Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2020 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

Bait balls, those tightly formed swirling masses of fish that twist and turn in unison, are a mesmerising natural spectacle. But, for the fish – in this case Atlantic horse mackerel – they are a last-ditch attempt to avoid being eaten by predators. While those at the centre of the ball are offered some protection from hungry jaws, the sheer number and proximity of these horse mackerel simultaneously create an all-you-can-eat buffet for the European barracudas and bluefish eagerly circling them.…

Sand lizard By far the rarest of our three native lizards, this beautiful creature is confined to just a few sand dunes and heaths across England – though reintroduction programmes have recently helped to establish new populations. It is more robust and bulkier than its common counterpart. Males are easiest to spot in spring, as their large heads and flanks become flushed bright green to attract prospective mates. Northern marsh orchid This pretty plant is bright purple, with dark spots and lines marking the flowers, but it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish from other marsh orchid species. It flowers from late May through to July, and is most abundant in damp, coastal dune slacks. As its name suggests, the species’ main range is in Scotland, Wales and north-west England.…

RED LIST STATUS: CRITICALLY ENDANGERED Why did the lesser Bermuda snail go extinct in the wild? The last live individuals were seen in Bermuda more than 15 years ago. The introduction of other snail species such as the predatory rosy wolf snail, which was introduced as biocontrol, has proved troublesome to the native population. In 2005 seven species of terrestrial worm were recorded on Bermuda, of which three are known to eat snails. Also, Bermudian land snails have not been observed sealing their shells and may be prone to drying out during warm conditions. What about changes to habitat? Natural habitats are confined to a few isolated patches mainly within parks and nature reserves. These areas continue to be degraded by invasive species, and it is reasonable to assume that…

WHAT IS IT? As carnivores go, butterworts are at the daintier end of the spectrum. No big teeth or sharp claws, but delicate pink flowers nodding on slender stalks and plump rosettes of sticky leaves that trap and digest insects – a vital source of sustenance in the plants’ nutrient-poor habitats. WHERE IS IT? This new member of the genus was found growing directly on the bare rock of a vertical sandstone cliff in the spray of a waterfall in the Peruvian Andes. The first specimens were collected above the celebrated tombs built by the mysterious Chachapoyas culture at Mummy Lake. SB FIND OUT MORE PhytoKeys: bit.ly/2Rg068f…

Using animals to restore the grassland ecosystem that existed in the Arctic before humans settled there between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago could help prevent the release of vast amounts of greenhouse gases, according to a study from the University of Oxford. Huge quantities of organic material are currently frozen in the permafrost beneath the surface of the Arctic. But rising temperatures could cause the permafrost to thaw, releasing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. The thaw could be prevented, the study suggests, by introducing bison and horses to graze on the shrubs and trees growing in the Arctic. Large herbivores would clear the trees and trample the snow, allowing grass growth that would increase the amount of sunlight reflected back into space and enable…

1 SPOT NEOTROPICAL BIRDS There’s plenty of British birdlife to keep us busy in quarantine, but for something more exotic, sit back and enjoy The Birders – a 50-minute documentary film that celebrates the dazzling birdlife of northern Colombia, and follows birder and biologist Diego Calderón Franco as he sets off on a road trip to find it. For lockdown, the film-makers have added a checklist of 100 species to identify. No binoculars required, but Cornell’s Merlin bird ID app may help with those tricky tanagers. wherenext.com/birders 2 EXPLORE THE GREAT TROSSACHS FOREST For a change from your regular daily walk, lose yourself in the 'Highlands in miniature' – a 4,400ha expanse of lochs, rugged hills and woodland north of Glasgow. This 360° virtual tour enables you to zoom down…

For the residents of Churchill, having polar bears as close neighbours is just a fact of life. Yet the town takes no chances and, as a result, there have been no fatal attacks here for nearly 40 years. Warning signs glare from every corner; a nightly siren wails on the stroke of 10pm to chivvy you home. Doors are left unlocked should someone need a quick getaway, and children make the short journey to school in cars and buses. On Halloween, trick-or-treating is only possible because the authorities form a virtual human chain around Churchill’s streets. If a bear wanders into the town or its surrounds, the Polar Bear Alert Program (PBA) responds immediately. Bears are warded off by ‘hazing’ – yelling, revving engines and use of ‘bear bangers’, and…

ROSS HODDINOTT Ross is a wildlife and landscape photographer as well as a photography tutor specialising in Devon and Cornwall. rosshoddinott.co.uk MORE ONLINE View a woodland photography tutorial with Ross (How to Photograph Trees, Mushrooms and Rivers) on Nature TTL's YouTube channel.…

How did you get into wildlife gardening? Mostly due to a childhood of being immersed in nature and surrounded by a family of naturalists and horticulturalists – but mainly Mum’s influence in being a very keen gardener! At an early age, our parents installed a wildlife pond in the back garden, where we spent many an hour mesmerised by the newts, frogs and dragonflies that would visit. We also witnessed a huge decline in local songbirds and in particular the song thrush, house sparrow and swift, which we used to see in the dozens. Through our work, we soon realised we could actively encourage these species back into people’s gardens. Which gardening achievement are you most proud of? It is every time we receive an email or text from a…

Floating on air This photo was taken during a trip to Greece, on Kerkini lake, where a big population of Dalmatian pelicans spends winter. Those that were landing near our boat were reflected in the mirror of the water. I tried panning with my camera, and it let me eventually catch the bird sharp, just a moment before it spoiled the immaculate surface of the lake. Tomasz Szpila, Bulowice, Poland 1 In the shadows Crested black macaques are endemic to the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Seeing them in the wild was a humbling experience, as humans are responsible for their biggest challenges. I wanted to capture what would be lost if we don’t protect them. Kevin De Vree, Erpe-Mere, Belgium 2 Fancy feet Probably the most stylish insect I found…

1 | NIGHTINGALE Bursting into song When the human world is in turmoil, we can all take comfort in the beyond-human one. Birdsong is proven to give us a natural high, and one song in particular has been written about by almost every nature writer: that of the male nightingale. Shy and dowdy he may be, but when he opens that beak, he has the power and clarity of an opera singer, and the improvisation and range of a jazz diva. Though legendary for singing on May nights, this relative of the robin also performs in early morning and at dusk. The fact that it skulks in the shadows only adds to the sense of occasion. New undergrowth and scrub are what the species needs, ideally less than 10 years…

The bare statistics do not do justice to the enterprise as a whole – seven organisations collaborating to create a ‘super reserve’ of 3,300ha, which is home to 5,000 species of invertebrates. This is what’s happened on the Isle of Purbeck, the peninsula shielding Poole Harbour in south Dorset. It is Britain’s most important lowland heathland site, one of the few areas in Britain where all six native reptiles can be found, and home to rare birds such as Dartford warblers and woodlarks. Here, conservation groups such as the National Trust and RSPB, and the Government’s wildlife agency Natural England, have been working for more than 50 years to conserve what’s left of this precious habitat. The creation of the Purbeck Heaths National Nature Reserve, according to the RSPB’s Dorset…

A parasite known only to be hosted in North America by the Virginia opossum is infecting sea otters along the West Coast. Sea otters ranging from Southern California to Alaska were tested for the presence of Sarcocystis neurona, a parasite and important cause of death in the marine mammals. Several infected sea otters were found in the northern part of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, where Virginia opossums are not known to live. “We were pretty sure it comes from the land, but we didn’t really know how this pathogen finds them,” says lead author Tristan Burgess. Results suggest the pathogen may be carried by water runoff from land to sea, where it can be concentrated through ocean movement and prey species, such as clams. Most infections occurred in California…

DELUGES UNLEASHED by tropical storms can create perfect conditions for desert locusts, and scientists argue that this is what produced the immense clouds of billions of insects seen over East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia since 2019. The current swarms are the biggest for 70 years in Kenya, and for nearly 30 years in Ethiopia and Pakistan, leading to claims that China would send an army of 100,000 hungry ducks to combat the threat to crops. In common with other locusts around the world, desert locusts are grasshoppers that sometimes breed explosively after rain causes a sudden growth in vegetation and enables their numbers to rise exponentially. East Africa and the Middle East were hit by a series of larger-than-average cyclones in quick succession over the past two…

It’s mid-January and I’m wading thigh-high through a stream, looking for kingfishers. Minnows dart before each footstep. I hear a faint, high-pitched peeping sound ahead and slow my pace. A flash of orange and cobalt blue whizzes by. As an artist, I find the vivid pallet of kingfishers irresistible and I have painted them often. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about their behaviour, but I’ve always longed to discover what happens when these bright birds disappear underground to bring up their young in the dark. I follow the sound, looking for a steep bank where this kingfisher might make its nest. But I find nowhere suitable and so head instead to some nearby flooded gravel pits owned by a friend. She tells me the bank where kingfishers regularly…

During an early morning drive in the back of a pickup truck on a logging road, I hear the co-ordinated and exceptionally loud vocalisations of a pair of Bornean gibbons for the first time. The noise resounds through the lush forest like a car alarm as the Endangered primates proclaim their territorial boundaries. They are not alone: the hum of cicadas and intermittent drumming of a woodpecker also fills the humid air. I can’t see the gibbons but our guide Terance Bin Bukarak paints a vivid picture with an amusing impersonation of them high up in branches, peering out across the mixed dipterocarp forest: “They know we are here,” he says. As a member of the Dusun Kota Belud tribe, Terance was taught how to hunt for food in the…

Too quick to cull? I am surprised to read that these so-called conservationists plan to cull the beautiful American mink (Wild News, February 2020). Why not gather them all and place them in a special environment where they can continue to live like all other animal species? Why are humans so bent on destroying what they cannot create. I suggest that to save this planet, we should start with culling the human race down 6 billion out of 7 billion. This statement of mine is more direct compared to Sir David Attenborough’s comments in one of his documentaries. Jan Anthonisz, via email Human population How refreshing to read Mark’s column on human overpopulation (My Way of Thinking, February 2020). It is regrettable that previous clumsy attempts at population control have…

The river separating villagers from the jungle in Chitwan, southern Nepal, was blanketed in fog as we set off for an early morning safari. The guide standing atop our canoe used his oar to gently tap away the gathering crocodile snouts, their eyes lighting up like constellations against the murky backdrop. “Even from a distance, we could admire the flicking of antennae-like ears.” Chitwan is famous for its Bengal tiger population and its crashes (yes, that’s the correct collective noun) of greater one-horned rhinos. I was there, with my partner, to see the latter. We alighted on the far riverbank and briskly walked to the safety of an open-top jeep, where the guide laid down the rhino rules of the jungle. Rule number one: if a rhino starts hurtling towards…

A leopard may not be prone to changing its spots, but these markings do differ across the big cat’s body. ‘Rosettes’ can be seen along the animal’s sides, back and upper tail, while its legs, belly, neck and face have simple black spots in various sizes. Even their whisker bases are spotted – as seen here, while this individual in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park has a good old nosy around the camera – creating unique patterns that can be used to help with identification.…

Dunes are a world of constant change and movement, and must surely be the most mobile of all the UK’s land habitats. Peppered along stretches of our coastline, with a distinct westerly and northerly bias, they must also represent one of our least modified and therefore most ‘natural’ vegetation types. Typically, dunes are characterised by ridges or hillocks of sand beyond the reach of the highest tides, and usually run in bands parallel to the sea. Among them are low-lying depressions, called slacks. Dunes also tend to become progressively taller and more vegetated the further from the sea you go. Britain’s oldest dune systems date back 9,000 years, but all coastal dunes form the same way. Sand is blown onto the beach before becoming trapped by either debris or plant…

The past decade has seen an accumulation of high-profile and influential studies showing that ocean acidification – the result of CO2 emissions dissolving in seawater – disrupts basic fish behaviour. But according to new research, most of it is wrong. Acidification has been reported to interfere with smell, hearing, vision and activity levels in fish, especially in coral reef species. One well-publicised study found that it caused fish to swim towards predators rather than away from them. Timothy Clark of Australia’s Deakin University says his interest was raised by the unusually strong effects of CO2 identified in the studies. “Yet there had been no attempt by independent research groups to replicate these profound findings.” Working with an international team of colleagues, Clark embarked on a three-year project to do exactly…

The Rothamsted Insect Survey, a long-term study of moths and aphids, has shed light on how these two insect groups are faring. Between 1969 and 2016, scientists from Rothamsted Research collected daily data from a total of 137 traps across the UK (112 light traps for moths; 25 suction traps for aphids). The study has revealed that, overall, moths have declined by 31 per cent, with losses specifically in coastal, urban and woodland habitats. In contrast, overall numbers of aphids have remained more or less constant. But while rarer species have held steady or even slightly increased, the three most common aphids – the bird cherry oat, the apple grass and the English grain – have all declined. Given these three are all crop pests, a likely explanation for their…

Biologists in Spain have identified a significant driver behind the decline of Europe’s urban house sparrows. “We’ve been recording numbers in Valencia since 2014,” says Edgar Bernat-Ponce of the city’s university. “In that time, some parks have replaced their grass with concrete and artificial grass, so this gave us a chance to see how it affects sparrows.” They found that numbers dropped by 60 per cent in resurfaced parks compared to 15 per cent in unaltered ones over the same period. Artificial surfaces yield fewer insects and seeds for the birds. “The loss of green areas looks like the most important factor in Valencia right now,” says Bernat-Ponce. Perhaps not in UK cities, though, where declines have been recorded since the 1920s. “There are real differences in the urban environments…

PERU Just one eDNA survey can yield surprisingly rich results. In collaboration with WWF Peru, NatureMetrics analysed eDNA samples from 40 sites along the Marañón River Basin to check for the presence of river dolphins, Amazon manatees and migratory catfish. The analysis showed that many catfish species were present throughout the river, Amazon manatees at 12 sites, and river dolphins in all lowland sites. The study also detected the presence of more than 155 mammals, including the rarely observed night monkey and kinkajou, 74 amphibians, 65 birds and 6 reptiles.…

The first breath I take as I walk into the garden elicits a tiny gasp, as it lines my mouth with a newness that spring dawns create. Some days I get up and by the time I’m brushing my teeth, it’s already clear to me that today is not the day. It’s one of those days, one which will struggle to get going, limp miserably through its 24 hours and probably be forgotten by the end of the month. You see, I don’t feel happy. To be clear, I’m not depressed either but I’m definitely not in the mood to rival Sid and Nancy’s (my black miniature poodles) insatiable desire to rush out and go wild. I open the door and they explode into the garden. I trudge back to…

There’s a painting by Frederic Remington – an artist known for his impressions of the Old West – of a herd of bison being led by a bull. “That never woulda happened,” says retired biologist and wildlife guide Pat Rousseau. “The females make all the decisions – where you eat, where you lay down, who babysits.” Pat is leading chapter one of my summer mission through the province of Manitoba to see the ‘big five’ – a term famously coined by big-game hunters in Africa, now used to market wildlife experiences across the globe – and we’ve just got our first tick. Metres from the minibus are 20 members of the 40-strong plains bison herd that resides at Riding Mountain National Park – all shaggy coats, humped shoulders and low-slung…

TV choice Following the herd Join a group of elephants as they embark on a mammoth journey. ELEPHANT DISNEY+, STREAMING NOW Part of the new and exclusive content on Disney+, Elephant tells the story of one of Africa’s great migrations – from the Okavango Delta to Victoria Falls – through the eyes of three individuals: Gaia, the matriarch, her sister Shani, and Shani’s calf, Jomo. As you’d expect, the cinematography is bafflingly good, the film’s feature length allowing us to both luxuriate in close-ups of elephant eyelashes and to lose ourselves in glorious scenics as we walk with the herd through the drying Kalahari. What you can’t do is enjoy David Attenborough at the helm – it’s not, it’s Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Because, of course, this is a family…

“I helped to lay the hedge bordering Darwin’s former home.” It’s no accident that London and its surrounds comprise one of the greenest urban places on the planet. It’s down to people like Bob, who has been nurturing his local patch with the Bromley Countryside Volunteers for 24 years. “Bromley contains more green-belt countryside than any other London borough, so there’s lots to do all year,” he says. “In winter, for instance, we coppice hazel; in spring and summer, we repair fencing and manage wildlife ponds. In autumn, we carry out conservation work in the chalk grasslands, to support wildflowers and butterflies.” Bromley, a blend of urban and rural, is home to five nature reserves and six Sites of Special Scientific Interest, all of which require regular care from the…