Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2020 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

New year, new start and all that. And where better to kick off than with a heartwarming tale of a couple that have dedicated their time to rehousing orphaned chimps in Liberia (p46)? These victims of the bush-meat trade deserve a new lease of life and a safe sanctuary. Closer to home, I’m planning a few changes this year. Confession time: I’m often guilty of overlooking plants in my search for animals. So, this year, I’m resolving to spot and learn about as many of the plants we feature in our Wild Month section (p10) as possible. Meanwhile, Liz Bonnin’s feature about the impact of meat production on our planet provides additional food for thought (p54). But mostly, I’m planning to spend as much of 2020 as I can enjoying…

Long-tailed duck Visiting from breeding grounds as far away as the Arctic Circle, there is no mistaking the long tail and predominantly white plumage, with dark wings, of a male ‘long-tail’ in its winter finery. These neat sea ducks are usually seen in flocks, with unpaired birds often choosing the wintertime to find a partner before they head north. Common scoter Breeding in tiny numbers up in Scotland’s Flow Country, the vast majority of overwintering scoter will have come from northern Europe and Russia. The all-black males have a small patch of yellow on the bill, in contrast to the dark-brown females, however, only a few select locations will host large rafts of this sociable sea duck. Red-breasted merganser One of the sawbills, these long-bodied and long-necked diving ducks have…

For the first time since local extinction in 1996, Nubian giraffes have returned to Pian Upe wildlife reserve in northeastern Uganda. Fifteen of this Critically Endangered subspecies were moved over 400km from Murchison Falls National Park in October 2019. The 11 female and 4 male subadults are aged two to four years old: “We chose younger giraffes with a longer reproductive lifespan,” says Robert Aruho, veterinarian for Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), who led the move. Pian Upe’s savannah held large numbers of giraffes in the 1960s before conflict in the Karamoja region saw them poached out. “The habitat is perfect, and effective anti-poaching measures are now capable of supporting at least 700 individuals,” explains Aruho. Nubian giraffes are Uganda’s only giraffe species and the bulk of them inhabit Murchison Falls.…

Badgers may have disappeared from the news – eclipsed by Brexit and climate change – but they’re still being slaughtered in many parts of England and Wales. The UK Government has authorised badger culls since 1975. First, they were gassed in their setts; now they are caught in cages (and shot) or hunted at night. During the past seven years alone, more than £60 million has been spent killing up to 130,000 badgers. It is the largest massacre of a protected species in living memory. The reason is simple: the farming sector blames badgers for passing a highly infectious disease – bovine tuberculosis – back to cattle. Bovine TB, as it is called, is a nightmare for many farmers and costs taxpayers £100 million every year in compensation (after the…

The African subspecies of the bearded vulture can be found throughout eastern Africa, from Ethiopia to South Africa, but is declining and only has significant populations in those two countries. In South Africa, the population is down to only 100 breeding pairs, and a total population of 320 birds. In 2015, a conservation programme began with the aim of creating a genetically viable captive population from 20 non-related founder birds. The only bearded vulture in captivity they could locate was an adult female, Lesli, which they rescued from a traditional healer. And so, to achieve their aim, conservationists from the African Raptor Centre have begun to harvest second eggs from wild nests (a technique that won’t affect the wild population), raising the chicks in captivity using bearded vulture puppets (as…

After two civil wars and a deadly Ebola outbreak, Liberia is one of the poorest and least-developed countries on Earth. As a result, it still retains some of the largest tracts of forest in West Africa and one of the biggest populations of chimps. Wildlife conservation is only just taking hold in Liberia, but there’s huge pressure to sell forest concessions to the logging and palm oil industries. New president George Weah faces a moral dilemma: can he lift the nation out of poverty and still protect its wildlife?…

An engineer by profession, J Denis Summers-Smith chose house sparrows as an amateur study subject in 1947 because they could be seen on his doorstep. Over 70 years, the modest, self-taught ornithologist has produced a plethora of books, articles and scientific papers about the birds, and has observed members of the sparrow family worldwide. His best-known book, called simply The Sparrows, is a classic monograph in the highly collectible Poyser series. “House moves were contingent on the presence of breeding house sparrows,” Denis Summers-Smith wrote, and his studies were conducted “before breakfast, on business travel, in offices, stations and even from the dentist’s chair”. Retirement brought the opportunity for more sparrow work which, now in his late 90s, he continues in north-east England. As he has said: “Sparrows live in…

Scottish film-maker Gordon Buchanan didn’t excel at school. But a stroke of luck led to his first overseas assignment – while working in a restaurant as a teenager, the owner’s partner, who happened to be a wildlife film-maker, was looking for someone to help out on a programme. Now 47, Gordon’s speciality is an immersive blend of presenting and on-camera filming in exotic locations, with an understated narration style that quietly enthrals. BBC Wildlife Magazine met him while his latest series for BBC Two, Snow Cats & Me – which follows the fortunes of lynx in Siberia – was in the final edit. On screen, your field skills as a naturalist seem to be second nature. When did you first get into watching wildlife? The Isle of Mull, where I…

DOCUMENTARY Unlocking Nature’s Secrets: The Serengeti Rules Five unsung heroes of modern ecology look back on their work and adventures in the field. BBC iPlayer, until January 2020 WEBCAM Plumgarths Wildlife Garden Bird feeders provide a helping hand over winter at the Wildlife Trusts’ headquarters. bit.ly/2qH74Jt DOCUMENTARY Natural World: Meet the Bears From finding food and raising cubs to coping with rivals and habitat loss – how are bears faring in an ever-changing world? BBC iPlayer, until October 2020…

There’s a real threat to our countryside and its flora and fauna – the ‘tidying up’ by armies of volunteers to any area that is perceived to be in need of a makeover. Recently visiting two localities, I was dismayed to find that both had become victims. The first, a wetland habitat including a pond, had been completely shorn of all its natural vegetation down to bare earth. Only a common beetle and a few ants, as far as I could discover, had escaped the wrath of the bulldozer, yet here were formerly myriad invertebrate species. At the second site, all the stones covering a ground area of several acres had been meticulously picked up and dumped into one big pile. Until quite recently, the rare beetle Cymindis axillaris (pictured)…

LIZ BONNIN The extent of deforestation caused by the beef industry was revealed to TV presenter Liz, during a trip to the Amazon rainforest. “The natural world is bowing under the pressure of meat production.” she says. See p54 AMY-JANE BEER Wildlife writer Amy examines the relationship between sparrows and humans. “The association goes way back, beginning with the birth of farming in Eurasia,” she says. See p58 MEERA SULAIMAN Turning her lens to trumpeter swans in North America, photographer Meera is pleased the species is making a comeback. “Human encroachment around the Great Lakes all but eliminated overwintering grounds for trumpeters,” she says. See p64 MICHEL D’OULTREMONT Spending time in Norway during freezing winter conditions left photographer Michel in awe of musk oxen. “They are wonderful animals, straight from…

The sight of a large raft of sea ducks bobbing about on the open water, flanked by a generous smattering of divers and grebes, is a fine display, but one which surprisingly few naturalists find the time to track down. However, with a combination of insider knowledge, timing and patience, there should be no excuses for missing out on this under-watched, and much underrated, winter wildlife spectacle. With our rich coastal waters bathed by the warming influence of the gulf stream, it is perhaps unsurprising that sea ducks, divers and grebes from breeding locations right across the northern hemisphere will choose to ring in the new year in the seas surrounding Old Blighty. This means a visit to the Moray Firth in January, for example, could see birds with Canadian,…

Hidden in plain sight is a fair way to describe one of Britain’s most cryptic mammals – the polecat, Mustela putorius. Though seeing any mustelid, particularly the small ones, must be one of the most challenging tasks for any naturalist. The best that most of us could expect is the opportunistic sighting of one of these kinetic carnivores as it bounds across a pathway. As a consequence, any sighting of any member of the weasel family is equally instilled with a sense of both luck and privilege, but none so much as a glimpse of the elusive polecat. Once one of the commonest and most widespread mustelids, it fell victim to a long history of persecution. Our brutal 19th-century attitude to anything with tooth and claw was to trap it,…

“I often find that no-one knows what it is that I want to know, so I end up doing research myself.” Science needs its specialists – those who know an awful lot about not very much. But if there’s to be any cross-fertilisation of ideas, it also needs others who know a little bit less about a whole lot more. Graeme Ruxton is just such a generalist. Ask him what he’s working on at the moment and he reels off a diverse list: How camouflage works in animals that group together; the rules social insects follow when building nests; how effectively leaf-eating insects escape predators by simply falling off their foodplant; how winged seeds work; why some snails decorate their shells with lichen; what’s the best sort of food to…

Boosts local biodiversity, such as worms and crustaceans. Reduces local ocean acidification and de-oxygenation. Cuts down local eutrophication (pollution caused by an excess of phosphorus and nitrogen). Provides coastal protection, by blunting the energy of waves and storms. Offsets climate change – cultivating just 0.001 per cent of waters suitable for kelp farming could offset the entire emissions of the global aquaculture industry. Produces climate-friendly animal feed: feeding cows 1 per cent seaweed in their diets can reduce their methane production by up to 60 per cent, slowing emissions from agriculture and improving animal health (find out more on p54). Provides a healthy food source – rich in minerals, vitamins and protein. It’s also a source of alginates that are used to make cosmetics and food thicker.…

In 400BC, Greek playwright Aeschylus was warned by a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object, and so he had taken to spending most of his time outside. The story goes that a large bird mistook Aeschylus’s bald scalp for a rock, and dropped a tortoise on his head, killing him instantly. In south-eastern Europe, bearded vultures have been documented dropping tortoises from heights to crack open their shells and access their meat.…

One of the chimps we got to know best was Max. He’s so clever – he would always work out my blind spot while I was filming and launch an attack, leaping on top of the camera. Baby chimps are highly curious and love nothing more than having new toys to play with – the shinier and more expensive-looking, the better. We became a form of enrichment for the orphans, so our equipment took quite a hammering – in the end, we had to budget for ‘chimp damage’ at around £1,000 per shoot. Radio mics were the biggest casualties, with the wires ripped to pieces.…

“Encroachment around the Lakes has all but eliminated wintering grounds for trumpeters. Without LaSalle, there’d be nowhere for them to go.” Trumpeter swans socialise on melting ice at LaSalle Park, Hamilton Harbour, Lake Ontario. The peaceful scene may be somewhat at odds with the smoke-belching chimneys of the Stelco steel mill in the distance, but that the birds are in the picture at all is something to celebrate. The trumpeter – the largest swan in the world – once nested across North America in its hundreds of thousands, but was virtually hunted out of existence for its meat, feathers and even its feet. By 1886, the species had vanished from Ontario; by 1935, just 69 clung on across the entire continent. The swan’s honking call might have been silenced for…

Gordon Buchanan’s lynx series is the ninth in a hugely popular run of documentaries, often shown over Christmas and New Year. “I’ve become known for a brand where ‘me’ is always in the title,” he says. “It’s quite funny really, as I don’t think I’m a very ‘me, me, me’ person! But being part of the Christmas schedule is great – it’s family TV for people with full stomachs!” 2011 The Bear Family & Me 2013 The Polar Bear Family & Me 2014 Snow Wolf Family & Me 2015 Gorilla Family & Me 2016 Elephant Family & Me 2016–17 Tribes, Predators & Me (two series) 2017 Reindeer Family & Me 2018 Grizzly Bear Cubs & Me 2019 Snow Cats & Me…

‘DOUGHNUT’ NUDIBRANCH Whatever this is, it seems to have more eyeballs than are strictly necessary. Doto greenamyeri is a nudibranch sea slug, only described in 2015. It’s about 15mm long, and those aren’t eyeballs. (Nudibranchs have tiny eyes and very poor eyesight; they can just about distinguish light surroundings from dark.) Those are chemically-protected protuberances known as ‘cerata’, which flamboyantly advertise their toxicity to predators and also function as gills. The cerata have been likened to honey-drizzlers and stacks of pancakes or doughnuts. This beauty, photographed in Indonesia, is grazing on its prey of choice, a colonial hydroid – a coral-like animal that is more closely related to the Portuguese man o’ war.…

There are a lot of books outlining what we can do about climate change – what makes yours different? Every author has their unique voice and style, and I have mine. I’m generally light-hearted and playful by nature, with a love of terrible puns and wordsmithery. And I have a very active relationship with nature. So I think all that comes across in the book. Your book isn’t all doom and gloom, but feels empowering… After doing the research, I did feel all doom and gloom. I think it’s important for all of us to go there and not have our heads in the sand and ignore the reality of us having lost half the world’s wildlife in the last 40 years. But we can’t get stuck in despair. Taking…

“There I was, trying to be all scientific with recordings, and I’m deceived by plumage!” Why the Montagu’s harrier? In the early 1990s, there were 15 pairs breeding in Britain. Five years ago, there were five. Now there’s only one pair, making this graceful raptor one of the rarest of all British breeding birds. Habitat loss is often blamed for the decline but, through research using satellite-tracking technology, it’s now known that these beautiful birds of prey are ‘disappearing’ on rogue shooting estates in the same way that hen harriers, goshawks, red kites and golden eagles do. Tell us about your best ‘Monty’ sighting… While travelling in Spain with the expert Finnish ornithologist Dick Forsman, we came across a field with no fewer than seven Montagu’s harriers performing the species’…

1 Gruinard Bay, Ross and Chromarty, in West Scotland consists of a large expanse of sheltered sea with numerous rocky inlets and sandy bays, which is superb for divers and grebes throughout winter and up to early May. 2 Rose Isle on the Moray coast in northeast Scotland is a great location to catch up with both common and velvet scoter, in addition to long-tailed duck. The tops of the dunes in the Forestry Commission car park offer good views. 3 Filey Bay in North Yorkshire, is located just south of the Brigg and, at high tide, it is possible to see all three species of diver. Even rarities, such as king eider and surf scoter, have been known to turn up. 4 Pagham Harbour in Chichester is now managed…

As well as the species’ scientific name, one of the polecat’s Old English tags – foulmard or foul-mart – refers to the particularly smelly nature of this animal. Mustelids as a group are not the easiest on the nose – producing social scents in the form of secretions from their anal glands – but polecats boast a notably strong odour, which they release when threatened. As they are solitary creatures, polecats can also use these glands to mark their territory.…

European eels follow the moon in the final stages of their migration from the Sargasso Sea to freshwater rivers, a new study has revealed. The eels’ journey begins with them drifting as larvae across the Atlantic to Europe’s continental shelf, where they develop into glass eels. Alessandro Cresci, of the University of Miami, showed that, in this phase, as they entered estuaries, they were mainly orientated towards the moon, which led them in a southerly direction. The eels, Cresci explains, are a single population of the same species that spread across the European continent and as far south as North Africa. Glass eels’ migration is very complex. “They need an orientation mechanism that is general enough to help them reach the coast at all possible latitudes they might be at,”…

Change in taste Pine martens have a broader diet, which changes according to the seasons, than previously understood, according to new research. Fruit is important in summer and autumn, while songbirds and small mammals are targets in breeding seasons. Bumblebee medicine Callunene, a natural nectar chemical in Calluna heather, can protect bumblebees from a harmful parasite. The discovery was made by scientists from Kew Gardens and Royal Holloway, University of London. Life after death Some corals can recover after being apparently wiped out by heatwaves. According to Science Advances, Cladocora caespitosa can regenerate from a few polyps that survive the heat by shrinking in size and retreating within the skeleton. Athletic ant Saharan silver ants can run at nearly 1m per second, reports the Journal of Experimental Biology, making them…

The success of the bearded vulture project has resulted in the creation of the Multi-species Action Plan to Conserve African-Eurasian Vultures, which covers 15 species of Old World vultures. Created after a long process of workshops, and consultations with governments and NGOs from over 100 countries, it has been adopted by the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS). It lists the priority actions – and has become the global blueprint – for vulture conservation. • Visit cms.int…

This month’s panel BIG CATS Can lions and tigers co-exist? India is the only country in the world that is currently home to both of these charismatic big cats, and history and biology say they can indeed co-exist. The felines’ ranges overlapped for millennia across much of western Asia – in India, this was the case into the early 19th century. Much as predators co-exist in Africa, tigers and lions can live together within carefully drawn boundaries. For example, they may use adjoining habitats, or the same habitats at different times. Behavioural adaptation is another strategy, particularly when it comes to hunting: tigers are largely nocturnal and solitary predators, killing prey by ambush, while lions are social felids, hunting co-operatively with their prides. The question of lions and tigers as…