Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2021 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

1 | DARK-EDGED BEE-FLY Unicorn in the garden Some insects seem to get all the love – bees, butterflies and dragonflies especially. Flies, not so much. But in March, there is a fly that stands out for its attractiveness and fascinating lifestyle. What’s more, it is abundant and widespread through most of Britain, though no longer in Ireland for some reason. Meet the dark-edged (or large or greater) bee-fly. Flies excel at many things, including pollination and parasitism. This one is superb at both. You will often hear it first – a loud hum as it hangs motionless on whirring wings, just above head height. The next thing you’ll notice is its extraordinary proboscis. It is as if you are looking at a furry little ginger unicorn, though the long…

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has committed the Government to creating new national parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) as part of its plan to increase the area of England protected for nature to 30 per cent by 2030. The announcement late last year was part of a 10-point plan to “kickstart the nation’s green recovery”, which also included £80 million for habitat restoration, environmental education and tree-planting. The Government has yet to decide where the new designated areas will be, but a report published in 2018 identified some current AONB as meriting elevation to national park status – the Chilterns, the Cotswolds and a combined area of East Devon and South Dorset. The Landscapes Review also highlighted the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, the Sandstone Ridge in Cheshire,…

WHAT IS IT? This dapper specimen is a member of a small family of tropical beetles closely related to the more familiar longhorns, as betrayed by its enormous antennae, which are considerably longer than the rest of its body. WHERE IS IT? It was collected in Ecuador by the legendary American entomologist Terry Erwin, who died last year. Erwin himself described hundreds of insect species and is most famous for revealing the breathtaking diversity of life in rainforest canopies, which led him to estimate that there are 30 million species of arthropod on the planet. FIND OUT MORE Acta Entomologica : bit.ly/39meR1i…

The first time you spot a glow-worm, you might do a double-take. Its eerie yellow-green light seems so alien, it almost doesn’t look like something that belongs on planet Earth. In the UK, you’re most likely to see the common glow-worm, found across Europe and Asia. In the northern hemisphere, ‘glow-worms’ are not worms at all, but beetles from the family Lampyridae. The females don’t have wings and look similar to the larvae. During the day, the female hides underground. At night, she crawls up a plant stem and turns on the light in her abdomen in the hope of attracting a passing mate. In Australasia, the term ‘glow-worm’ refers to the larvae of little flies that feed on fungi. Some of these fungus gnats are carnivorous, luring prey with…

TV choice A world of wonders that has been kept secret, until now… Take a look behind the scenes of London’s much-loved Natural History Museum. NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM: WORLD OF WONDER CATCH UP ON MY5 “Welcome to the Natural History Museum as you’ve never seen it before,” says the narrator of this new four-part series. While many viewers will have visited the museum (NHM) in London, few will have been lucky enough to get a glimpse inside the 140-year-old building during the pandemic. Watching the programme, though, feels almost exactly like stepping once again into the Hintze Hall, where the skeleton of Hope, a blue whale, hangs from the ceiling. She is truly the inanimate star of episode one, with her story the subject of intense scientific research. Through chemical…

An ideal issue Congratulations to the BBC Wildlife team on your December 2020 issue – I rate it as the best ever. The range of features was superb, from ants to rhinos by way of lynx and rewilding, and every topic held my attention throughout. And who would have thought that spotting over 500 species in the UK in December was feasible? Peter Griffiths, Hertfordshire Starting young We often see squirrels, pigeons, robins, foxes and blackbirds in the garden. We have made birdfeeders and I dug a small pond, because I’d like newts to visit our garden. Mummy also had some wood left over from making a bookshelf, so she drilled holes in it and I and my sister put cotton wool, sunflower seeds and acorns in it. Lucy-Grace (aged…

Beachcombing is one of life’s great pleasures – you never quite know what you might find. One creature always worth looking out for is the diminutive blue-rayed limpet, Patella pellucida. Very different to its more familiar conical cousins in rockpools, it lacks spherical symmetry and is more delicate, with an almost translucent shell reminiscent of a little fingernail in size and shape. Like its relatives, the blue-rayed limpet is also an algae grazer, but it specialises in the big stuff: kelp. For most of the tidal cycle, this impressive seaweed and its limpet predator are submerged, so beyond reach of rockpoolers. However, kelp may be cast ashore after a storm, and then you can find this beautiful mollusc among the tangled creases and root-like holdfasts, or haptera. Triggered by the…

The first survey of Europe’s breeding bird populations for 23 years presents a rosier picture than you might have expected. The second European Breeding Bird Atlas (EBBA) shows that 35 per cent of all native bird species have increased their breeding ranges in the last 30 years. Twenty-five per cent have seen their ranges contract, while no change was detected among the remaining 40 per cent. “It’s not as discouraging as it could have been,” says David Noble, principal ecologist with the BTO and a member of the EBBA steering committee. “But there’s devil in the detail.” The survey records the presence or absence of 596 species in a total of 5,110 50km grid squares (spanning 11 million square kilometres and 48 countries). Winners include cattle egret, citrine wagtail and…

Persecution of birds of prey has long been a source of conflict between conservationists and grouse shooting interests. In Scotland, disappearances of golden eagles on or near grouse moors led the Scottish Government to set up an expert group to review grouse moor management. Responding to the group’s findings this winter, Scottish rural affairs minister, Mairi Gougeon, told the Scottish Parliament that some of the practices used in management of grouse moors “have the potential to cause serious harm to the environment if correct procedures are not followed”. Self-regulation by moorland businesses would not be enough, she said. Accordingly, following the next Scottish election in May, proposals would include controlling the use of heather burning – to boost carbon storage – and licensing of grouse moors, with potential to withdraw…

People often ask why I’d want to photograph wildlife in the Sahara. Well, I have always felt drawn towards vast open spaces, but I also enjoy tackling difficult subjects neglected by other photographers, and telling their stories. As ecosystems, deserts are hugely underrated – yet they are equally deserving of the attention lavished on tropical rainforests and coral reefs. Incredibly, the Sahara occupies almost one-third of the African continent and is hugely biodiverse, yet it remains largely overlooked, even by the world’s most prominent conservation organisations. Sadly, this immense, beautiful desertscape has become a paradigm of the ongoing mass extinction that our planet is currently experiencing: its large mammals have either disappeared from more than 90 per cent of their ranges, or have gone extinct in the wild. Spanning 11…

DAVID PATTYN lives in the Netherlands and works as an anaesthesiologist and part-time wildlife photographer. He is passionate about mammals and birds. See more of his work at: dpwildlife.com…

While bioluminescent organisms produce and emit light, biofluorescent organisms absorb and emit it. They can fluoresce like this due to proteins in their skin or other tissues that absorb energy from sunlight, and re-emit it as a different colour. From frogs to fish, fluorescent creatures exist in all habitats across the globe. Marine creatures living in the shallows or twilight zone probably use fluorescence in specific body parts for predation or communication, while fluorescence in the ocean depths may not have a specific function but just be a by-product of tissue biochemistry. Scientists have used biofluorescence as a revolutionary tool in molecular biology. Green fluorescent protein (GFP) occurs naturally in the crystal jellyfish. When GFP is genetically inserted into cells and illuminated with blue light, it glows bright green. This…

The sun shining on the dark-painted beehives made the bees think it was warm outside. Achingly cold winds from the Arctic and Russia sweep across Estonia, causing daytime temperatures to plummet into minus figures well into spring. Sven had risen early, searching for interesting patterns to photograph in the ice, when he spotted something peculiar. Hundreds of dead honeybees were frozen on the pond at his family holiday cottage, not far from his father-in-law’s hives. “The sun shining on the dark-painted beehives made the bees think it was warm outside, when actually it was still below zero,” he says. “There was no snow either, so the green grass plus slightly warmer temperatures might have tricked the bees to fly out.” This time of year is critical for honeybees. In the…

Thank you, Mark Carwardine, for your recent article regarding our terrifying situation and the sixth mass extinction of life that we are observing (My way of thinking, December 2020). It is so good to see that the truth is, at last, starting to be seen and heard in mainstream media, but there is still such a long way to go. Over the last two years, I have noticed an almost complete absence of insects in my garden, the eight hedgehogs that were living in my back garden when I moved here seven years ago have disappeared and the flocks of starlings and blackbirds, which were once abundant in this area, have diminished. The loss of biodiversity on Earth is not only terrifying, it is heart-breaking and, personally, I am grief…

Lapping it up Leopards can go for days without drinking – they get much of the moisture they need when consuming prey. When they do drink, like other feline species, they have a special technique for slaking their thirst. Unable to draw water into their mouths using suction, as humans would, these big cats rely on adhesion instead. They use their tongues, the tip curved backwards, to pull up a column of water, then quickly close their mouths around it in the split second before gravity takes over. Mirror, mirror On the wing from early spring to the embers of summer, the common blue damselfly is an abundant, widespread species in the UK. Seen here resting on reeds, reflected in the still water, you’re likely to spot these insects around…

Buff-tailed bumblebee Individuals spotted in February or March will all be recently emerged queens. It is their buff-coloured tail for which the species is named; confusingly, the workers have white posteriors. There is also a yellow collar, with another yellow band on the abdomen. Comma Wings open, the comma butterfly stands out from the crowd, thanks to its ragged profile with an intricate orange-and-black pattern. But once its wings have closed, its greys, tans and browns perfectly resemble a dead, mouldy leaf. The wing undersides also have a curious comma-like mark. In March, any individuals seen will have overwintered as adults. Woodcock This bird’s beautifully mottled and barred, reddish-brown plumage makes it nigh-on-impossible to spot while on the woodland floor – until flushed, that is. The best way to catch…

Giant hornets are several times larger than honeybees. In Asia, they can make swarming assaults on beehives, chewing through narrow entrances, killing defenders, then carrying off larvae and pupae to feed to their own young. Defence by individual bees is futile, but teamwork can be a different story. Tipped-off by local beekeepers, researchers from the University of Guelph placed small piles of animal and bird dung near Asian honeybee hives in Vietnam and filmed what happened next. For bees, the smellier the dung the better, it seemed, as they collected poppy-seed-sized mouthfuls to take to hive entrances and build small piles. The heavier this ‘fecal spotting’, the less time hornets spent at hives and the less likely they were to launch mass attacks. This might be because some chemicals in…

WHEN IT COMES to dishing out conservation funds, the authorities favour photogenic species – especially mammals and birds. At least, that’s what many scientists have long complained. Now the suspicion of systemic funding bias has been backed up by a study of how the European Union allocates money for conservation. The research, published in December 2020 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, looked at how the EU’s flagship LIFE programme spent its money in 1992–2018. Though the analysis only considered projects helping animals, its findings were stark: vertebrates received six times more than invertebrates (›970m as opposed to ›150m). Three-quarters of the budget went on mammals and birds alone, including such high-profile species as Iberian lynx, imperial eagles and corncrakes. The researchers concluded: “Conservation effort is primarily explained…

I am talking to James Wallace, CEO of the Beaver Trust, but we are not talking about beavers, we are talking about buffer strips. Wallace is quite animated about them, so much so that beavers hardly get a mention. The Beaver Trust is all about the large-scale restoration of our river system. The Trust is so named, Wallace tells me, because the beaver is a “highly productive, hard-working, communal, familial organism” – all qualities that Wallace clearly admires. But the buffer strip is as integral to his vision for rivers as the charismatic little ‘ecosystem engineer’ that has so caught the public’s imagination. Buffer strips are areas along riverbanks that are left to go wild – free from farming, intensive livestock grazing, or any other interference. On a map, think…

The unusually shaped eggs of the common guillemot are large, colourful and very nutritious. Three times the size of a hen’s egg, guillemot eggs were, for centuries, eagerly sought by those with access to their colonies. In some areas, it was thought that at the sight of approaching human egg-collectors (known as ‘eggers’), guillemots deliberately threw their eggs off the breeding ledges rather than allow them to be taken. Nonsense, of course, but it was an explanation for the shower of eggs that invariably rained down from the guillemot’s breeding cliffs whenever humans disturbed them. Tourist steamers often blasted their horn or fired a shotgun at guillemot colonies, so their passengers could enjoy the spectacle of guillemots pouring off the cliffs, causing their eggs to roll off and smash onto…

Amazing images taken by our readers Enter our Your Photos competition at discoverwildlife. com/submit-your-photos Star photo The power of persistence The weir on the River Severn in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, always provides spectacular views of the Atlantic salmon heading upstream to spawn. I photograph the fish every year and work with other photographers and the Environment Agency to identify individual fish, to see how long they spend trying to overcome the man-made barrier. This large female was seen on the weir for three days until (hopefully) she found the fish pass and her way upriver to make her nest in gravel beds, known as ‘redds’. Robin Bennett, Shrewsbury ENTER TO WIN A MILLICAN 25L ROLL PACK BAG This month, our star photo wins a Smith The Roll Pack 25L rucksack from…

It was a typical North American winter night. The wind howled outdoors. Trying to fall asleep, I thought how cold and lonely it is to be outside during such a night. Lucky are those animals who have found a den or hollow, but what about those who didn’t? I was about to drift off when the outdoor lights came on. Who could have activated the motion sensor – a deer or racoon? I was falling asleep again when… bam! A loud boom startled me, and a sudden flow of cold air entered the room. Having found a flashlight, I went downstairs to discover the front door wide open and several papers flying about. Then I heard a squeaky noise, similar to a mouse. Shining the flashlight around, there was nothing…