Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2021 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

1 | PINE MARTEN Here’s looking at you kit Young pine martens, or kits, are making their first forays from dens deep in tree cavities this month. Once one of our commonest mammals, second only to weasels in their abundance, pine marten populations plummeted between the 16th and 19th centuries. The semiarboreal mustelid was hit by woodland fragmentation and the popularity of their pelts (valued both for warmth and fashion), swiftly followed by their persecution as vermin. With a bounty on their heads, pine martens were pushed into pockets of the Highlands, and the uplands of Wales and northern England, and were close to extinction by the early 20th century. Thankfully their fortunes are now changing. Between 2015 and 2017, pine martens were translocated from Scotland to mid-Wales, with a…

Willow tit No larger than a blue tit, a combination of a black cap and pale cheeks should eliminate every other species, other than marsh tit. The best way, in fact, to separate these two very similar relatives is by call. Willow tits have unfortunately been in decline for over 30 years, with the lack of dead wood and the drying out of wet woodlands the probable primary causes for the bird’s disappearance. Siskin Dinkier than greenfinches, siskins are attractive finches with a distinctively forked tail and a streaky yellow-green body. Despite preferring to breed in coniferous forests, the food on offer in wet woodland sites, particularly in northern and western Britain, is a considerable draw for these lively birds. Water shrew This bicoloured shrew often has a silvery appearance…

It’s hard not to wonder whether a twitching, colour-changing sleeping octopus is dreaming. It’s difficult enough to know what’s going on inside the head of a fellow human, let alone a member of a different species – especially one that doesn’t even have a backbone. But new research on the brain function of sleeping octopuses reveals striking similarities with ourselves and raises the tantalising possibility that they dream like we do, too. It’s no secret that cephalopods – octopus, cuttlefish and squid – are remarkably intelligent by molluscan standards and are a match even for many a vertebrate. “They have quite special learning abilities, including spatial and social learning, as well as problem-solving capabilities,” says Sidarta Ribeiro, who led the research at Brazil’s Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte.…

WHAT IS IT? This huge centipede – 20cm long and 2cm broad – is only the third amphibious species known to science. It comes in blue-legged and yellow-legged varieties, and is named after Alcyone of Greek mythology, who was turned into a kingfisher – an allusion to its colour and proficiency in and out of the water. WHERE IS IT? S. alcyona is the first new centipede to be described from Japan in 143 years. It is found under rocks near forest streams on the Ryukyu Islands. Several individuals escaped capture by plunging into the water. FIND OUT MORE Zootaxa : bit.ly/3eAqupk…

A shocking new hotel has opened its doors in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang, in China. Billed as the world’s first ‘polar bear hotel’, it offers guests a round-the-clock view of two captive polar bears from the comfort of their rooms. The bears live in an indoor ‘dungeon’ in the centre of the hotel, in what would normally be the foyer. Under harsh warm lights, they pace back and forth – showing clear signs of distress – amid fake rocks and icicles. It’s nothing less than a 21st century bear pit. But far from receiving a frosty reception – which would undoubtedly be the case in a more enlightened part of the world – it opened to full bookings from Chinese guests. Keeping a couple of hapless polar bears in…

SHANE GROSS is an award-winning Canadian marine conservation photojournalist. shanegross.com…

When BBC Wildlife Magazine teamed up with the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (DSWF) to support its internationally renowned annual competition and exhibition, we knew the standard was going to be high. In the end, there were a whopping 2,307 entries from artists in 70 different countries. The winners, runners-up and highly commended have now been chosen and we have a selection for you over the next few pages. Since launching in 2008, the annual event has attracted more than 12,500 entries and generated more than £1.2m in sales. Finalists shortlisted are invited to exhibit and sell their artworks as part of an annual exhibition, with 50 per cent of the proceeds from all sales supporting the vital conservation work of DSWF. It also plays an integral role in helping to…

Amazing images taken by our readers Enter our Your Photos competition at discoverwildlife. com/submit-your-photos 1 Playful pod I was on an expedition cruise to New Zealand and our group was exploring Doubtful Sound when a pod of bottlenose dolphins appeared and proceeded to play in the bow wave of the boat for the best part of an hour. John Maddox, Truro 2 Eye of the elephant This image was taken in Zambia on a safari with my brother. Prior to the holiday he had challenged me to take a close-up photograph of an elephant's eye. On the first night, I was fortunate enough to capture this. Hayley King, Cambridge 3 Shedding skin I felt extremely lucky to encounter this freshly emerged ladybird on a grass stalk during one of my…

CAROLYN COWAN The writer and ecologist finds out why the British tree bumblebee boom is good news. “They pose no threat to native UK bumblebees by competing for nesting spaces or food resources,” she says. See p32 GILLIAN BURKE The Springwatch presenter shares her views on the importance of our oceans to the future of the planet. “I know I have contributed to the problem. Like so many of us, I am desperately trying to be part of the solution as well.” See p54 MAX WHITTAKER Photojournalist Max shares his experience witnessing deer fleeing California’s wildfires. “I was following firefighters when they suddenly appeared,” he says. See p80 SAMUEL WEST The actor and star of Channel 5’s All Creatures Great and Small shares his passion for dippers. “They curtsey from…

Deterring all but the most determined of naturalists, wet woodlands have to be some of the wildest and yet most natural of all our British woodlands. Characterised by tussocky sedges and a tall herb layer, which combine to conceal swampy pools harbouring partly submerged fallen trunks, this secretive and sometimes forbidding habitat will certainly reward those venturing off the beaten track. Scattered across the UK, wet woodland is dominated by trees able to thrive in either poorly drained or seasonally flooded soils, such as the various willows, birch and alder. This habitat can also be encountered anywhere from floodplains, fens and bogs, to hillside flushes and even peaty hollows. Rarely covering expansive areas, it more frequently forms a mosaic with other habitats, such as drier woodland. Here, the boundary between…

If you want to find an animal that is odd with a host of strange adaptations and a convoluted and complex lifestyle to match, then you can’t go far wrong with a parasite. Parasites are masters of subterfuge that have evolved highly specialised tricks and adaptations to outwit their hosts. The parasite known as Stylops melittae takes this weirdness to a whole new level. Stylops belongs to a group of insects called the twisted wings, or Strepsiptera, of which there are about 17 species in the UK – all just as weird as each other. But what exactly are they? These furtive members of our fauna are so odd that science hasn’t yet fully committed to their description. One thing is for sure: they are insects. The minuscule male –…

“Rock and roll ain’t noise pollution” sang rock band AC/DC, but they might want to reconsider their lyrics after a study by Californian scientists has shown that noise can cause long-term harm to natural plant communities. The study centered on a region of New Mexico where gas wells operate in an area dominated by pinyon pine, juniper and sagebrush shrubland. Test areas were sampled twice over a 12-year period and sites exposed to the continuous noise of gas well compressors had less tree seedling recruitment than those which enjoyed the ‘sound of silence’. Pinyon seedlings, for example, were four times more abundant on quieter plots. What’s more, sites where the noise had stopped were still shown to have suffered long-lasting effects to plants. Researchers think that this is due to…

Acinereous vulture in Spain has become the first European vulture to have been killed by diclofenac, the controversial livestock drug that has wiped out millions of vultures across much of the Indian subcontinent. Conservationists are now deeply concerned that the drug could decimate vultures in Europe, the only continent where numbers are recovering. “The evidence found in Spain sadly confirms what we have been warning about for almost a decade. Vultures are already dying from veterinary diclofenac poisoning and this could already be affecting their population trends,” said Ivan Ramírez from BirdLife Europe. Following the discovery that diclofenac is extremely toxic to vultures, conservationists successfully achieved a ban on its use across southern Asia. However, despite the known catastrophic impact of diclofenac on vultures, its use has been approved by…

In oceans around the world, marine animals are making quite a noise. It’s long been known that cetaceans such as whales and dolphins use sound to locate food, to navigate and to communicate, but new research is revealing fascinating other uses for this underwater orchestra – from evading predators to ‘whispering’ to their young. The science of locating objects by sound is known as echolocation (or biosonar). Many species, including toothed whales and dolphins, bats, swiftlets, oilbirds and shrews, use the behaviour to ‘picture’ their environment via sound. Echolocating animals emit calls, locating and identifying objects through the returning echoes. It’s a highly specialised system that can be used for navigation, foraging and hunting. Whales and dolphins echolocate by throwing out beams of high-frequency clicks in the direction they are…

TV choice The Springwatch team are reunited Wonderful wildlife, four brilliant presenters, and silly puns can only mean one thing – Springwatch is back! SPRINGWATCH BBC TWO, 25 MAY – 11 JUNE It’s been an unprecedented year for all of us, and for the Springwatch team, that meant adapting to new ways of filming and presenting in order to bring us the wildlife programme we so love and cherish. This year, Michaela is finally able to rejoin the presenting team and the programme is aiming to look forwards, with an overarching theme of ‘A Vision for the Future’ as they reveal the wildlife stories of spring. Chris and Michaela will be based at Wild Ken Hill, a rewilding and regenerative agriculture project in west Norfolk with…

By contacting us, you consent to let us print your letter in BBC Wildlife Magazine. Letters may be edited. Helping orangutans I wonder whether James Fair’s article on orangutans (The $80 million question, April 2021) isn’t unduly optimistic, particularly in its upbeat final paragraph, which read: “Neither Bornean nor Sumatran orangutans are going extinct at any time soon.” All three orangutan species are Critically Endangered, the last category before Extinct in the Wild on the IUCN Red List. The article found no space for this scientific assessment, using vague terms like "any time soon" to suggest the ‘palm oil campaigners’ (whose views were not reported in the piece) are wrong and we mustn’t blame palm oil. The article omitted to say that the main conservationist quoted, Erik Meijaard, has been…

Hammer home Thanks to the nearby Gulf Stream, the waters around South Bimini Island in the Bahamas team with all manner – and size – of sea life, and anglers come to land tuna, marlin and swordfish among other giants. The Bahamas is a shark sanctuary where you’ll find several species, including the lemon, nurse and great hammerhead shark, pictured. The largest of the hammerheads and endangered worldwide, they can grow up to 20 feet long. They feed on other sharks and frequent these waters from December to March. Sticking together Coleman’s shrimp are native to the seas around Indonesia and Australia and were first described in 1975. Here it is shown in its usual habitat: camouflaged on a fire urchin, also known as a toxic sea urchin. These striking…

The adult male Stylops, on the face of it, is the most normal-looking stage in the life-cycle, though scrutinise him a little closer and things get a bit squiffy. His flying apparatus is a pair of strange wings with the appearance of a heavily folded, over-sized superhero cape. They sit behind a couple of organs a bit like joysticks called halteres – flies also have these – which are modified wings used like flight-stabilising gyroscopes. Flies have their halteres in place of the hind wings, our Stylops has them the other way around.…

A collection of salmon scales kept by generations of Swedish fishermen and fisheries biologists over a century has given a unique insight into the human impact on fish populations. The Swedish study focused on the Baltic region, which is heavily dominated by hydropower. The resulting dams either severely restrict or completely prevent salmon accessing their natal rivers to spawn. As a mitigation measure, since the 1960s five million ‘stocked’ (hatchery-reared) salmon have been released annually to boost numbers, but these stocked fish have had an effect on the genetic make-up of wild populations. Researchers focused on 13 Swedish rivers and compared DNA retrieved from 893 archived Baltic salmon scales from the 1920s with 787 contemporary samples. They found a homogenization of the populations, with local genetic adaptations being lost. The…

THE UK HAS something of a love-hate relationship with grey squirrels. While many of us love their athletic arboreal antics and cute-furry-mammalishness, we also blame them – not without reason – for the spectacular decline of our beloved native red squirrels. An upshot of this tension is that we are more willing to turn a blind eye to the lethal control of greys (albeit with little success) than we are for nearly any other mammal. But what if we were to genetically modify the problem away rather than trap, shoot or poison it? Because new research published in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that it’s now possible to insert genes into individual squirrels that will spread rapidly through the population via males to render females infertile. The research team at…

I read Hugh Warwick’s article on hedgehogs (Helping hedgehogs, spring 2021) with interest as I have a lot to do with them in my own way. A few years ago, I found a hedgehog and five hoglets in one of my hoggy boxes in late October, and knew survive the winter. I took them into the babies from the mother and put her out to hibernate. After their weight reached about 700g, I took them to my local vet and she then microchipped them. I put them out in the garage to hibernate, and in the spring let them all go. Since then I have had two of them return and I use my scanner to check them. Last year, I found one in the garden during the day. He…

“The group ran towards the young gazelle and quickly set about preying on it.” One morning, I was leading a game drive at Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya, when we came across a small herd of Thomson’s gazelles grazing and nearby a troop of 50-60 olive baboons foraging, some on the ground and others in the trees. We watched as a group of the baboons left their troop, ran towards a patch of grass where a young gazelle fawn had been hiding and quickly set about preying on it. Swiftly, the mother gazelle moved in to defend her offspring, driving the baboons off – some up a yellow fever tree, the remainder up a monkey thorn – before returning to the now lifeless fawn. She then patrolled the area to…