are too light.

LEFT In autumn when food is abundant, squirrels have plenty of spare time to collect nuts one at a time in their mouth. They scrape a small hole in soft earth and bury their prize, patting the soil down on top to hide it from birds. The caching is not random: a particular place will be chosen that they can ďŹ nd later.

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February 2018

PHOTO STO RY

ABOVE Less than two per cent of Scotland’s wildwood – the forest that would once have allowed a red squirrel to travel from Lockerbie to Lochinver without touching the ground – remains intact. Expanding and reconnecting the country’s fragmented woodland is essential for this species and other wildlife.

February 2018

NEIL MCINTYRE is a wildlife and landscape photographer based in Cairngorms National Park, where he runs wildlife photography tours. His book The Red Squirrel: A Future in the Forest (£25) is available via www. scotlandbigpicture.com. See more of his images at www.neilmcintyre.com.

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Nick Garbutt/naturepl.com

REVIEWS

O BOOKS O TV O RADIO O DIGITAL O MOVIES

The grey wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park, US, is a modern conservation success story.

YELLOWSTONE’S WONDER WOLF

How the death of a canine shook the world.

The Wolf

By Nate Blakeslee

BOOOK F THE

MONTH

Beyond Spring

Birdmania

O a snow-clad December day in 2012 a On hunter in Wyoming, US, shot the most h ffamous wolf in the world. O-Six was the star of the Yellowstone National Park wolf o rrecovery project. Thousands of park visitors had watched her catching elk. So celebrated h was she that The New Yorkerr gave her an w obituary. This w obituary wonderful book is about the human lives she touched and the controversies that led to her death.

We meet committed rangers like Rick McIntyre who has notched up 85,000 wolf sightings; and Doug Smith, who leads the Yellowstone wolf studies. And we also meet the ranchers and hunters who see the reintroduced wolves as a deadly threat to their livelihoods and to their elk herds.

Best of all, writer Nate Blakeslee takes the trouble to befriend the man who fired that fatal shot so that he can tell his own side of the story. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the passions that wolves arouse.

By Matthew Oates Fair Acre Press £10.99

By Bernd Brunner Greystone Books £24.99

Following ecologist Matthew Oates on his ‘wanderings through nature’, from the stirring of spring to the fullness of summer, is like going for a walk with a favourite uncle. He takes us to his most cherished places (Cumbria, and the Cotswolds, amongst many others) and shows us the seasonal treasures that he’s found there, including his beloved purple emperor butterflies. Although written with a naturalist’s knowledge, Beyond Springg is suffused with poetic charm. It’s a book to get you through the darker months.

This handsome book is as much about humans as it is about birds. A fascinating window on the subject rather than a comprehensive history, it features a large and very varied bunch of characters linked by their avian obsessions. They include Richard Meinertzhagen, notorious for perpetrating the greatest ornithological frauds of all time, conservationist George Archibald, who imitated the endangered whooping crane’s mating dance to persuade a female to lay, and a whole flock of pigeon breeders.

Stephen Mills Wildlife writer

Pete Dommett Nature writer

Jonathan Elphick Ornithologist

One World £20

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February 2018

REVIEWS BOOKS

Wicked Bugs

Young readers

Briony Morrow-Cribbs

By Amy Stewart Algonquin, £10.99, Age 8–12

Yuck – exactly the response you need to capture the attention of an eight- to 12-year-old. Before they’ve decided to be afraid of creepy-crawlies, or too cool for wildlife, kids are enthralled as they experiment with the emotions of fear, disgust, excitement and awe.

They’ll get them all here in droves, but woven through the gruesome facts are scientific facts too.

Author Amy Stewart offers up just the right balance in the gory details to get them hooked, but at the same time educated by the

ecological lessons and anatomical details with which the text is littered.

From the frustrating familiarity of head-lice and the bizarre mystery of the once famine-threatening Rocky Mountain locust, to intestinal worms and the foot-hollowing chewings of the chigoe flea, Stewart does not hold back from the stomach-churning anecdote. She does, however, avoid tabloid sensationalism, and on the way she dispels some of the silly myths about black widow dangers and deathwatch beetle omens.

Richard Jones Entomologist

MEET THE AUTHOR HOR

Ruth Pavey

In 1999, Ruth bought a small, scrubby wood in Somerset – and set to work.

Why did you take this on?

I wanted to plant trees.

Trees should outlive us, so to plant them now is to send a good wish to the future.

What have you achieved?

When I bought the wood it was very dense scrub, part of which had been an orchard. I’ve opened up some areas to replant fruit trees, and have also put in longer-lived trees such as oak, beech and cedar. It’s now a sunnier, airier place, but still has plenty of cover for wildlife.

What were your toughest learning experiences?

That border disputes can be very trying, and that sharing land with wildlife, and wild plants with territorial ambition such as coarse tussocky grass, dock, old man’s beard, hemlock, nettle and thistle, requires a surprising degree of care and patience.

The Aliens Among Us

The Inner Life of Animals

By Leslie Anthony Yale University Press £25

By Peter Wohlleben Bodley Head £16.99

How do you protect your saplings from wildlife?

Species that have been transported by humans from one region of the world to a new region in which they did not previously exist, are termed alien or non-native species. While some non-native species have minimal effects on biodiversity, and a few may be beneficial, about 15 per cent have damaging consequences and are termed invasive alien species – The Aliens Among Uss provides a fascinating overview of this topic. It tackles the complexities of invasion science but also offers a range of perspectives on the subject.

Author Peter Wohlleben’s most recent offering is like taking a gentle stroll down a meandering woodland path with a fascinating companion at your side, full of entertaining stories. And this forest contains an astonishing array of animals and beyond.

There’s a slime mould that recreated the Tokyo underground system, a crow that fed an abandoned kitten, beech martens that savage car engines and friendships between ravens and wolves. After finishing this you’ll have no doubt that animals are sentient beings.

It’s hard. I was amazed at how delicious the rabbits, rodents and deer found the saplings, so enclosed them with spiral guards and wire. When weeds grew up inside I tried lightexcluding membrane, but root-eating voles sheltered underneath. Now I use the rigid wire cylinders you see round street trees, and try to keep weeding.

Helen Roy Alien species expert

Liz Kalaugher Science writer

February 2018

What sort of wildlife encounters have you had?

Meeting a stray llama wasn’t exactly a wildlife encounter, but memorable all the same.

I once found a lame fox in the hollow of a tree, and I’ve seen a stoat chasing a rabbit and a buzzard about to despatch a jay.

`

IT IS NOW AN AIRIER PLACE BUT HAS COVER FOR WILDLIFE.” What has been your most rewarding project?

I’m thrilled that some of the apple trees I’ve grafted from the survivors are bearing fruit. I also love the cedars and the fast growth they’ve put on (I understand arguments against non-native trees, but the wood has few of them), and the way the snowdrops and Narcissus have settled.

What is your hope for the future of your wood?

I would like it to grow on in its semi-wild, semi-managed state for as long as can be imagined, so wildlife can continue to live there and the fruit trees can provide apples, pears and plums for as long as possible.

O A WOOD OF ONE’S OWN is Ruth’s account of the joys and tribulations of restoring her woodland (Duckworth Overlook, £14.99): http://ducknet.co.uk BBC Wildlife

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This BBC One series offers a cheetah’s-eye view of what it is to hunt with the fastest mammal on Earth.

TV

CHOICE

Going wild behind the camera lens Nine animals on land and in water lead us into their secret worlds.

Animals with Cameras TV BBC One

Graham MacFarlane/BBC

Due to air 1 February

No matter how brave, patient and persistant wildlife film-makers are, there will always be places that they can’t go and creatures that they can’t follow. In these cases, why not pass the filming buck on to the animals themselves? Presented by Gordon Buchanan, this new three-parter does exactly that, kitting out nine species both on land and in water and sending them on their way.

Attaching teeny-tiny cameras to animals is nothing new, but the devices used in this series – many of which were developed by miniature camera expert Chris Watts – are designed to function for longer, offering extended, spy-onthe-wall views that we would

`

never otherwise have – and giving biologists the chance to unravel some wildlife mysteries.

First to go a-filming are meerkats in the Kalahari. This is an incredibly well studied group of mammals, yet virtually nothing is known about their lives underground.

Thanks to a team of camera-clad youngsters, researchers enjoy their first ever viewing of a meerkat's underground residence, and crucially, of the day-old pups inside.

The cameras also prove valuable in researching potential outcomes. In Cameroon, a device on an orphaned chimp named Kimbang enables his carer to answer the all-important questions that will dictate when he is ready for release into a wild group: can he competently climb among the highest branches, select the best fruits to eat

WE SEE THEIR WORLDS THROUGH THEIR EYES, GAINING NEW INSIGHTS.”

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and avoid potential predators? And as you’d hope with a series like this, there’s behaviour new to science. The cameras on Magellanic penguins hunting off Argentina, for example, show the birds passing up perfectly adequate shoals of shrimp and squid, holding out instead for anchovies. It’s as risky as it is remarkable – like walking through town with hungry, fractious children and blanking a fast food shop on the chance there’s something healthier around the corner.

As if that’s not enough, we are also privvy to cheetahs learning to hunt; fur seals avoiding great whites; conflict resolution between baboons and farmers; a deep dive with Chilean devil rays; feeding brown bears and sheepdogs protecting their charges from wolves. “Our camera crew is one of the most diverse teams to ever film a wildlife series,” says Gordon. “This is their world, their footage, their story – and we’re going to see it through their eyes.” Sarah McPherson February 2018

REVIEWS BROADCAST

Q&A Chris Watts Which animal was hardest to work with?

I worked with the cheetah, brown bear, chimp and meerkats. They all had different challenges. The meerkats were particularly tricky as they kept running down holes when I was trying to attach their devices.

How did you ensure the cameras didn't cause stress?

We did lots of research into comfort and stability. We even made it possible for Kimbang the chimp to put his own camera on!

What was the most rewarding footage?

The meerkats. Researchers in the Kalahari study them all day, but have no idea about their first weeks. So getting shots of the newborns was very special.

WILD

STREAM THE LATEST ON iPLAYER, NETFLIX AND BEYOND

If the festive season has left you feeling the need to slow down, this new series from BBC Four allows you to do exactly that. Turtle, Eagle, Cheetah: A Slow Odyssey (BBC iPlayer, until 26 January),

made to complement Animals With Camerass (left), enables you to experience the natural world in real time through the eyes of a cheetah on the African savannah, a green turtle cruising the reefs of Indonesia and a whitetailed eagle (above) on the wing over the west coast of Scotland. On the subject of New Year, if one of your

Elephants are in peril from poachers.

resolutions is to eat less meat, strengthen your resolve with the 2014 film Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (Netflix), a feature-length

documentary following ollowing film-maker Kip Andersen as he investigates the t impact of large-scale anim mal agriculture, unearthing som me eye-opening statistics along the t way (livestock coverss 45 per cent of Earth’s total t land; methane is 25– –100 times more harrmful than carbon dio oxide

Spells of mild weather bring hedgehogs out and about during hibernation.

Sir David: Robin Cox/BBC; polar bears: Roie Galitz/John Downer Productions/BBC; sea eagle: Mark Medcalf/Shutterstock/BBC; hedgehog: Paul Hobson/NPL/Getty

The hunting cheetahs. I put the camera on the individual’s head as this is the most stable area of its body when it’s sprinting.

The housing moulds to its head and the camera has a stabilised sensor, so the shots are incredibly smooth.

Yes. The larger the animal, the heavier the battery it can carry, so the longer the run time. But we always had a trade-off between quality and run time. The meerkats, for instance, could only carry 25g, so we went for the best camera and smallest battery – great footage but only two hours’ run time. In contrast, the bear’s camera could last for four days.

CHRIS WATTS is camera designer on Animals with Cameras.

February 2018

catch Snow Bear (BBC iPlayer, until 25 January) a one-hour special narrated by Kate Winslet that follows a polar bear family (below) w travelling from their den in Svalbard to the pack ice of the North Pole.

MONSTER FOSSILS Attenborough and the Sea Dragon ONLINE BBC iPlayer

What was most dramatic?

Do the cameras differ much from animal to animal?

over a 20-year timeframe; one burger requires 600 gallons of water to produce). Finally, if you missed it when it aired on Boxing Day, make sure you

FEELING THE CHILL

Winterwatch

TV BBC TWO Due to air 29 January–1 February

It’s that time – to curl up and enjoy the best of Britain’s winter wildlife from the warmth and comfort of your sofa. HQ for this year’s seasonal spectacular is Sherborne Park Estate in Gloucester, and wild treats in store include cranes and other winter waders at West Sedgemoor on the Somerset Levels; a snow diary of the Cairngorms as temperatures plummet around these famous Highland peaks; new research on grey seal behaviour (see p36); hedgehogs stalking dark urban streets for a home; red deer and a trio of kingfishers squabbling over hunting territory – and not your average leafy riverbank, but the seaweedy surroundings of Ramsgate Harbour, on the East coast. “Winter is the hardest time of year for British wildlife – Winterwatch h has this dramatic season covered,” says series producer Chris Howard.

Following the success of Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur, Sir David is back in the land of palaeontology, investigating the remarkable chance discovery of a huge ichthyosaur found on the Jurassic Coast. This predatory dinosaur-dolphin is thought to be a completely new species, and potentially the biggest found in the UK. Attenborough follows scientists as this superfossil is excavated, scanned and replicated, uncovering the secrets of this ocean predator and the world in which it lived.

Sir David studies a super-fossil.

BBC Wildlife

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Carving out the landscape below the lodge is Tarangire River, a favorite watering place, which attracts impressive numbers of wildlife from the surrounding ecosystems that come together in large numbers to drink, just below our wide-stretched terrace.

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Q&A Q

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MICHAEL ENGELHARD Author and wildlife guide g

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ST UA RT B L AC K M A N Science writer

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M I K E TO M S Ornithologist

J A M E S FA I R Environment editor

EMAIL YOUR QUESTIONS TO wildquestions@immediate.co.uk or post to Q&A, BBC Wildlife Magazine, Immediate Media Company, 2nd Floor, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN

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Seahorse: Wild Wonders of Europe/Zankl/NPL; elephant: Francois Savigny/NPL; seal: Andrey Nekrasov/Alamy; owl: Jenny E. Ross/NPL

Author of Furry Logic

M A R I N E B I O L O GY

How and why do seahorses change colour?

Many fish have the ability to change colour and do so for all sorts of reasons. Seahorses change colour to mimic their surroundings when hiding from predators or prey (sudden, bold changes in appearance may even deter their enemies), and to communicate during courtship displays and territorial disputes.

Like other fish, seahorses change colour using small, sack-like organs known as chromatophores, which are embedded in their skin.

Each chromatophore contains one of three or four pigments.

Expansion or contraction of the chromatophores via tiny muscles results in different colours being displayed with varying intensity.

Chromatophores are controlled in two ways: by the nervous system (when rapid camouflage is required for predator avoidance) and by hormones (during courtship and breeding). The latter causes a slower, more controlled change, often to a brighter, less subtle hue.

Matt Doggett

Q&A Q

AFRICAN MAMMALS

Q

Can elephants be right- or left-tusked?

A Yes. Just as humans are right- or lefthanded, elephants are known to use one tusk more than the other. This favoured appendage is sometimes referred to as the ‘master tusk’ and often appears more worn. Tusks are evolved from teeth and have all sorts of uses – in defence, as weapons, for stripping bark, foraging and digging. Sarah McPherson Seahorses – here a shortsnouted – can change colour quickly, blending into their habitat to hide from predators.

ARCTIC WILDLIFE

A Dogs – namely labrador retrievers – have played an important role in ringed seal research, a challenge to carry out on the snowy wastes of Arctic sea ice.

After learning about ‘seal seal dogs dogs’ from an Inuit hunter, marine biologist Brendan Kelly from the University of Alaska used labradors to sniff out breathing holes and lairs (caves dug in the snowdrifts over breathing holes, which females use to rest and nurse their pups). The dogs boasted an 80–85 per cent success rate in a search area 5–10km wide, pinpointing up to 200 lairs and holes in a month.

Thanks to their canine assistants, Kelly and his team were able to secure samples of moulted skin for DNA analysis, and to attach tags to dozens of individuals to follow their Q

annual movements. Their research revealed that ringed seal subpopulations interbreed throughout the Arctic, reducing the species’ vulnerability to extinction; and that earlier snowmelt, driven by climate change, snowmelt change is exposing the pups sooner and more frequently to the elements and predators, such as polar bears and Arctic foxes.

Michael Engelhard

Named for its circular markings, the ringed seal is the Arctic’s smallest and most common seal species.

BIRDS OF THE WORLD

What’s a spotted owl’s favourite type of tree?

A

California spotted owls – endangered birds that live in the mixed conifer forests of the western US – prefer the tallest trees. Measurements taken by bouncing a laser pulse from an aeroplane off the treetops in the Sierra Nevada mountains revealed that these birds are drawn to trees more than 32m high; that their favourite nesting sites are in trees more than 47m high; and that they avoid areas with lots of trees less than 15m high.

The discovery should be enormously helpful when it comes to forest management. It was previously thought that California spotted owls needed a canopy with at least 70 per cent tree-cover, a density that can make forests vulnerable to fire and drought.

Knowing the birds’ heads for heights means foresters can now remove the shortest trees, thus reducing the canopy cover without destroying valuable nesting habitat.

Large trees also host the nests of northern flying squirrels, a key prey item that the owls hunt by perchand-pounce. The birds have low energy requirements, even by owl standards – an adult caring for young can survive on just one squirrel every 1.8 days.

Liz Kalaugher February 2018

California spotted owls like the cool conditions of oldgrowth forest.

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Q&A Q

WHAT IS IT?

F R E S H WAT E R F I S H

How do archerfish use water as a weapon?

A

Woe betide any insect perching on a leafy frond near the water’s edge if an archerfish lurks nearby. This predator can strike its prey with a mouthful of water from up to three metres away, even compensating for the way light bends as it crosses the waterline and adjusting its aim to make a direct hit.

Exactly how the archerfish water pistol works has until recently remained a mystery. It was long assumed to involve an inbuilt catapult, but nobody could find such a mechanism. Then, in 2012, a team of Italian scientists discovered that archerfish don’t rely on catapults or muscle power, but instead manipulate the water itself.

An archerfish spits out streams of water by pushing its tongue along a groove in the roof of its mouth. By pushing harder towards the end of the stream, the droplets further back collide with those ahead, merging into larger blobs. So instead of sprinkling their prey with a gentle mist, archerfish throw powerful water bombs that speed up as they approach their target.

Fungus: Marc Ducousso/Cirad; archerfish: Photo Researchers/FLPA; geese: Robin Chittenden/Alamy

Pretty in pink: a fungus fit for fairies.

New Caledonia in the South Pacific is most famous for its tool-using crows, but the islands are teeming with other endemic species, including the flightless, heron-like kagu, and Amborella, the sole surviving species of the oldest lineage of flowering plants on Earth. It is also home to contenders for the largest living fern, pigeon, gecko and skink. And then there’s this little beauty. Podoserpula miranda might be just the thing for fairies to serve scones on if it wasn’t for the smell of radishes.

It was only discovered in 2009 and has come to be known as the Barbie pagoda fungus, for obvious reasons. The specific name translates from the Latin as “she is to be admired.”

Stuart Blackman

Q

Helen Scales

The secret to the archerfish’s shooting skill lies not in anatomy, but physics.

BRITISH BIRDS

Do wintering pink-footed geese cause problems for farmers?

A

Britain – particularly Norfolk – hosts more than 80 per cent of the world population of pink-footed geese during the winter months.

Numbers have increased dramatically over recent years, largely due to reduced hunting pressure, but also to the availability of agricultural crops.

As with other geese species, the past few decades have seen pinkfoots switch from feeding in wetlands to grazing on farmlands, with a particular fondness for sugar beet tops.

While the grazing of cereals and pasture does bring the birds into conflict with farmers, utilising sugar beet is seen as positive. The crop is harvested from September to the end of December, and it is the cut tops and other remains that the geese eat. If the beet fields are left unploughed through the winter, the pinkfoots can ‘clear up’ any leftovers and are less likely to move onto more precious crops – so both geese and farmers benefit.

Mike Toms Approximately 50,000 pink-footed geese wintered in the UK in the 1960s.

Today, there are more than 200,000.

Q&A Q

N AT I O N A L PA R K S O F T H E W O RLD

W H AT C A N I S E E I N . . . ?

ETOSHA NAMIBIA A

The secret to Etosha is its scarcity of water. Because it is such a precious commodity, diverse groups of mammals and birds congregate around waterholes in easy-to-find clusters. It’s the key reason why this national park is regarded as one of the best places in Africa to see wildlife, from endangered species such as the black rhino, predators including lions and nd cheetahs, and herbivores such as springboks and mountain zebras. The Okaukuejo and d Halali waterholes are said to be especially good for rhinos, while those wanting g to see lions should head for Okondeka.

Some 340 bird species have been recorded in the park, and you've a good chance of sighting raptors such as bateleurs and martial eagles. Both greater and lesser flamingos gather to breed in the saltpans towards the end of the rainy season, during which you can also see

4 3

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blue cranes. Etosha is named after the vast saltpan that lies at its centre. For most of the year it’s a dry, unforgiving place, but fills – to an extent – when the rains come between November and April.

VOLUNTEERING

HOW CAN I HELP...?

Leeds City Council Leeds Wildlife Volunteers Illustration by Bex Glover; Jonathan Dunster/Leeds City Council

Tell us about your volunteers Our group comes from all over Leeds. Many are retired, but we also have students, people between jobs, stay-at-home parents and selfemployed workers who can sneak in a day of volunteering every two weeks. They all have different motivations: giving something back to their local area, a love of wildlife, socialising e with like-minded people or gaining experience in the conservation sector.

NATIONAL PARK IN NUMBERS

TOP OF THE TICKLIST 1 Mountain zebra 2 Black rhino 3 Greater flamingo 4 Etosha Pan

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WATERHOLES

protecting locally important sites – for example removing rhododendron and Himalayan balsam from Breary Marsh Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), or taking out scrub from Adel Moor, one of only two sites in Leeds that is home to common lizards.

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SPECIES OF MAMMAL

2,500 RESIDENT ELEPHANTS

What’s your next project?

woodland, scrub and wet areas. The glade is awash with colour in the summer, with butterflies and dragonflies flitting through the orchids, but in recent years it has become increasingly shaded and scrubby and the pond has dried up. We will coppice trees to allow in more light, remove the willow and birch scrub and hopefully restore the pond.

Over 2018 we plan to restore the glade area of Eccup Whin – a site of oak and birch

What’s a recent achievement?

Volunteers remove rhododendrons at Breary Marsh.

We’ve just restored a pond at Chevin Forest Park Local Nature Reserve. The pond had been unmanaged for years and had silted up, but a stand of greater reedmace gave it away. We spent an entire day scooping out vast amounts of accumulated mud. It was hard and extremely smelly, but by the end of it we’d created a nice big hole to fill with water. It will help enormously towards maintaining and increasing local amphibian numbers.

What sort of tasks do you do?

We work at council-owned nature sites in and around the city. Much of what we do involves February 2018

O JON DUNSTER www.leeds.gov.uk BBC Wildlife

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Q&A Q

B O TA N Y

Q

What is an ancient woodland indicator?

A

In England and Wales, a woodland is deemed ancient if it has existed with continuous tree cover since at least 1600 (1750 in Scotland). The distinction may seem arbitrary, but acknowledges the fact that older tree-ed landscapes tend to have greater ecological value.

To determine the age of a woodland, you can consult historic maps and records, or you can get out and look at its flora. Newer woodlands tend to be big on the pioneer species – those with windblown seeds, for instance, while

It’s no joke: sea otters learn a lot by clowning around with stones.

B I O L O GY

Why do animals hiccup?

A

ancient woodlands usually have a greater abundance of plants that spread slowly over the ground, such as wood anemone, wood sorrel and ransoms, and those whose seeds fall close to the parent, as do those of the wild service tree.

Wood anemones are slow to colonise, These plants, advancing just 1.8m along with in 100 years. guelder rose, wood spurge and small leaved lime, are some of our most common ancient woodland indicators. As well as being slow-growers, they require long-term, stable woodland cover to survive and are easy to recognise.

Hiccups are at least as intriguing as they are inconvenient. These noisy gulps and/or belches induced by involuntary contractions of the diaphragm seem to be far from useful in adults, but there’s evidence that they serve to help expel air from the stomach in suckling infant mammals. Indeed, we get hiccups less often as we age. They might have truly ancient evolutionary origins. A hiccup-like reflex enables tadpoles to divert water to the gills and air to the lungs as they transition to air-breathing adults – just as our piscine ancestors would have had to do on the way to conquering the land.

Stuart Blackman

Amy-Jane Beer

Q

B E H AV I O U R

Wood Anemone: Andrew Mason/FLPA; tadpole: Simon Colmer/NPL; sea otter: Bertie Gregory/NPL

A Sea otters have many ways of tugging on our heartstrings. And going by a plethora of YouTube videos, we can now add juggling stones to the list. To be fair, it’s more keepy-uppy than juggling, albeit keepy-uppy with two or three stones at a time. The otters lie on their backs and pat the stones into the air, catching them and rolling them skilfully around their chests and necks. And very impressive it is, too – they can even do it with

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Hiccups help tadpoles to transition.

their eyes closed.

The behaviour is likely to be linked to the animals’ use of rocks to detach prey from the seabed and break it open. Otters form attachments to certain stones – keeping them in an armpit when not in use – and have been known to retain their favourite ones throughout their lives. Recreational juggling may be a playful way of learning how best to manipulate these tools.

Stuart Blackman

February 2018

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LETTER OF THE MONTH

Really wild holiday On a recent visit to Sri Lanka I was lucky enough to see some of the planet’s most charismatic animals, including a blue whale. While on a boat trip off the coast of Mirissa, the colossal cetacean appeared in the distance. Every dive brought the marine mammal closer to the vessel, until I could count the remoras clinging to its skin.

The whole holiday was surreal. My head spun with sightings of technicolour feathers and formidable talons, and hearing babbling calls, but the highlight occurred during a safari.

We spent 12 fruitless hours searching for leopards in Charlotte was delighted to see this blue whale, Lunugamvehera National and other exciting Park, near Hambantota. species, in Sri Lanka.

The following day we returned to the park and were rewarded with the sight of a leopard lazing in a tree. It stirred and disappeared from view before emerging from behind a trunk, giving us a disdainful look. I stopped breathing, was completely hypnotised and tried not to burst into tears of joy as the big cat sauntered off.

Charlotte Varela, Burnley

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WRITE TO US BBC Wildlife, 2nd Floor, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN

Behind closed doors As an animal lover, and an experienced, responsible cat owner, I was dismayed to read Bob Holderness-Roddam’s letter “Forgotten Felines” (Your Feedback, December 2017). His view advocates animal cruelty by suggesting that cat owners should confine their feline companions indoors, which restricts their natural instincts to roam and to hunt. Further, to confine a cat indoors is not easy, as anyone who has had to restrict a cat to the indoors (for example, for medical reasons) would testify.

After decades of wildlife observation, it is clear to me that the activities of humans destroy other animal life on a much grander scale than cats.

Sharon Painter, Staffordshire

Elephant in the room Regarding “The True Cost of Meat” (Agenda Analysis, December 2017), I have never been a great meat eater and am trying to reduce the amount of meat in my diet further, but that really isn’t the point. Jonathon Porritt is right about reluctance to examine the underlying causes of environmental degradation.

I was not surprised to find no mention anywhere in this article of the cause that underlies all the others, which is the growth of the world’s human population. Unless we tackle this, all other efforts to save a planet worth living on are ultimately futile.

Susan Francis, via email

BLOGGER OF THE MONTH This month’s winner is Annabel Lever who writes about the wildlife of Sheffield. Read her blog at https:// clutteredmindwildheart.blogspot. co.uk Visit www.discoverwildlife.com to find out how you can join our Local Patch Reporters Project.

February 2018

YOUR FEEDBACK 2

ONLINE PHOTO CONTEST

THEME: WINTER WILDLIFE

1

Building after Brexit

O Enter our monthly online photographic contest at www.discoverwildlife.com/ your-photos/photo-contest

I found Chris Baines’ article (Brave new world, December 2017) very interesting and a source of hope regarding agriculture and wildlife habitats, post-Brexit.

However, Chris mentioned the possibility that with the disappearance of EU subsidies, it may lead to rewilding in the uplands. My concern is that our government’s obsession for building houses will lead to loss of farmland in general. Upland areas will continue to be grazed as they are the only places that cannot realistically be built on.

Richard Dowling, via email

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3

1 WHITE-TAILED DEER, Jeremy Blue, Ontario, Canada

2 HANUMAN LANGUR, Anuj Raina, Admedabad, India

3 RED SQUIRREL, A Patscheider, Seefeld, Austria

Picture-perfect day In 2017, I visited a hide in a private woodland in Kirkcudbright in Scotland, with three other photographers. The four of us were there all day, taking pictures from 7.30am until 4pm. I was elated to capture images of red squirrels, a sparrowhawk, sp parrowhawk, a great gre reat at spotted s woodpecker (below) and a range of other birds. I took oveer 1,000 shots on that d day!

Paul Watkin ns, via email

Touchingg tribute I would liike to say how m much I have enjjoyed reading C Chris Packham’’s ‘Notes from an En nglish Wood’ in B BBC Wildlife oveer the past few mo onths (above right).. I always try to w watch

BBC Two’s Springwatch, and find his impressive wildlife knowledge and quirky sense of humour very appealing. But I feel this is the real Chris, a poetic style combined with a deep understanding of the natural world. I was particularly moved by his sensitive and understated tribute to his (and Scratchy’s) lost companion in the Spring 2017 issue.

Mave Ersu, via email

Badger behaviour I live in Cornwall, and spent most of the summer watching a family of badgers who feed in my small garden every night. I have a installed a camera and enjoy watching their antics. In late November I didn’t see them

ffor a number of n nights.

Prior to that, th he male and female had been enjoying h th heir peanut su upper. I observed th hem having a few sq quabbles with an nother young male, bu ut otherwise all th he animals looked exxtremely healthy.

However, the temperature had dropped considerably. I wonder whether they stay in their setts more frequently at this time of year?

Pauline Kavanagh, via email Features Editor Ben Hoare replies: During prolonged bad weather – such as during thick snow – badgers can stay in their sett and go without food for long periods.

But they’re also opportunists, so might simply have been foraging elsewhere. Or perhaps the family had been disturbed in some way, and were being unusually wary.

Help the overlooked I read Lucy Jones’ article about standing up for ugly animals (Hey, good lookin’, November 2017) with intrigue. It shows that it is easier to raise money for the conservation of charismatic and attractive animals. I wonder whether the promotion of the interconnectivity of organisms would prove worthwhile in increasing money to conserve less attractive species.

Fiona Kent, via email Louise spotted a kingfisher in November.

Glorious colour This photo of a kingfisher (above) was captured in early November at a bird hide in Worcestershire. It was taken as the sun was starting to go down, which created a lovely background light.

Louise Morris, via email

QUIZ ANSWERS (see p113) The Wild Words are: 1B, 2A, 3B, 4C, 5B, 6A

BBC Wildlife

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LOCAL PATCH BLOGGER AWARDS 2017

BLOGGER OF THE YEAR AWARDS 2017 WINNER!

Last year, nature bloggers kept us enthralled with their wildlife tales and now our Bloggers of the Month have been whittled down to one.

T

he 13 Local Patch Reporters who won BBC Wildlife’s Blogger of the Month competition throughout 2017 made up our Blogger of the Year Awards 2017 shortlist.

The judging panel of four natural history TV presenters – Gillian Burke, Lizzie Daly, Ben Garrod and Miranda Krestovnikoff – had the tricky task of picking an overall winner.

The 13 Local Patch blogs they read covered a range of wildlife topics, from tracking the seasonal changes in a garden to visiting UK nature reserves.

Here we announce the overall winner and the five runners-up. To see the full list of winning entries visit www. discoverwildlife.com/news/ blogger-awards-2017

YOU CAN BE A LOCAL PATCH BLOGGER TOO! Post your blog updates on our forum: www.discoverwildlife.com/forum

A rare sea slug enjoys a fish egg supper in a Cornish rockpool.

WINNER Heather Buttivant Cornwall, UK

Cornish Rock Pools cornishrockpools.com

Cornish marine life is surprisingly rich. People often find it astonishing that it’s possible to see anemones, corals, starfish, lobsters, sharks and bizarre sea slugs with just a decent tide and a pair of wellies.

My blog shares the thrill of discovering this alien world.

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I’m lucky to be part of a growing network of keen citizen scientists recording wildlife and promoting marine conservation. Knowing that my blog is inspiring others to try rockpooling and to protect our beaches keeps me going on those freezing winter days when any sane person would stay at home in the warm!

Highlight of the year Fish eggs are fabulous things to photograph in early summer. If you catch

them when they’re close to hatching you can see each baby fish staring out, its tail curled tight around its head like a scarf. In May, my son and I were looking at rock goby eggs, which formed a black-specked carpet of grey. It was only when I saw a tentacle move that I realised that I had discovered the very rare sea slug, Calma gobioophaga, feeding on them. The species is under a centimetre long and was perfectly camouflaged.

JUDGE’S COMMENT Finally, an in-depth blog about intertidal wildlife!

Everyone loves rockpooling – but this blog actually highlights how important rockpools are.

I’m really pleased to see a platform for the public to learn about what they’ve seen and even contribute to science. Brilliant!

LIZZIE DALY

February 2018

BLOGGER AWARDS

THE JUDGES GILLIAN BURKE is a biologist and presenter on BBC Two’s Springwatch and Autumnwatch. She lives in Cornwall with her two children.

LIZZIE DALY is a wildlife and children’s TV presenter. She is completing her Masters degree in the electroreception of arthropods.

BEN GARROD is an evolutionary biologist, great ape conservationist and presenter.

He regularly contributes to BBC Wildlife’s Q&A section.

RUNNERS-UP

After hearing them for months, Alex finally saw one of his local little owls.

Dara Fermanagh, UK

Young Fermanagh Naturalist youngfermanaghnaturalist.com

I live in a beautiful part of Northern Ireland, and want to celebrate its beauty. Observing and writing my thoughts has become a very important part of my life (I have Asperger's). The platform has become a valuable communication tool.

Highlight of the year It has to be observing the hen harriers on my local patch, especially when I saw two males fighting for territory.

Alex Oxfordshire, UK

Appleton Wildlife Diary appletonwildlifediary.wordpress.com

My blog is a regular account of what happens on a local patch in Oxfordshire.

I use a camera-trap and photography to capture local and visiting wildlife, from insects and birds, to a range of mammals, including deer and badgers.

Highlight of the year My wildlife highlight was finally finding a local little owl after months of hearing it, and even one of this year's young.

Our runner-up blogs feature lapwings (left) and explore local nature sites.

Carol Donaldson Kent, UK

Nature Girl naturegirlblogdotcom.wordpress.com

Elliot and Kirsten were thrilled to see an otter while visiting a loch.

February 2018

My blog is a mixed bag of my passions and interests, which include my work, garden wildlife and recipes for

MIRANDA KRESTOVNIKOFF is a biologist, trained diver and wildlife expert on BBC One’s The One Show. She is also president of the RSPB.

foraged food. I’d like my blog to enthuse people and encourage them to protect wildlife.

Highlight of the year Working with farmers in Kent as we have managed to double the number of lapwing chicks fledged from their land.

Elliot McCandless and Kirsten Brewster Dundee, UK

The Wildlife Journals thewildlifejournals.com

We started this blog to share some incredible wildlife encounters we had during an 15-week trip abroad.

Since returning to Scotland we have tried to see some of the creatures on our doorstep and shed some light on their conservation status.

Highlight of the year While exploring a loch for a place to photograph grebes a lone otter appeared. We’ll never forget the sight of it staring back at us through the reeds.

Celia Dillow Somerset, UK

Tracks and Trails and Puppy Dog Tales tracksntrailsnpuppiestales.blogspot.co.uk

My blog celebrates the birds and beasts of the gorgeous Somerset Levels and moors. It is an area of beauty and rare habitats, which is full of history and astonishing wildlife.

Highlight of the year While visiting Aller Moor, a turquoise dart flew towards me and away. The kingfisher repeated this until I moved and it could return to its fishing post.

BBC Wildlife

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INSIDE THE IMAGE

POLAR BEARS SVALBARD The remote, rugged archipelago of Svalbard is home to a variety of Arctic wildlife, but its most famous denizen has to be the polar bear. In winter the large ice floes surrounding the islands provide vital hunting grounds for the species’ key food source: seals. If the ice doesn't form, the animals become marooned on the islands where they risk starving to death.

CLOSE FOR COMFORT While our ship was anchored off Duvefjorden, we suddenly spotted a female with a two-year-old cub. The pair became aware of our presence and started to walk towards us, driven by hunger and, perhaps, curiosity. As they approached, the bears were distracted by a nearby leak from the ship’s kitchen, which had stained a patch of snow. They paused to lick it, pressing their legs together and adopting synchronous, almost identical positions.

Initially, the bears were a significant distance away, giving me time to mount a 200–400mm lens and photograph them as they wandered towards us. The animals eventually came so close that even the minimum focal length of 200mm was too tight to include any of their surroundings.

This, however, allowed me this unexpected close-up, which I came to call Polar Pas de Deux. I chose black and white to symbolise how pollution casts its shadows on immaculate natural environments.

1

3

DATA FILE CAMERA Canon EOS-1D X LENS 200-400mm, f4 FOCAL LENGTH 200mm

4

EXPOSURE 1/640 sec, f/9, ISO 6400 EXPOSURE COMPENSATION +0.67

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February 2018

PHOTO ANALYSIS THE PHOTOGRAPHER

EILO ELVINGER

Based in Luxembourg, Eilo is a wildlife and travel photographer, and was a category winner in Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2017. See more of her images at www.eilopict.com

2 5

1

LIE DOWN

The closer the bears got, the wider my shooting angle became. Had I taken this shot standing up with a tripod, I’d have captured only the tops of their backs. But it was their legs I wanted. So I lay on the floor beside a hole in the ship’s hull, positioning my lens so it could ‘see’ through the hole. It was the closest I could get to horizontal.

2

DIM IT DOWN

3

ADAPTING LIGHT SENSITIVITY

4

GAINING GRAIN

5

SUPER SYMMETRY

White bears on white snow meant the overall reflectance was very bright.

No matter which metering (light measuring) option I tried, the camera would rectify the over-brightness by underexposing the scene. I manually compensated for this by nudging up the exposure compensation from its default of 0 to +0.67.

The bears were relatively still, so I could have used a longish shutter speed. However, with the ship’s vibrations I had to use a shorter one (1/640). Given the short focusing distance, I also needed a sufficient depth of field (f/9) to ensure that both front and back legs would be sharp.

With these settings and the low light levels, I had to boost the ISO speed – which makes cameras more sensitive to light – to 6400.

Using a high ISO can add ‘noise’ (grain and pixelation) to an image. This is not always desirable in colour photos, but can enhance texture in monochrome shots – here the mushy snow, sharp claws, wet paws and fluffy fur.

The key to this image is the symmetry. I closed in on the bears’ legs, framing and cropping so that each animal commands the same amount of space.

+ FIND OUT MORE For more photo advice visit www.discoverwildlife.com/ wildlife-nature-photography/ tips-and-techniques

BBC Wildlife 109

YOUR PHOTOS PHOTO E CHOIC

YOUR PHOTOS

www.discoverwildlife.com is the place to see and share wildlife photos.

1FROLICKING IN THE MIST

2UNDER ATTACK

In November I went for a walk near my home to enjoy the morning mist. Not long after sunrise I saw roe deer on the brow of a hill overlooking Salisbury Cathedral. They spotted me first before running off towards the woods. I took a few pictures, managing to focus on the ungulates and not the misty background, and even captured a couple of mid-jump shots. I wasn’t sure if they would be in focus, but I was delighted with the result.

Martin Cook, Salisbury, UK

I’ve been coming to the Hesserghatta grasslands in the outskirts of Bangalore, India, for about seven years. We see a lot of short-toed snake eagles hunting here, but this time I managed to capture a truly unique moment. After locating its prey, the predator usually swoops down and rapidly flies away with the kill. However, this individual took on a feisty rat snake that fought back, and eventually the raptor abandoned the hunt. It was such an exciting duel to witness!

Vikram Ramesh, Bangalore, India

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3HANGING AROUND

Last year, my husband and I journeyed to Zombitse-Vohibasia National Park in Madagascar to try and see the Endangered Verreaux’s sifaka. Our guide warned us that our chances of seeing the lemurs may be slim but we saw a group of 10-strong off the main path, which included this young male hanging from the branches. It was truly incredible to have such a close encounter with these rare animals.

Rebecca Noble, Worcester, UK

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4DEEP IN THOUGHT

I trekked with a tour group through Bwindi National Park, Democratic Republic of the Congo, for about four hours in search of gorillas. When we eventually found the primates, I was thrilled to see a sleeping silverback, several females and a couple of youngsters playing boisterously. The silverback began to stir and I captured his pensive expression. It really was an honour to see these magnificent animals in the wild.

Andy Edge, Essex, UK

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February 2018

5 SHARING THE NEWS

During a camping holiday in Cornwall last year, my fiancée and I were walking through a nature reserve, keeping an eye out for reptiles. We spotted this beautiful, basking adder on a pile of dry vegetation and I spent over half an hour lying on my front, torn between getting a great shot and avoiding a bite! It was my first adder sighting so I couldn’t wait to share my picture with family and friends.

Jason Parry, Totnes, UK

6BREAKFAST IS SERVED

I visited a wetland in West Bengal, India, early one morning to photograph watercocks, which belong to the rail and crake family. While I waited, a group of pied starlings arrived, flying around me in a flurry of excitement. After a while an adult began to feed a juvenile and I managed to capture the behaviour on camera. It reminded me that every little thing is beautiful, no matter how common it may be.

Bijoy Adhikary, Kolkata, India

February 2018

BBC Wildlife

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PUZZLES

CROSSWORD

Win a prize with our brain-teaser.

Compiled by RICHARD SMYTH

WILD WORDS

Answers in our April 2018 issue

1) the definition for at hack

DECEMBER ANSWERS Across: 1 Amoeba, 4 Baobab, 8 Remoras, 9 Sunbeam, 11 Damask rose, 12 auks, 13 coati, 14 Stallion, 16 Soya bean, 18 Silky, 20 Ashy, 21 Quadrupeds, 23 Linseed, 24 Alpines, 25 Lemons, 26 Ganges.

Down: 1 Akepa, 2 Odonata, 3 Black kite, 5 Azure, 6 Bobtail, 7 Black lory, 10 Poison oak, 13 Crossbill, 15 Australia, 17 Alyssum, 19 Lapwing, 21 Queen, 22 Dyer’s.

DECEMBER WINNER Ann Stainsby West Sussex

mountains of South America (6) 26 Old name for a white-tailed eagle or other sea eagle (4) 27 Yellow-billed seabird, Larus canus, with greenish-yellow legs (6, 4) 30 Genus of trees and shrubs to which the maple belongs (4) 311 Prefix meaning ‘environment’ that might come before -friendly (3) 32 The ___ river dolphin of South America is also known as the boto (6) DOWN 1 Sociable UK crow species (4) 2 Flowerless plant that reproduces from spores (4) 3 Colourful, noisy corvids of North America, Cyanocitta cristata (4, 4) 4 Neotropical forest bird of the trogon family (7) 5 The ___ locust is known its vast, voracious swarms (6)

6 Species of hammerhead shark, Sphyrna tiburo (10) 7 Eurasian plant well-known for its effects on felines (6) 14 Plant of East Asia also known as Japanese spikenard (3) 15 North American shrub of the genus Viburnum (10) 19 Asian bird also known as the horned pheasant (8) 20 Large, omnivorous parrot of New Zealand’s South Island (3) 211 Joy ___, conservationist and author of Born Free (7) 23 2013 BBC natural history series narrated by David Attenborough (6) 24 4 Hampshire river known for water vole, white-clawed crayfish and brook lamprey (6) 28 8 Pacific island notoriously invaded by the brown tree snake (4) 29 Big cat, males have manes (4)

WIN TWO WILDLIFE BOOKS HOW TO ENTER This competition is only open to residents of the UK (including the Channel Islands). Post entries to BBC Wildlife Magazine, February 2018 Crossword, PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA or email the answers to February2018@wildlifecomps.co.uk by 5pm on 2 February 2018. Entrants must supply name, address and telephone number. The winner will be the first correct entry drawn at random after the closing time. The name of the winner will appear in the April 2018 issue. By entering participants agree to be bound by the general competition terms and conditions shown on this page.

Immediate Media Company Limited (publisher of BBC Wildlife Magazine) would love to send you newsletters, together with special offers and other promotions. If you would not like to receive these please write ‘NO INFO’ on your entry.

Branded BBC titles are licensed from or published jointly with BBC Worldwide (the commercial arm of the BBC). Please tick here m if you’d like to receive regular newsletters, special offers and promotions from BBC Worldwide by email. Your information will be handled in accordance with the BBC Worldwide privacy policy: www.bbcworldwide.com/home/privacy.

February 2018

Enter for the chance ce to o win two Bloomsbury books, worth £46.99.

Lars Jonsson shares his artwork in Winter Birds and in I, Mammal Liam Drew explores a history of mammals.

O To find out more visit www.bloomsbury.com/uk

2) the animal you associate with the adjective dipterous A a fly B a goldfinch C a pheasant

Find out the answers on p105

3) the offspring of a cormorant A a keet B a shaglet C a fledgling

4) the sound made by bitterns A a chirp B a squeak C a boom

5) the name for a female seahorse A a queen B a seamare C a dam

6) the collective noun for iguanas A a mess B a tiding C a huddle Questions set by ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD

COMPETITION WINNERS The Lost Wordss giveaway: Nick Lynch, Charlotte Boyle, Fiona Shepherd, Anna Shoosmith and Mandy Betts.

General terms and conditions 1. Visit www.discoverwildlife.com/generalterms-and-conditions-2018 to read the full terms and conditions. 2. Competitions are open to all residents of the UK, including the Channel Islands, aged 18 years or older, except employees or contractors of Immediate Media and anyone connected with the promotion or their direct family members. 3. Entries received after the specified closing date and time will not be considered, and cannot be returned. 4. Only one entry will be permitted per person, regardless of method of entry.

Bulk entries made by third parties will not be permitted. 5. The winning entrant will be the first correct entry drawn at random after the closing time, or, in creative competitions, the one that in the judges’ opinion is the best. 6.

Promoter: Immediate Media Co Bristol Ltd.

BBC Wildlife 113

Henny Brandsma/Minden Pictures/FLPA

ACROSS 8 Term describing taiga (6) 9 River of Wensleydale, noted for plants such as thistle broomrape and marsh cinquefoil (3) 10 Marwick ___, Orkney reserve (4) 11 Scavenging insect of the Dermestidae family (4, 6) 12 Plant with long, trailing stems – a member of the genus Vitis, perhaps (4) 13 Plant in the amaranth family, native to the Andes and widely cultivated (6) 16 Deer-like hoofed mammal of Africa and Eurasia, such as the gazelle (8) 17 ___ chough, traditional name for the red-billed corvid Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax (7) 18 The ___-headed seedeater is a sparrow-like finch of southern Africa (7) 22 Spotted beetle of the family Coccinellidae (8) 25 5 The rare ___ flamingo is native to the

A taking wool from a dead sheep B a hawk before it has become acclimatised and can hunt on its own C employed marking unsatisfactorily shorn sheep

Tales Tal

bush b h from the

A celebration of national park rangers in Uganda hots up when fire-eaters entertain the crowd.

A WILD WORLD OF RIPPING YARNS WHO? LIZ BOURNE is co-project leader of Queen Elizabeth Parks Project, a community conservation initiative.

WHAT? FIRE-EATERS AND LOG CROCODILES

WHERE? UGANDA

LIZ JOINS A COLOURFUL CIRCUS AND LEARNS HOW TO CAPTURE A ‘CROCODILE’ ON WORLD RANGER DAY.

Meg Schofield

D

riving along the pot-holed road, past bush fires and the occasional buffalo, it was difficult to imagine what was ahead. “It’s going to be a circus!” one of my fellow volunteers joked.

It was late July and I was in western Uganda with volunteers from the Queen Elizabeth Parks Project. We were gathering for World Ranger Day, an international event that celebrates the work that rangers do and remembers those who have been injured or lost their lives in the line of duty. Such an event hadn’t been held in Uganda before, but with some international encouragement officials had formed a committee and drawn up a schedule of events. And we were to be part of it.

Coming to a halt where a small group of rangers were gathered, dressed in full camouflage and carrying their AK-47s, we stumbled out of our vehicle to the sound of a brass band, which was accompanied by acrobats and stilt walkers.

We formed a line and proceeded to march behind the

entertainers and armed rangers. There was no one to watch us, other than the occasional boda-boda driver and a fish eagle.

We arrived in Kikorongo, a small town on the way to Kasese. As the local community looked on, we donned surgical gloves and participated in the ‘corporate social responsibility’ part of the day – litter picking.

Rangers are not always considered the good guys. Conflict between national parks and local communities is rife, and rangers and their families are often discriminated against. Positive action can go some way to changing perceptions. And so, hot and sweaty, we picked up a mountain of rubbish.

After an hour of litter picking, we drove south and arrived in Kyambura to repeat the activity. The heat was now intense, so it only seemed right that the acrobats should start fire-eating...

While fire-wielding daredevils entertained the crowds by rolling the flames over their bodies and into their trousers, I bumped into a ranger friend who told me he’d heard some locals were trying to sell ivory in the village and he was waiting to nab them. Even on what was supposed to be a day of fun he was helping to protect Uganda’s wildlife.

The final part of the day was held at the national park headquarters in Katunguru.

Officiators acknowledged that being a park ranger is a dangerous job, and candles were lit for the estimated 1,000 around the world that have been killed in the line of duty over the past 10 years.

We were then given a demonstration of how to capture a crocodile. A large log played the supporting role as a ranger showed us how to grab the ‘creature’ and secure it, using ropes and a roll of tape.

Fire-eaters, jugglers and log crocodiles – sometimes conservation work really is just like a circus.

“RANGERS ARE NOT ALWAYS CONSIDERED THE GOOD GUYS. CONFLICT BETWEEN NATIONAL PARKS AND COMMUNITIES IS RIFE.”

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O Do you have a tale that you would like to share? If so, please email a synopsis of your idea to james.fair@immediate.co.uk

February 2018

CH AS O OSEN NE O F TH E

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