Conker Nature Magazine - April 2024: The Wildlife Edition Issue 5

APRIL 2024 ISSUE 05

WILD WONDERS EDITORS PICK NATURAL WORLD TV SHOW

EARTH SOUNDS: HEAR OUR PLANET LIKE NEVER BEFORE

NATURE’S SIGNS THAT SPRING HAS ARRIVED

THE WILDLIFE EDITION

Spring in Italy Birds portraits and life

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INSIDE COVER PHOTOGRAPHER: VICTORIA BUTAKOVA

WILDLIFE MAGAZINE

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Editor-in-chief Lucy Morris Sally Marie Rosie Jones Tobias James Kararaina Bishara Darren Wynne Heather Wilkins Laura Woolley Isabelle Price Laszlo Balogh

Executive Editor Wildlife Editor Digital Editor Features Editor Photo/Sub Editor Photo Assistant Travel Editor Advertisement Director Logo Illustrator

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Conker Nature Magazine takes pride in ethical wildlife photography that prioritises the safety and welfare of wildlife and their environment. Conker Nature Magazine is committed to the correct representation of the natural world, away from the manipulation of media, and total honesty in our captioning. Photographers, please support us in providing all relevant information around the circumstance of the image and giving total clarity of where the image was taken (to include, but not just restricted to, use of bait, captivity or habituated animals).

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CONTENTS

APRIL 2024

08 SUNNY MEADOW

PHOTOGRAPHER: LYUDMILA AKSENOVA IG: @MILA071977 WB: LAKSENA.RU YT: WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/MILA1977FUL

16 BIRDS PORTRAITS AND LIFE PHOTOGRAPHER: VICTORIA BUTAKOVA

SIGNS THAT SPRING 24 NATURE’S HAS ARRIVED IN A RIVERSIDE FOREST MEADOW

PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT DUFFIELD IG:@SCOTT.DUFFIELD.PHOTOGRAPHY WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/SCOTT.DUFFIELD. PHOTOGRAPHY WB: SCOTTDUFFIELDPHOTOGRAPHY.PIXIESET.COM

SHOWCASE - THE 32 WILDLIFE BITTERN PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT DUFFIELD IG:@SCOTT.DUFFIELD.PHOTOGRAPHY WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/SCOTT.DUFFIELD. PHOTOGRAPHY WB: HTTPS://SCOTTDUFFIELDPHOTOGRAPHY.PIXIESET. COM

38 ANIMALS

PHOTOGRAPHER: MARK GIROUARD IG:@MDGNATURE WB: MARKDGPHOTOGRAPHY.MYPIXIESET.COM

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CONTENTS

APRIL 2024

44 SPRING COMING ON WINGS PHOTOGRAPHER: EVGENIA KORCHAGOVA IG:@DEILTORA

50 SPRING IN ITALY

PHOTOGRAPHER: YULIA BILATO IG:@YULIA_GARDA

58 BIRDS OF PREY

PHOTOGRAPHER: ZOE SAUNDERS IG: @BIOLOGISTZO

72 WILD WONDERS

EDITORS PICK FAVOURITES MONTHLY ROUND -UP

WILDLIFE MAGAZINE

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Editor’s Letter

April 2023 PHOTOGRAPHER: LYUDMILA AKSENOVA IG: @MILA071977

Lucy Morris Editor-in-chief Welcome to Conker Nature Wildlife Magazine Edition April 2024 Issue!

D: S AN RE GL ATU RGE N E E CRE W LA X NATIONAL TRUST: BL FA OW LLO Y BO BEADED BUTTERFLY D E R A E M DUNELM: BROOCH - £12 ME RSH ELL 40 £ NHM CANDLE WILDLIFE MA JEW GARDEN - £10

This month, we delve into the vibrant world of spring wildlife. As nature reawakens from its winter slumber, animals come to life with renewed energy. You’ll glimpse into the lives of various creatures, from migratory birds returning home to newborn mammals taking their first steps.

Experience through our lenses the beauty of blooming landscapes and the stirring of life beneath the surface of ponds and rivers. It’s a celebration of the season of rebirth, captured in all its wild splendor.

Continuing our journey, we explore the delicate balance of ecosystems in spring. This issue showcases the intricate interplay between flora and fauna as they both flourish in the warming weather. You’ll see how the blooming flowers provide sustenance for pollinators, initiating a chain of life that affects every creature in the ecosystem. From the smallest insects to the largest predators, every species plays a crucial role in the grand tapestry of life.

FOLKSY: BUNNY ENAMEL GARDENING MUG BY THE BUTTERFLY AND TOADSTOOL - £15

Also, on our website this month, we highlight the important conservation efforts taking place around the world to preserve these spectacular springtime scenes for generations to come. We start with the results from the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, Over 600,000 birdwatchers took part across the UK, but what did we find out? View the results on our website over at www.swankymediagroup.com/nature - see you there!

BARBOUR: STONEBAY SUMMER FIT SHIRT - £64.95

In our entertainment section, we talk all things wildlife - with books from Isabelle Tree, Emma Mitchell, and Lawrence M. Krauss.

BARBOUR: ANNIE MIDI DRESS- £119

Also in our entertainment section is our wild show watch out with Netflix’s ‘Our Living World’. From the Emmy Award-winning team behind Our Great National Parks comes a revealing look at the secret network of connections that unites us all and sustains our planet’s most magical phenomenon: life itself. Narrated by Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett, this docuseries spans the globe to showcase the extraordinary creatures and ecosystems, great and small, that work together to help restore and sustain Our Living World.

To wrap up, the Conker Nature Magazine team looks forward to welcoming you back next month with another natural world filled issue.

Next month, we will be joined by wildlife conservationists from across the world celebrating their winnings of the Whitley Awards 2024! We look forward to seeing you next time!

WILDLIFE MAGAZINE

NATIONAL TRUST: EVERYDAY EXPLORER BUG KIT - £5

REGATTA: SARIKA JACKET SHELL PINK CORAL WATERPROOF - £80

NATIONAL TRUST: CURVED BRIM HAT- £22

FABLE ENGLAND: SEA SNAIL CHARM & PEARL NECKLACE £68

REGATTA: SAMARIS III WALKING BOOT - £110

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DISCOVER INTERNATIONAL DAWN CHORUS DAY SUNDAY 5TH OF MAY 2024

AT WWW.SWANKYMEDIAGROUP.COM/NATURE Photo by ambassdor: Alex Wright IG: @alex.wildliferockandroll

Sunny meadow PHOTOGRAPHER: LYUDMILA AKSENOVA IG: @MILA071977 WB: HTTPS://LAKSENA.RU WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/MILA1977FUL

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Birds portraits and life PHOTOGRAPHER: VICTORIA BUTAKOVA

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NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMN X DUNELM

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NATURE’S SIGNS THAT SPRING HAS ARRIVED IN A RIVERSIDE FOREST MEADOW PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT DUFFIELD IG:@SCOTT.DUFFIELD.PHOTOGRAPHY WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/SCOTT.DUFFIELD.PHOTOGRAPHY WB: HTTPS://SCOTTDUFFIELDPHOTOGRAPHY.PIXIESET.COM

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WILDLIFE SHOWCASE - THE BITTERN PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT DUFFIELD IG:@SCOTT.DUFFIELD.PHOTOGRAPHY WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/SCOTT.DUFFIELD.PHOTOGRAPHY WB: HTTPS://SCOTTDUFFIELDPHOTOGRAPHY.PIXIESET.COM

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ANIMALS PHOTOGRAPHER: MARK GIROUARD IG:@MDGNATURE WB: MARKDGPHOTOGRAPHY.MYPIXIESET.COM

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SPRING COMING ON WINGS PHOTOGRAPHER: EVGENIA KORCHAGOVA IG:@DEILTORA

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FATHER’S DAY WITH

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DOBBIES: CASHBAH CHAIR£129

Spring in Italy PHOTOGRAPHER: YULIA BILATO IG:@YULIA_GARDA

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Birds of Prey PHOTOGRAPHER NAME: ZOE SAUNDERS IG: @BIOLOGISTZO

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WILD WONDERS

Wild Show Watch Out

Jane: Season 2 | Apple TV Release: April 2024 Jane, a 9-year-old budding environmentalist on a quest to save endangered animals. Using her powerful imagination, Jane takes her best friends David and Greybeard the chimpanzee on epic adventures to help protect wild animals all around the world because, according to her idol Dr. Jane Goodall: “Only if we understand, will we care.

Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, can they be saved.”

Season 2 Episode : Ailuropoda melanoleuca Jane, David, and Greybeard must reunite a lost baby panda with its mother—and find out why they’re the only bears with six fingers.

Wild Show Watch Out

Season 2 Episode 2: Canis lupus -

Our Living World |Netflix - Release: April 2024

Tracking a wolf in the snowy mountains leads the trio to their neighbor’s pug, who helps connect the dots between wolves, dogs, and people.

From the Emmy Award-winning team behind Our Great National Parks comes a revealing look at the secret network of connections that unites us all and sustains our planet’s most magical phenomenon: life itself. Narrated by Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett, this docuseries spans the globe to showcase the extraordinary creatures and ecosystems, great and small, that work together to help restore and sustain Our Living World.

Episodes S1 E1 - Nature’s Amazing Work S1 E2 - The Rythm of Life S1 E3 - Breaking Point S1 E4 - Road to Recovery

Season 2 Episode 3: Chlamyphorus truncatus -

Wild Show Watch Out

With David sick in bed, Jane must partner with an unexpected ally to save Greybeard from a pride of lions.

Vibe Check | National Geographic YouTube

The three friends use their underground vessel to observe the elusive pink fairy armadillo, but a garden problem stops them in their tracks.

Season 2 Episode 4: Anthozoa While exploring the Great Barrier Reef to determine if coral is a plant or an animal, the trio learn that looks can be deceiving.

Season 2 Episode 5: Panthera leo -

Ahead of Earth Day, National Geographic announced the launch of the new digital series VIBE CHECK x NAT GEO, allowing audiences to continue their enjoyment of Earth Month by using peaceful natural sounds in their meditation practice or just to enjoy while working, studying or relaxing at home. The new series is part of the global cross-platform ourHOME campaign, Disney and National Geographic’s month-long celebration of Earth Month. Watch on YouTube.

WILD BOOK ROUND UP The Earth Transformed: An Untold History - By Professor Peter Frankopan Bloomsbury Publishing | £12.99

A Flat Place - By Noreen Masud Penguin Books Ltd | £10.99

The Wild Remedy Journal: Finding Wellness in Nature - By Emma Mitchell Michael O’Mara Books Ltd | £12.99

In this revelatory book, Frankopan shows that engagement with the natural world and with climatic change and their effects on us are not new: exploring, for instance, how the development of religion and language and their relationships with the environment; tracing how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples; scruntinising how the desire to centralise agricultural surplus formed the origins of the bureaucratic state; and seeing how efforts to understand and manipulate the weather have a long and deep history.

Taking us from the beginning of recorded history to the present day, The Earth Transformed forces us to reckon with humankind’s continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world.

Raw and radical, strange and beguiling - a love letter to Britain’s breathtaking flatlands, from Orford Ness to Orkney, and a reckoning with the painful, hidden histories they contain. Noreen’s BritishPakistani heritage makes her a partial outsider in these landscapes: both coloniser and colonised, inheritor and dispossessed. Here violence lies beneath the fantasy of pastoral innocence, and histories of harm are interwoven with nature’s power to heal. Here, as in her own family history, are many stories that resist the telling. She pursues these paradoxes fearlessly across the flat, haunted spaces she loves, offering a startlingly strange, vivid and intimate account of the land beneath her feet.

In The Wild Remedy, Emma Mitchell’s deeply personal account of her interactions with nature and its healing properties, she recorded, month by month, a year of her nature finds and wildlife discoveries and the science behind how nature affects our neurochemistry. Now, in this stunning journal, she invites her many followers to accompany her on that road, to experience nature for themselves, record their own interactions and find healing in the natural world. This unique journal includes activities, drawing prompts, contemplative quotes and lots of space for you to write about your own thoughts, feelings and experiences.

EDITORS PICK NATURAL WORLD TV SHOW EARTH SOUNDS: HEAR OUR PLANET LIKE NEVER BEFORE

By Apple TV | Narrated by Tom Hiddleston | Released in February 2024

I

mmersive audio reveals the unexpected, unfamiliar and untold ways in which animals communicate around the world. Narrated by Tom Hiddleston.

Episodes: Season 1 Episode 1: Australian Forests In ancient woodlands. a crocodile relies on sound to protect her babies, koalas release powerful roars, and an enchanting frog choir communes.

Season 1 Episode 2: The Himalayas Mountains act as a huge echo chamber for elusive creatures - like snow leopards - who use the landscape to amplify their rarely heard love songs.

Season 1 Episode 3: The Rainforests In one of the richests soundscapes, howler monkeys attempt to out-voice each other and slothes break their silence in search for mates.

Season 1 Episode 4: The Pacific Whale songs and dolphin clicks hold hidden meaning in an underwater world full of clever acoustic tricks.

Season 1 Episode 5: African Plains -

Season 1 Episode 11: Shallow Seas -

Predators listen for frantic footsteps, cocktail ants craft a battle cry, and lions embrace the transformative power of rolling rain and thunder.

New technology reveals a raucous symphony of pops and squeaks in an underwater amphitheatre full of flirtatious fish and graceful manatees.

Season 1 Episode 6: Polar Worlds In subzero conditions, emperor penguins use custom calls to find their families. After dark, the northern lights make mesmerising music.

Season 1 Episode 7: African Deserts Silence may seem golden in the desert, but secret sounds connect curious meerkats - and tip off eavesdropping predators like cobras and eagles.

Season 1 Episode 8: Atlantic Coasts Where land meets sea, rockhopper penguins, orca whales, and elephant seals find incredible ways to cut through the chaos Season 1 Episode 9: Winter Woodlands In North America’s forests, a snowy game of hide-and-seek unfolds between foxes and voles. When seasons change, elk strike up a sonic rivalry.

Season 1 Episode 10: African Water Worlds The Okavango Delta is awah with sound. And locals - from pied kingfishers to hippos - tune in to life above and below the water to survive.

Season 1 Episode 12: Listening to Our Planet Meet the scientists studying sound around the globe to help stop the rapid progression of climate change and wildlife endangerment.

PHOTOGRAPHER: SCOTT DUFFIELD IG: @SCOTT.DUFFIELD.PHOTOGRAPHY FB: WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/SCOTT.DUFFIELD.PHOTOGRAPHY WB: SCOTTDUFFIELDPHOTOGRAPHY.PIXIESET.COM

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