Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2018 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

It was during a stay at Lulworth Cove in Dorset that I had the chance to walk across the MoD land around the abandoned village of Tyneham on one of the open weekends when no artillery firing was taking place. That was the first time I was aware of the wildlife treasure houses contained within these army training ranges. Farming land left virtually untouched for decades promotes a profusion of plants and animal species, the like of which our countryside has hardly seen since the pre-War years. Ben Hoare, our features editor, was privileged to be allowed to spend the day on parts of Salisbury Plain that the public are not normally allowed to visit, and he reports on p22 on some interesting studies being conducted in amongst the tank…

Most polychaete worms are covered in hair-like bristles, so they also go by the name of bristle worms. They usually have well-developed jaws and each body segment has a pair of limb-like muscular protrusions. These ‘limbs’ can be used to crawl and burrow. In some species, such as green paddle worms, they have become flattened into little oars, enabling the worms to actively swim around. With over 10,000 species of polychaete known, including the fearsome bobbit worms of BBC’s Blue Planet II , it’s a body plan that works well.…

THE GENOME An organism’s genetic recipe is encoded on the strings of DNA that form the chromosomes within each of its cells. The code is written using just four different chemical ‘letters’, and their precise order determines which protein building blocks are manufactured. An organism’s entire genetic code is called a genome. In humans it contains more than three billion letters, though the axolotl salamander’s is 10 times as big. Hundreds of species’ genomes have now been sequenced, providing a wealth of information on evolutionary relationships and biological function.…

Mature male gharials develop a large lump called the ghara (Hindi for ‘earthen pot’) at the end of their snouts. This cartilaginous structure, covering the nostrils, makes the males visibly different from females. Often, it is distinctive enough to tell individual males apart. Its internal architecture includes many folds. When a male demonstrates his machismo, he squeezes air through these nasal passages, adding a buzz to his snorting. Without opening their jaws, male gharials also make a popping sound underwater, audible to their rivals within 500m. Experts speculate that the ghara may act as a resonator, advertising an animal’s identity and location.…

Now in its ninth year, the British Wildlife Photography Awards recognises the incredible talents of photographers working in the UK. The competition highlights the great diversity and wealth of the country’s wildlife and raises awareness of our natural habitats. By entering the contest you will have a chance to win £5000 and benefit from national publicity. The prize fund includes products from lead sponsor Canon. Winners of the 15 categories and highly commended entrants will have their images showcased in a touring exhibition and stunning photo book. They will also be invited to an awards ceremony in London. BBC WILDLIFE ANIMAL PORTRAITS AWARD We are delighted to announce that BBC Wildlife Magazine is once again sponsoring the ‘Animal Portraits’ category. BBC Wildlife Magazine editor, Sheena Harvey, says: “This…

• Croatia has eight national parks, 11 natural parks and numerous other protected areas. The rocky karst of the Adriatic coast, between Zadar and Split, is home to rock partridges and western rock nuthatches, while inland of the coastal ridge, the Velebit Mountains near Krasno Polje, have both three-toed and middle spotted woodpeckers, hazel grouse and capercaillies. • In Serbia, where the Danube is joined by the Sava River in Belgrade (and a few km each side of the city) there are breeding ferruginous ducks, black storks and white-tailed eagles, and the eagles can even be seen in Belgrade’s centre. • Around Mount Kapaonik and Mount Tara in the southern mountains, look for wallcreepers (top), Tengmalm’s owls and white-backed woodpeckers. • This year’s Champions of the Flyway bird race, taking…

Great tits usually lay in the region of 5–11 eggs per clutch, and blue tits lay 6–12, though the latter are known to produce up to 16. The female lays one egg each morning, and on the final day starts incubating her clutch – this process typically takes 12–14 days. Tit eggs are cream with brown speckles. Historically, it was thought that the speckles helped with camouflage. But Andy Gosler realised that speckling wasn’t uniform: the first egg in a clutch tends to be less marked than the last, and some females had far more speckled eggs than others. In fact, in great tits the speckles seem to have a structural function, as they occur where the shell is thinner. Females nesting on low-calcium soils laid thinner-shelled, more speckled eggs…

THE PANEL BIOLOGY Q Do scavengers ever eat their own? A You could view cannibalism as making perfect sense: the body of a member of your own species should contain exactly what you need for nourishment. However, it’s also likely to contain parasites and infections that are particular to your kind. Having a cast-iron stomach helps, but even then it seems that mammalian scavengers, such as wild boar, martens and foxes, actively avoid the meat of their own species. In fact, they tend to avoid carnivore carcasses in general, perhaps because many parasites are able to infect closely related species. There are exceptions, though. Leopards, for example, are known to eat dogs as well as the carcasses of defeated rivals. Stuart Blackman BOTANY Q What is an extra-floral nectary? A…

WHO? TIM PRESTON is a keen wildlife photographer based in Wellington, Shropshire. He spends his spare time observing his local wildlife. WHAT? GREY SEALS WHERE? DONNA NOOK, LINCOLNSHIRE TIM FINALLY VISITS DONNA NOOK TO PHOTOGRAPH GREY SEALS, AND WITNESSES THE MIRACLE OF BIRTH. Donna Nook, north Lincolnshire, is a place I’ve been wanting to visit to photograph grey seals for many years. But it’s a long way from my home in Wellington in Shropshire to this national nature reserve on the southern side of the mouth of the Humber, and somehow I’d always found a reason not to go. This year, however, I was determined to make it for the winter pupping season. After leaving at 6am on a cold, dark and drizzly morning in late November, I arrived in…

JANAKI LENIN Janaki writes about Indian wildlife. She says,“Uniqueness runs deep in gharials – their pescatarian diet, riverine habitat, and now, alloparenting. I’m amazed they are related to other crocodilians at all.” JO WIMPENNY Jo is a science writer.“Wytham Woods is a true living laboratory” she says.“Great tits have been studied here since 1947, making this one of the longest-running biological experiments in the world!” NATALIE LAWRENCE Natalie loves animal oddities. “Pangolins are perhaps the most spectacularly unusual mammals in existence, and are still illegally traded worldwide,” she says.…

MOUNTAIN BLACKBIRDS Ring ouzels ( below ) are back this month. These upland thrushes overwinter in Iberia and North Africa, although a few seem to be risking winter stays in England and Wales. Coastal hills with short turf attract the recently arrived migrants, before they head to nesting areas in Wales and the north. BABY STEPS The first of the year’s badger cubs should be making tentative nocturnal excursions out of their family’s sett, especially in the south. They will have been born underground in January or February, so are not yet weaned and won’t go far. AMPHIBIAN ALERT If while watching spawning frogs, toads or newts this spring you think you’ve seen diseased individuals, make sure to report them to Garden Wildlife Health, an excellent project run by the…

“MANY WOODLAND SPRING FLOWERS ARE ALSO EPHEMERAL BY NATURE, MAKING THE TIMING OF YOUR VISIT EVERYTHING.” A walk in almost any landscape with trees at this time of year will enable the keen-eyed observer to spot a range of wild flowers, but it is in those locations with continuous tree cover for at least the last 400 years where floral diversity will be at its highest. Many of the spring flowers that inhabit these ancient woodlands are termed ancient woodland indicators, as they need the precise conditions offered by stable and continuous wooded cover to thrive. Additionally, with this suite of flowers being slow to colonise new habitats, they are less likely to be found in a forest that has been recently planted. Bluebells are an obvious example of an…

BIG BAT DOWN UNDER A giant fossilised relative of New Zealand’s strange burrowing bats has been unearthed on South Island. According to Scientific Reports, Vulcanops jennyworthyae foraged on foot as well as on the wing, and was about three times the size of the modern bat. SUCKER PUNCH The discovery of fossil butterflies 70 million years older than the first flowering plants, reported in Science Advances, challenges the idea that the insects’ characteristic coiled proboscis evolved to tap nectar. Indeed, flowers may even have evolved in response to the insects. LOT OF ROTTERS Dead trees harbour 12 times as many species of fungi than was thought. Modern genetic techniques allow fungi to be identified even without the visible fruiting bodies, and The ISME Journal reports that 300 trunks in German…

FAIRY SHRIMP Chirocephalus diaphanous Tank tracks compress the ground, creating water-filled hollows perfect for this quirky 13mm-long crustacean, in the UK found at only a handful of locations. “Army vehicles disperse its eggs, which stay dormant in mud until rain triggers their development,” says MoD ecologist Iain Perkins. WHINCHAT Saxicola rubetra Around 400–500 pairs of whinchats nest on Salisbury Plain, lowland England’s last significant population. “They love to perch on tall umbellifer flowers, such as wild carrot,” says Ian Henderson of the BTO, “especially on warm, dry valley sides with lots of insect-rich bare ground.” BROKEN-BELTED BUMBLEBEE Bombus soroeensis “Salisbury Plain’s MoD grassland is vast, flower-rich and not all cut in July, so is fantastic for bumblebees,” says Richard Comont of Bumblebee Conservation. “Several rare species still flourish, including this…

“I HAVE DIRECTED THE BUSINESS TO PURSUE AN AUDIT OF SEAWORLD.” ANCIENT ANTS Richmond Park in south-west London is home to 400,000 anthills and 3 billion ants weighing 7.5 tonnes, according to a citizen science project initiated by The Royal Parks charity. The oldest anthills, created by yellow meadow ants, had been there for at least 150 years, the study found. Thomas Cook Group chief executive officer Peter Fankhauser responds to a request from the animal rights group PETA for it to stop selling any tickets to SeaWorld because of its policy of keeping orcas and other dolphins in captivity.…

What was the documentary? It’s called Trophy: The Big Game Hunting Controversy, and while it is quite interesting, it only gives one side of the argument. It’s a film about hunting, not conservation or the issues facing conservation. What’s wrong with that? It’s a very small part of the whole picture. For instance, it didn’t talk about how viable it is to breed animals for hunting. As a story about people who hunt it was interesting, but there should be a balancing point of view. Was there anything else you didn't like? There was quite a lot about the farmer [John Hume] who is breeding thousands of rhinos for their horns – what it didn’t say is that that’s monoculture, and the countryside around his farm should have trees, with…

“IT WAS GOOD FOR PIRATES AND PROFITEERS BUT THERE WAS NO LEGAL FRAMEWORK TO CONTROL THE CHAOS.” WHAT IS THE LAW OF THE SEA? The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is an attempt to manage how everyone uses the sea and make it fair and sustainable. Dubbed a “constitution for two-thirds of the planet”, it covers everything from the definition of territorial waters, marine pollution and the rights of shipping traffic to fisheries and mineral resources management. WHY WAS IT SET UP? For a long time, a nation’s territorial waters were measured by the maximum range of a cannon ball (three nautical miles, or 5.6km) and everything else was a free-for-all. It was good enough for pirates and profiteers but there was no legal framework…

HISTORICAL USES • Pangolin meat was a valuable food source in Asia and Africa for thousands of years. • Historical reports describe physicians in Asia using pangolin scales to cure all sorts of ailments, from “bile disturbances” to cholera. • Just as pangolins use scales to protect themselves, so artisans crafted elaborate body armour from pangolin scales in China. MODERN USES • Today, culinary uses of pangolins range from bushmeat in Africa to delicacies in high-end Asian restaurants. They’re even used to make ‘pangolin wine’. • Pangolin body parts are still used in traditional medicines across Africa and Asia, and falsely believed to have medicinal and aphrodisiac properties. • Pangolin scales are now trafficked to the USA because they contain Tramadol HCL, a material for synthesising the dangerously addictive illegal…

Why write about ravens? I’m fascinated by raven intelligence and our shared history. With the world becoming a darker place, it seemed the perfect time to explore the life of this beautiful, awe-inspiring bird. How are ravens currently faring in the UK? Since 1995, there has been a 45 per cent increase in the number of ravens in Britain and a 121 per cent increase in England. There are now well in excess of 12,000 breeding pairs across the country, with birds present in every county. Are ravens still at odds with humans? Ravens are controversial among farmers who claim that the birds menace livestock, particularly lambs. I visited sheep farmers in northern Scotland who are calling to be allowed to cull ravens. It is an ongoing debate, with some…

What did you learn that most fascinated you? For part three, we filmed boxer crabs that live in the Red Sea. These little crabs hold tiny anemones hostage on their claws, using their toxic tendrils for protection. If an individual loses one, it tears the surviving anemone in half and both sides regenerate via asexual reproduction. It’s an ingenious strategy. Were there any particularly memorable filming moments? Yes – coconut crabs on Christmas Island. They are known as ‘robber crabs’ as they are naturally inquisitive and supposedly steal anything. We thought they would be easy to film if a few items were laid out to pique their interest, but to start with they weren't bothered. After waiting for hours, we finally broke for lunch, which happened to be a Chinese.…

America's Wild Heartlands TV NAT GEO WILD Starts 20 March A five-part series showcasing the wilderness of North America, travelling deep into the frontier landscapes of this vast continent, from the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio Rivers to the dramatic Appalachian Mountains, and telling the stories of the wildlife – big and small – that survives here. Just some of the wild stars include river otters (below), foxes, timber wolves, great grey owls and thousands of snow geese that arrive with winter.…

Fish don’t come much cuter than this little juvenile star puffer. But the adults are giants of the pufferfish world, reaching well over a metre in length. As they grow, those mesmerising, swirling bands of colour break up into a swathe of black polka dots. And being puffers, they can increase their apparent size spectacularly by gulping down seawater. Widespread and common on Indo-Pacific coral reefs, this is one of the puffer species that are prized in Japan for their meat – known collectively as fugu. It’s a potentially deadly delicacy, though, as the fish accumulate a potent neurotoxin in their livers, skin and ovaries and must be prepared by specially trained chefs.…

“AN OSPREY PLUNGING TO CATCH A FISH IS EDGE-OF-THE-SEAT STUFF - UNBEATABLE WILDLIFE DRAMA.” This April the osprey is one of six iconic reintroduced species to grace a special new set of Royal Mail stamps. Yet its dramatic Scottish comeback in 1954, when a pair nested at RSPB Loch Garten reserve, was actually natural – the Scandinavian birds had been passing through the Highlands on migration. So, too, was the eventual return of nesting ospreys to Cumbria in 2001. But as the ‘fish hawk’ might easily have taken 150 years to re-colonise the entire country on its own, birds were also reintroduced further south at Rutland Water. When the young unpaired ospreys hatched at Rutland wandered in search of new nesting areas, they speeded up the resurgence elsewhere. The latest…

Walk a storm-blown strand-line and mingled with the flotsam and jetsam of humanity you’ll find a tangle of natural treasures. If you’re lucky, these will include a strange creature called the sea mouse, Aphrodita aculeata. It’s a psychedelic fuzz of fur and spine, and can look like both something and nothing. From one angle it resembles a sandy fur-ball. But from another, it catches the light and your eye. Pop it in some seawater and it takes on a completely new vibrance. It becomes a splash of fibre-optic brilliance. The sea mouse simply doesn’t conform to what you might expect a ‘worm’ to be. Far from being a slim tube it is quite chunky: up to 20cm long and 5cm wide. The body is covered in a velveteen pelage, and…

LIVING WITH LYNX Dr David Hetherington and members of the Paisley Natural History Society will be examining whether we could live alongside lynx in the UK. 5 April, http://bit.ly/2slzVDd SUFFOLK SPECIES Learn about the wildlife around Stow Maries Aerodrome, a WW1 military aviation museum, with wildlife photographer Russell Savory at this RSPB talk at Oulton Broad. 6 April, http://bit.ly/2nReUuu JOIN A STAG PARTY This month sees the start of the annual Great Stag Hunt, organised by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species. Look out for this impressive beetle and submit your sightings. April onwards, http://bit.ly/1TLfHGz PUT PEN TO PAPER Be inspired by the landscapes and wildlife of Eycott Hill Nature Reserve, Cumbria, at this creative writing workshop led by tutor Geraldine Green. You’ll spend time outdoors before crafting your poetry…

• MARINE LIFE SHARKS THAT EAT THEIR GREENS VEGETARIAN BONNETHEAD SHARKS MAINLY FEED ON PLANT MATERIAL AND ARE ABLE TO DIGEST IT. Sharks are surely the last animals you’d expect to enjoy their vegetables. But bonnethead sharks are able to get by on little else. Back in 2007, it was discovered that up to 62 per cent of the gut contents of these sharks was plant material from their preferred seagrass meadow habitat. What wasn’t clear was whether the sharks reap any nutritional benefit from all that salad. It was speculated that their short guts – typical of an exclusive meat-eater – might not even be able to digest it. It turns out that they can. Biologists have now found that bonnetheads can thrive on a 90 per cent seagrass…

“WE KNEW DEATH WOULD CREEP THROUGH THE SHADOWS SO WE BARKED AT THE MOON.” As a nipper I’d have been panting in its crown in less than a minute, with green-stained knees, twigs in my hair and a muesli of barky bits down my shirt. The oak is squat with a fat belly and brawny arms, opened sideways, trimmed in a rich velvet of mosses and lichens – medieval in fashion but younger in years. Its sprawling form tells me it spent its youth in a field, but it is now cocooned in a forest, overreached by an upstart pine and jostled by an impatient throng of irritating birch. Soon after we began to explore these woods it shed a limb, a giant python which curled across our path and…

LOOK FOR DROPPINGS Hedgehog scats ( below ) are quite distinct: about 2–3cm long, typically blunt at one end, gritty, black and studded with shiny bits like glitter (inedible insect wing-cases and exoskeletons). They’re often deposited on lawns, so easy to see. LISTEN FOR SNUFFLING These are noisy mammals. You might hear coughs, snuffles, huffs or wheezes – especially on balmy evenings during the May–July breeding season, when amorous hogs can sound like little steam trains. SET UP A TRAILCAM Fix one at ground level near suitable-looking access points (experiment with different positions). Even if you don’t strike gold, you’ll get insights into your garden’s other nocturnal visitors. FINALLY, ASK AROUND! If hedgehogs live in your street, estate or suburb, the odds are a neighbour will have noticed one. Also…

One of the founders of the American clothing brands The North Face and Patagonia has had his dream of creating protected state wildernesses out of privately bought land in Chile come to fruition. Doug Tompkins died in 2015, but in January his wife Kristine Tompkins handed over 400,000ha of land to the Chilean government which have become Patagonia and Pumalín National Parks. As part of the deal, Chile has expanded three existing national parks with 3.6m ha of federal land. Tompkins, when he was president of Tompkins Conservation, said the deal was “a major milestone of our first 25 years of work”.…

“CORNCRAKES BEGAN TO DECLINE WHEN THE CUTTING OF CROPS BECAME MECHANISED.” The current UK strongholds for corncrakes are the Inner and Outer Hebrides, with smaller numbers in other areas of Scotland, and a reintroduced population on Cambridgeshire’s Nene Washes. After years of decline to a low point in the early 1990s, conservation work brought numbers up to 1,289 calling males in 2014, though only 866 males were recorded in 2017. The first birds arrive back in the UK in April (having spent the winter in sub-Saharan Africa) and depart in September. The species was once familiar across lowland farms, requiring vegetation 20cm tall, but it began to decline when the cutting of grass and crops became mechanised in the early 20th century. This – combined with the use of fertilisers,…

The Dutch explorer Jan Huyghen van Linschoten encountered a fabulous and unusual beast while travelling around India in the late 16th century. It was a “fish of most wonderfull and strange forme”, about the size of a “middle-sized dogge”, and had been hauled out of a river in Goa. It ran around “snorting like a hogge” and was covered in “scales a thumb’s breadth, harder than iron or steel”. When attacked, it rolled into a ball and could not be prised open. Van Linschoten was baffled, though he had seen plenty of exotic wonders. Particularly when the creature unfurled itself and scuttled off to safety. What on Earth was this thing? Four hundred years later, we can infer that this ‘fish’ was most likely a pangolin. There aren’t any other…

It can take just one image to change attitudes entirely, and the sight of scientist Jenny Lavers scooping 241 pieces of plastic from the stomach of a dead shearwater is a glaring reminder that the stuff we mindlessly chuck away is rapidly suffocating our seas and everything in them. To understand the global mega-issue that is single-use plastic, try the 2016 film A Plastic Ocean (Netflix), written and directed by Craig Leeson and featuring contributions from a raft of experts and scientists, including David Attenborough and Sylvia Earle. From sea to slope, South Korea has been the focus of our attention for the past month with the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics. To discover the wild secrets of this little-known land, tune into South Korea: Earth's Hidden Wilderness (BBC iPlayer, until…

A Bandhavgarh is one of four national parks in India whose names are synonymous with tigers. Home to a dense population of nearly 50 individuals spread across its 1,200km2 , Bandhavgarh is one of the best reserves in the country for an encounter with Asia’s iconic big cat. Bandhavgarh was the home of B2 – arguably the world’s most famous tiger – who resided here until 2011, when he died of injuries sustained following a clash with a younger male. Thousands of tourists are thought to have visited the park just to see and photograph him. Bandhavgarh’s tigers – and other predators, which include leopards and the Indian wild dog (dhole) – are supported by large numbers of spotted deer (chital), nilgai (Asia’s largest antelope species), sambar and the diminutive…

Stirred awake I found Ross Piper’s article on wood ants fascinating (Games of Thrones, December 2017). While out in my local woodland during late January, I saw loads of wood ants emerging from their nest. This seems very early in the year to me – I sometimes see the odd one but never this many, this early. Debbie Rigden, via Facebook. Entomologist Ross Piper replies: The worker ants will overwinter in the nest, but even in the depths of winter the full power of the sun falling on their nest for a good amount of time will be enough to stir them into activity and to bathe in its rays. Pet peeve I was annoyed by Mark Winson’s letter (A wildlife catastrophe, December 2017) on cat-proofing bird feeders. He suggests…