Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2020 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

1 | BOTTLENOSE DOLPHIN High jinks Late summer and autumn are a busy time for bottlenose dolphins. “After a 13-month gestation, the females give birth at the end of August into September,” says Charlie Phillips, a field officer for Whale and Dolphin Conservation based at the Moray Firth on the east coast of Scotland. “Around this time, the dolphins’ main food source here switches from migratory salmon to shoaling mackerel coming in from the North Sea. The females are glad of fish like mackerel and also herring, as they can metabolise the lipids quickly, turning them into thick, rich milk.” Amazingly, the young will suckle for 18 months. British and Irish waters are home to some of the world’s largest and most northerly bottlenose dolphins. The best-known (and most easily…

Anyone who takes a trip to Britain’s uplands in late summer is liable to leave with the colour purple burnt across their retinas. Swathes of heather often stretch as far as the eye can see. So, it would be easy to think that any further loss of, or damage to, the country’s moorland might be the least of conservationists’ many worries. But with our crowded isles proud custodians of about 75 per cent of the entire global total of heather-clad moorland, this is one habitat we should never take for granted. Covering over a million hectares of our uplands, moors are mostly confined to the north and west of Britain. They dominate areas above the limit of enclosed agricultural land, but below the theoretical treeline of about 600m above sea…

Campaigners have long sought to stop badger culling. First, they argued it wasn’t worth either the financial cost or the lives of the badgers themselves, because of the minimal reductions in levels of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle. Then, they challenged the Government’s failure to consider the impact of culling on other species – when licensing a cull in an area used by protected birds of prey, for example, they said Natural England should have assessed its impact on those birds (BBC Wildlife, July 2018). Though this challenge was rejected by the High Court, Natural England was found to have breached European legislation (BBC Wildlife, December 2018). There was widespread celebration earlier this year when the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) announced it was phasing out culling…

Marching over the bridge in Otterton, Devon, I steal a glance to the river below. It’s mid-March, and this is my final excursion before national lockdown. Brown and churning, the river scurries another two miles to Budleigh Salterton, where it spills into the sea. It’s chilly and overcast, but spring is well on its way. A preening mallard murmurs sweet nothings at the edge of the bank; a bumblebee loses itself in blackthorn blossom. Mark Elliott, project lead for Devon Wildlife Trust’s River Otter Beaver Trial, strides ahead. Delighted, he suddenly crouches by coppiced aspen – the woody victim of an unmistakable assailant. A closer look reveals a repetition of linear grooves whittled into a now pencil-shaped stump. “Classic beaver signs,” says Mark. A host of gnawed branches, felled trees…

“After the death of the female, which took place early in the morning, the remaining one made many attempts to rouse her, and when he found this to be impossible his rage and grief were painful to witness.” In 1879, naturalist Arthur Brown recorded this observation after the death of one of a pair of closely bonded chimpanzees at the Philadelphia Zoological Garden. In the actions of the surviving male – hair tearing, plaintive cries and repeated efforts to revive his companion – Brown recognised an intensity of sorrow akin to that exhibited by humans after the loss of a loved one. This is just one anecdote that appears to demonstrate capacity for grief in non-humans. But could such displays be the same as humans experience, or is there a…

On 17 June, with the entire country in lockdown, Scottish Parliament made a pivotal decision: to ban the unlicensed culling of mountain hares, affording them year-round protection. In the hours that followed, Twitter was ablaze. For some, the decision was reason to celebrate – a landmark victory for the conservation of an iconic animal. Others condemned the move, arguing that, ironically, protective status would be detrimental to mountain hares and their wider environment. The mountain hare is one of our most charismatic species, famed for its winter transformation from grey-brown to stark white. But it is also embroiled in the bitter controversy over the management of our uplands – a conflict that has raged for decades. The debate over whether mountain hares should be controlled by certain interests – namely,…

After a squabble or scrap, social species do often kiss and make up. We’ve seen this in everything from crows to dolphins, hyenas, macaques and chimpanzees. Former opponents engage in social grooming, embrace and generally stay close. Yet the precise function of this so-called affiliative behaviour is up for grabs. Some zoologists believe it serves to repair broken friendships, given it occurs more often between individuals with previously strong bonds. This is why it is frequently known as reconciliation. Others consider it a form of stress alleviation – self-soothing, perhaps. However, the fact that such reconciliation has been observed in a wide range of species does seem to suggest that the behaviour may be an effective way to minimise the knock-on effects of everyday conflicts. When you live cheek by…

The Eurasian cuckoo is far from unique, and of all the cuckoo-type birds on the western side of ‘the pond’, the brown-headed cowbird is perhaps best known. This brood parasite is equally crafty about raising its young without really raising its young. But it has a peculiar behaviour of its own. The female cowbird will stalk the host bird, such as a warbler, sparrow or blackbird, and to make sure she lays her egg at the right time, she may destroy its clutch or even the young or nest itself. This forces the host to start over, enabling the watching cowbird to lay in sync. Also unlike the Eurasian cuckoo, cowbird nestlings grow up alongside host chicks, but outcompete them. Nestling growth rates of the host may decrease due to…

1 HOW DO TURTLES MAKE THEIR WAY HOME? They have a magnetic memory! Baby turtles paddling away from their hatching place are unlikely to return for many years: loggerheads, for example, can take over 30 years to reach maturity. In the meantime, they wander the oceans in search of food. The Earth’s magnetic field changes relatively slowly and evidence shows that by imprinting the unique geomagnetic signature of their natal beach, turtles can navigate back to it with remarkable accuracy. 2 HOW DO THEY PROTECT THEIR NESTS? Most turtles will dig chambers in the sand, into which eggs are laid. To cope with a host of predators and parasites, female turtles lay several large clutches in separate nests, but even so, their eggs and hatchlings are incredibly vulnerable.…

TV choice Nostalgia with Attenborough Revisit the dramatic stories, with new narration and music. PLANET EARTH: A CELEBRATION BBC ONE, COMING SOON You’re in for a treat. BBC One has brought together eight of the very best sequences from Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II in a one-off special. With fresh narration from David Attenborough and a new musical score from Hans Zimmer, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and featuring the rapper Dave on keys, the BBC’s aim is “to lift viewers’ spirits during a time of international uncertainty.” From the opening shots of surfing bottlenose dolphins revelling in the waves off the coast of South Africa, I couldn’t help but smile. “As far as we can tell, they do so for the sheer joy of it,” says…

Bell heather This low-growing, bushy evergreen has dark green, needle-like leaves and clusters of purplish-pink, bell-shaped flowers. It carpets huge areas of many dry moorlands, so long as it is protected from heavy grazing. Bell heather favours dry, well-drained moors, with its flowers providing an excellent source of nectar for upland bees from July right through to October. Cowberry Often abundant on well-drained moors, cowberry is a straggling, evergreen shrub. It has small to medium-sized, oval and leathery, dark green leaves. In summer, it produces small clusters of pale, bell-shaped flowers. The berries that form are initially green, before turning an attractive bright red by winter. Though the leaves are poisonous, the berries are edible. Red deer Britain’s largest land mammal, the red deer, is a mightily impressive creature to…

Few aspects of life remain unaffected by coronavirus. In North Wales, the strange events of 2020 are believed to have led to the abandonment of the UK’s largest Arctic tern breeding colony. And scientists want the public’s help in working out where the birds have gone. The Skerries – a group of islets lying off Anglesey – are host every year to thousands of Arctic terns. Normally, RSPB wardens would be on site to monitor the population and protect it from disturbance. But not this year. In late May, Rachel Taylor, a senior ecologist with the BTO, received an email from an RSPB colleague who had gone to check on the colony and found just a handful of birds. “He also saw a male peregrine sitting on the lighthouse as…

A decision by the Norwegian parliament now makes it easier for wolves to be shot. The carnivores are listed as critically endangered in Norway, with a survey last winter showing that 56 wolves live exclusively in the country. Up to 50 others range across the border with Sweden. Almost all these animals live in south-east Norway, where many farmers rear sheep. Norway limits the size of the wolf population by licensing an annual cull, based on a minimum population target. Following the recent amendment, if this target is reached or exceeded, wolves can be considered to be a basis for conflict and are therefore liable to be killed. In sheep-rearing areas within the Norwegian wolf range, cull supporters, such as the Mayor of Tyset, Merete Myrhe Moen, say that farmers…

It is one of the most desolate places on Earth. The ice-capped mountain of Elephant Island is an inhospitable crag whose sheer cliffs feel the full force of the Southern Ocean on all sides. Yet, each December, this tiny Antarctic outpost transforms into a riot of sound and colour as tens of thousands of chinstrap penguins gather here to breed. Nesting in rookeries almost 200m above the sea, these charismatic birds – named for the thin black line that gives them a helmeted appearance – stain huge swathes of the island pink with guano. The stench is matched in intensity only by the noise. “It’s like being in a football stadium – it’s an assault on your senses,” says Noah Strycker, one of four penguin biologists that I accompanied to…

SHANE GROSS is a Canadian wildlife photographer based in The Bahamas. He specialises in marine conservation stories and can hold his breath for four minutes. See more of his work at: shanegross.com…

Bats have complex social lives that we are still uncovering. Swarming is a form of breeding behaviour, which in Britain and other temperate regions usually occurs in late summer. As maternity roosts disperse, bats congregate at caves, tunnels and other sites that will later be used for hibernation. These gatherings are noisy affairs (though you wouldn’t know it unless you have a bat detector) and bring together bats from many colonies for breeding, making them important for gene flow within populations. Other bats gather at mating arenas called leks, where multiple males display with wing flaps and calls to advertise themselves. If they catch a female’s attention, they may try and endear themselves by grooming her, as a prelude to wrapping wings around her and mating. But in some bat…

A fair question, given Britain’s record sunshine in 2020. In fact, the main danger is not overheating, but desiccation. Small creatures like insects have a proportionally greater surface area for their size. So while they have the protection of a nearly waterproof waxy cuticle covering their bodies, they can still lose moisture dangerously easily. They then find it difficult to replenish lost water, as nectar sources, dew, dung and muddy puddles dry up. On the hottest summer days, butterflies active in the morning often seek shelter by noon, and the caterpillars of speckled wood butterflies may stop feeding during hot periods, resuming in autumn.…

The gold medal goes to a bull southern elephant seal, recorded at an incredible 2,388m. While this is extreme, the species frequently dives to depths of 400–800m, staying under for 20–30 minutes. Motivated by food, elephant seals plumb the depths for squid and rays, often at nutrient-rich boundary zones where different oceanic waterbodies meet. Since it takes time to get down, hunt and resurface, these seals have astounding breath-holding abilities – up to two hours is known. They can carry three times more oxygen in their blood than humans, also storing it in their tissues. So the precious oxygen lasts even longer, the seals lower their heart rate to slow the pace at which it is used, and are able to tolerate very low levels of blood oxygen at the…

This spring a bizarre video filmed at Raintown Meadows in County Durham showed a great-crested grebe devouring a sand martin. Martin-hunting has been seen at the wetland several times in recent years, generally after chilly weather forced nesting martins to hawk for insects low over the water. According to Paul Stancliffe of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), this is virtually unheard of in grebes, among the bird world’s most proficient fish-eaters. He suggests the behaviour might be ‘learned’, where only one or two individuals have worked out how to catch martins. Alternatively, he says, it could be ‘opportunistic’, with the grebe or grebes simply coming across a ditched sand martin in the water, but adds that would be pretty rare. Grebes are, however, well known for consuming feathers, which…

Reading Kate MacRae’s story, ‘A long way from home’ (Tales from the bush, June 2020), I was reminded of my own encounter leading a birdwatching tour in Costa Rica. Walking along the Stream Trail, we sighted a family of tayras loping along the top of the opposite bank. Suddenly, the male effortlessly climbed the straight trunk of a Cordia tree, about 25m tall, descending a few seconds later with a small three-toed sloth, only a few weeks old, in its jaws. Further upstream, we watched in amazement as the male devoured the sloth, starting with the liver and then the brain. Eventually the female had her chance to eat, and then the offspring. Finally, the male scent-marked and rolled over the area where he ate his meal. We watched in…

Honey roasted When a honeybee colony comes under threat from a European hornet (a species roughly twice the size of the bees), the workers spring into action and form a ball of fuzzy bodies around the intruder. Initially, this incapacitates the hornet and stops it from sending out a signal for backup. But, as the bees close around their would-be attacker, they start to vibrate and will end up generating enough heat to ‘roast’ their enemy to death. Locking horns You wouldn’t want to find yourself at the pointy end of a South African gemsbok. The species’ lancelike horns are present in both sexes (the females’ tend to be thinner) and are about a metre long. This handsome headgear is used during the males’ sparring matches for dominancy, as well…

Habitats don’t come much more inhospitable than the surface of a glacier. And yet glaciers around the world are home to vast herds of small furry organisms that move in unison over the icy surface. Glacier mice are not rodents. They are not even animals. They are balls of moss growing around a core of sediment. Reaching up to about 15cm in diameter, they roll slowly over the ice to expose all sides to life-giving sunlight. Biologists have now published the results of a long-term study of these mysterious plants on Alaska’s Root Glacier. By tagging individual glacier mice, in much the same way that biologists track the movements of actual mice, they found that the moss balls travel about 2.5cm per day and live at least six years. They…

WHEN THE PROPOSED release of European bison near Canterbury was announced in July, news stories said that the small breeding herd of four animals – to be put into Blean Woods in 2022 – will be “the first time in 6,000 years” these giant bovines have roamed British soil. But is that widely reported claim correct? Critics of the Wilder Blean project say that its £1m cost is a poor use of scarce conservation funds, because bones of European bison, Bison bonasus, have never been found in the country. Rewilding advocates counter that a North Sea bison fossil dates from when Britain was joined to the Continent, adding that the extinct steppe bison, B. priscus, probably also once lived here. A 2016 genetic study found that European bison are actually…

Once upon a time, in a land not very far away, all the children were stuck indoors, with no school and no friends to play with... Nature writing is a powerful way to connect with the natural world. In literature, wildlife and wild places often represent our deepest souls, especially in troubled times. As we went into lockdown, I felt sorry for children and families now disconnected from each other and from wild places. In April, I teamed up with wildlife writers, champions, publishers and businesses to run the Nature on your Doorstep wild writing competition. Children and teenagers aged 4–17 were invited to submit stories about wildlife outside their windows, and hundreds responded. All the judges laughed, cried and learned lots, too. The diversity of stories – from different…

TREE FELLING An open canopy allows more sunlight to reach the woodland floor, creating varied vegetation. DAM BUILDING Beavers construct multiple dams within their territories, extending them over time. REROUTING WATERWAYS New channels diverge from the dam and canals are dug out to help the beavers move around. FLOODED AREAS Waterlogging in adjacent fields encourages wetland plants like soft rushes. BEFORE... The landscape prior to the beavers’ arrival. POOL CREATION Water is held behind the dam, reducing flooding downstream and supporting pond life. SLEEPING QUARTERS Beavers situate their lodges on the riverbank or in the safety of deep water pools.…

ALBATROSSES Laysan albatrosses form lifelong, monogamous pair bonds that are cemented with elaborate courtship dances. When one member of the partnership dies, the surviving bird will wait one to two years before even starting to look for a new mate, going through what has been described as a mourning period. GIRAFFES In 2011, scientists observed a lone Thornicroft’s giraffe mother standing guard over her dead infant. This is a decidedly unusual behaviour for giraffes, as they rarely remain stationary for long, and females in particular spend almost all their time with others. The mother stayed still, alone, and not eating for two hours before finally moving on. Similar behaviour towards dead infants has been reported in other giraffe species, though not towards unrelated dead giraffes. DOLPHINS In 2012, a tour…

Graceful, effortless, awe-inspiring… these are the words that spring to mind when describing the world’s two species of manta ray. But pink? Everyone from Octonauts viewers upwards knows that most mantas are basically black on top and white underneath. This coloration, called counter-shading, is underwater camouflage common to many rays and sharks. It hides them against the bright sky when seen from below, or against the dark depths when seen from above. Not always, however. On Australia’s east coast, there lives a male reef manta ray who is thought to owe his eye-catching blush to erythrism, a genetic mutation. First noticed on the Great Barrier Reef in 2015, the bizarre pink manta has been recorded on only a handful of occasions. Erythrism is usually seen in birds, mammals and insects…

We often see more moles during long spells of hot, dry weather, because they’re forced into the open as the earth hardens. But are their spade-like forelimbs, which work such a treat underground, any good above it? The evolutionary trend among four-legged land animals, or tetrapods, has been to move from a sprawling posture to an upright one that helps ‘stack’ weight vertically through the load-bearing limbs. Perfect for walking – but not tunnelling. Since moles do both, they have come up with a two-for-one design. They retain a sprawling posture for digging, while above ground a sixth digit, or false thumb, helps to lift the load during the upward phase of their commando-crawl-like gait. Ungainly perhaps, yet it works!…

Many do, yet there are fascinating exceptions. ‘Harry Potter’ usually conjures up images of wizards, children in cloaks and banquet-style meals, but the series has also inspired the name of a spider: Eriovixia gryffindori, whose tiny body resembles a Hogwarts sorting hat. The spider’s unusual shape protects it from predators by disguising it as dried foliage. Adopting a non-rotund body like this has worked for other spiders too. Jumping spiders in the genus Myrmarachne, for example, have turned their abdomen into what looks like two separate body parts – a bit like wearing a tight belt. The resulting ant-like silhouette deters predators that find ants noxious, and allows ant-eating species to approach their prey undetected. Such a slimline body limits how many eggs a female spider can lay. A fat,…

Fight and flight It was amazing to observe grey herons hunting for fish in Hungary earlier this year. They are often seen standing stock-still in the shallow waters, waiting for the fish that flit about below the surface. After a few days, I found that each heron seemed to have its own territory on the water – always coming back to the same spot. The herons that did not have their own territories would try to invade those of other herons. This photo was taken during one such attempt, as both birds flew up into the air. Tony Zhang, London 1 Cool customer Whilst working as an expedition guide, I encountered this young Arctic fox in Greenland. It was very curious and came straight up to me for a closer…