Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2022 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

IT’S PROVING DIFFICULT TO WINKLE SOME OF us out of our homes and back into the bright lights of the outside world. The ongoing threat of Covid-19 combined with the cold, grey days of January has turned many of us into hermits. Well, the secretary blenny empathises. The tiny Carribean fish – just 3-5cm long with a head the size of a pea – spends its days hiding within hollows in rocks and corals, only darting out occasionally to ambush prey. In fact, it appears that fish around the Cayman Islands – where this fellow was snapped – thrive under lockdown conditions. The Central Caribbean Marine Institute took advantage of the Covid-19-induced border closures to observe how the lack of tourism impacted fish density in usually high-traffic sites off Grand…

PIONEERING RESEARCH HAS SHOWN that baleen whales, the largest animals in the world, eat three times more prey than previous estimates have suggested. This has led scientists to believe that these animals and their monster-sized appetites play a bigger role in sustaining healthy marine environments than was once thought. Researchers from Stanford University in California attached high-tech tags to over 300 baleen whales from seven species including blue, fin and humpback whales allowing them to record the whales’ movements and document details of their feeding patterns. Through a combination of aerial photography and acoustically measuring the density of key prey species, most notably krill, the scientists were able to establish the average amount of food eaten daily by the whales. This revealed that whales in the Southern Ocean eat about…

STINKING HELLEBORE: WHAT A NAME! You can see why horticulturalists often prefer ‘winter rose’. The ‘stinking’ epithet references the fact that the crushed leaves smell unpleasantly meaty to some people. While many other hellebore varieties are grown in gardens, this one happens to be wholly native. You can find it growing wild in woods, mainly in limestone areas in the southern half of Britain, although it’s hard to tell these from garden escapes. Stinking hellebore has unusual greenish flowers, but neither those nor the leaves’ smell is the most interesting thing about this plant. It actually deploys heat to attract pollinators. The secret was discovered only 10 years ago, and the warmth is generated by another organism entirely, a yeast that lives in the hellebore nectar. Floral warming, as it…

WHAT IS IT? In June 2020, during a Covid-19 lockdown, student Virendar Bhardwaj uploaded a photo of a snake that he discovered to his Instagram account, captioning it kukri, a group of snakes named after their teeth, which are curved like a kukri, or Nepali dagger. His post caught the eye of scientist Zeeshan Mirza at India’s National Centre for Biological Sciences who thought that it looked a bit different to known species of kukri in the region. WHERE IS IT? The Indian snake is familiar to local people in the area where Bhardwaj found it. He was able to locate two snakes in Churah Valley, Chamba district, for Mirza and his team to begin the identification process. WHAT IS THE MEANING BEHIND THE SCIENTIFIC NAME? Oligodon churahensis is named…

FEW ANIMALS LIVE LIFE AS RECKLESSLY AS a fish with an itch. New research shows that fish the world over use sharks as exfoliation stations, in much the same way that bears use trees. The study, published in Ecology, collated 47 records of fish rubbing themselves against sharks, including great whites. These chafing sessions lasted anywhere between eight seconds and a luxurious five minutes. The marine biologists suspect that the sharks’ abrasive skin is ideal for exfoliation and parasite removal. It’s not yet clear whether the sharks get anything out of the surprising arrangement. The behaviour is the only scenario in nature where prey actively seek out and rub up against a predator, they say. “There is no terrestrial analogue for this type of behavioural interaction,” says lead author Lacey…

The largest member of the weasel family can take down big prey such as reindeer. However, the wolverine is primarily a scavenger, feeding on carrion that it finds or steals. “Its scat differs depending on what it has been eating,” says Jenny Mattisson from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research. “It’s white and dry when the carnivore consumes a lot of bones and is to similar to wolf scat when it eats fresh meat (grey-brown in colour but smaller in size).” Scats containing berries and fungi have also been found but are more rare.…

When a rainforest giant falls, it marks the start of a race. The winners are those that can use the sudden abundance of light to grow (only two per cent of available light reaches the forest floor, normally). The great trees play a long game, but there are also sprinters. One is a plant known as hot lips, a reference to the character played by Sally Kellerman in the 1970 film MASH. The plant aims to live for a few years before the canopy closes again, so it needs pollinators – fast. It advertises for them in a melodramatic way: striking red bracts (modified leaves) that attract hummingbirds and butterflies to the flowers that lie within those pouting lips. Once pollinated, the plant produces berries, which are consumed by birds…

Close up, the differences between them are often unmistakeable but we are not usually given the benefit of proximity with raptors. Start by considering the habitat, and then take in the main giveaways: size, body shape and flight pattern. Golden eagles are a bird of wild, remote moorlands and mountains in Scotland, often seen as tiny specks soaring in circles high above White-tailed eagles have much broader wings and a wedge-shaped tail, and are hard to mistake. They are found in similar places to golden eagles, with the addition of the shoreline, offshore skerries and favoured roost trees, often in full view of tracks and roads. Buzzards are often confused with eagles. Though they are less than half the size, their shape, particularly at a distance, is similar. The general…

When it comes to winning a female, male butterflies are determined and persistent. Many engage in spiralling, aerial contests as they assert their claims; others fly over enormous areas to seek a partner. For females, having multiple mates can help to increase the genetic diversity – and thus the success – of their offspring. To counter this, some males have developed tactics to ensure they win at the mating game long after the event has taken place. The postman, a flamboyant South American species, has a strategy involving perfume. Males daub females with a strong scent during mating, which acts as a powerful anti-aphrodisiac, repelling the advances of rivals. The compound is also found in some plants – but while the plants use it to entice butterflies to their blooms,…

ANIMALS COME IN A RANGE OF sizes. The smallest are from a group called Myxozoa, jellyfish-like parasites about one-hundredth of a millimetre long that are only visible under a microscope. Among vertebrates you would recognise with the naked eye, the smallest known to man is Paedophryne amauensis, a tiny frog that is just 8mm long. How large can animals grow? The heaviest beasts to ever walk the Earth were long-necked sauropod dinosaurs, known as titanosaurs. With a mass of about 50,000kg, titanosaurs weighed the same as 10 elephants and yet were still three times lighter than the largest species of all time, the blue whale, at 150 tonnes. Aquatic mammals often have a mass-to-volume ratio that matches the density of water, which provides neutral buoyancy and supports weights that can’t…

It was a foggy morning during my trip to Keoladeo National Park in Bharatpur, India. The park has beautiful walking lanes, which were almost invisible due to the weather that day. I had to wait an hour for anything to happen. After a while, I was able to spot some sambar deer, but they were not visible enough in the fog. Eventually, a male deer appeared and stopped for a second whilst crossing the lane. I waited for the right moment and captured him within the space amongst the trees. Sudhanshu Tiwari, Indore, India Among the mangroves In 2020, I visited La Ventanilla National Park in Mexico. We had an amazing adventure on a mangrove boat safari, which allows you to see many species of bird and reptile (such as…

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ACROSS 1 Cellar fungus (3,3) 4 To plant large numbers of trees (8) 9 Root of the German iris (5) 10 Cavy (6,3) 11 Diminutive songbird (4) 12 ___ Marshes, Norfolk nature reserve (4) 13 Mushrooms, for example (5) 15 Skeletal part of a sea sponge (7) 16 ___ Anglia, region known for its fens (4) 19 Predatory seabird that might be Arctic or pomarine (4) 20 Goose species, Anser anser (7) 23 Horned pachyderm, informally (5) 24 Very small branch (4) 25 Atlantic fish also known as a porgy (4) 27 Galls on trees in the genus Quercus (3,6) 28 Tree of the Phillippines, which is cultivated for its resin (5) 29 ___ ungulate, hoofed mammal in the order Artiodactyla (4-4) 30 Rachel ___, author of Silent Spring (6)…

I WAS INTERESTED TO READ JAMES FAIR’S article on thylacines (November 2021), having written about the subject for BBC Wildlife (then Wildlife) in 1982. I’ve been to Tasmania twice. Wilf Batty, ‘last man to shoot a tiger’ in 1930, told me that it had been hanging around his farm for a week, with an eye on his poultry. I spoke to Michael Sharland, and noted zoologist David Fleay, who both searched for the fabled beast. Fleay actually caught one in a trap in 1946, but it escaped, leaving hairs behind. It was intriguing to visit places such as ‘Tiger Range’ in the Florentine Valley, where the last live thylacine was taken in 1933. I also met Alison Reid of the old Hobart Zoo, who gave me a rendition of a…

FEMALE BADGERS, KNOWN AS SOWS, GIVE birth very early in the year, often in January or February. Though this may sound counterintuitive, it makes sense. Cubs born now will take their first wobbly steps above ground, blinking in the moonlight, in roughly 8-10 weeks’ time – during the full flush of spring. Earthworms, insects and a plethora of plant foods will be easy to find. These cubs will have the longest possible run-up to the autumn, when they must fatten up enough to tide them over the coming winter. It’s not the case, however, that a badger clan is one big happy family, cooing over the tiny, blind, wispily furred babies in its midst (cubs don’t open their eyes until five weeks old). If the new mother is low-ranking, she…

THE GOAT WILLOW, PUSSY WILLOW OR great sallow is a tree that delivers in every season. In spring and summer, it is perhaps best-known as a food-plant for caterpillars of the majestic purple emperor butterfly. But for now, in late winter, it gives a much-needed boost to the first emerging insects. So much so, a flowering goat willow on a fine February day is often audibly alive, as it hums like static electricity – the sound of grateful swarms of hoverflies, flies, bumblebees and solitary bees feeding among its branches. Goat willow is dioecious (male and female flowers grow on separate trees) and blooms before it is even in leaf. The flowers are furry catkins – grey on male trees, later turning yellow with the heavy load of pollen; greenish…

THE EXQUISITE BEAUTY OF HORSEFLIES belie their utter brutality. They simply slice into flesh with a cluster of serrated blades and lap the blood that inevitably flows. They even lack the decency to anaesthetise the incision site – little point when their victims are so ill-equipped to swat them. The first horseflies sipped nectar, as the males still do. Females, though, need a blood meal to provision their eggs.…

AS A CHILD, JOHANNA LOVED BEING OUTDOORS in nature, and has continued to do just that throughout her varied career while studying animal behaviour. Her latest research focuses on the globe skimmer dragonfly. “Coming from the very competitive field of ornithology, it was surprising to me that the migration of dragonflies is so poorly known, and I soon became absolutely intrigued with these charismatic insects.” The globe skimmer is hypothesised to migrate from India across the Indian Ocean to East Africa in the autumn, with a subsequent generation thought to return the following spring. Johanna and her co-authors used wind models and simulations to see if it could be true. They demonstrated that there are winds available that would support a migration across the Indian Ocean. The scientists also discovered…

THERE CAN BE FEW RARE VISITORS TO Britain as recognisable and charismatic as the snowy owl. A species familiar to so many from the Harry Potter films, it has a circumpolar distribution and its reliance on Arctic lemmings, an unpredictable prey species with fluctuating populations, can result in rather nomadic behaviour. Good lemming years can produce snowy owl irruptions further south than usual, particularly in North America. Fossil records show that during our glaciated past, the species bred in Britain and more recently nested on the Shetland isle of Fetlar for eight years from 1967. Progeny from the single pair hung around for years but no further breeding occurred and the last few resident birds were seen there in the 1980s. Today, there is likely to be around one to…

THE TERM ‘A BLOAT OF HIPPOPOTAMUSES’, coined in The Language of Field Sports by C E Hare in 1939, comes from their large, indeed bloated bellies; a male hippo weighs around 3,628kg and is covered in subcutaneous fat that helps him float. Their stomachs are typically bloated from a diet almost exclusively of grass, which they ingest and store for up to three weeks. A typical ‘bloat’ would consist of one male hippo amongst 10-20 females.…

THE JACANA IS KNOWN BY COMMON names that span saint to sinner. This tropical, freshwater wader – think moorhen on stilts – is known as either a Jesus or a prostitute bird. The former righteous moniker is thanks to the jacana’s gigantic feet, which distribute the bird’s weight, giving the impression of walking on water. The latter, refers to the female’s appetite for sex – one of the greediest in the bird world. She habitually consorts with multiple males, often several times an hour. Whether she’s called the son of God or a strumpet, the female jacana appears to have life sorted, as I discovered in Nicaragua while creeping around a volcanic lake spying on the northern jacana’s wanton lifestyle. The big, beefy females were busy duking it out on…

ISN’T IT TIME FOR ITV’S I’M A CELEBRITY… Get Me Out of Here! to find some animal-friendly alternatives to the same tired, tacky, childish – and infamous – Bushtucker Trials? After heavy criticism from viewers and animal welfare organisations, it did eventually stop forcing contestants to eat live animals. But the show still uses live rats, snakes, lizards, spiders and insects for cheap entertainment and profit. After no fewer than 21 seasons of dropping, crushing, chasing and kicking these hapless creatures, it’s hard to believe that none of the celebrity contestants (or anyone else involved in the production, for that matter) has put their hand up and said: “Hang on a minute, this isn’t right”. Its producers stress that they always comply with animal welfare laws, and they probably do…

ENJOYING AN EXULTED STATUS IN THE public consciousness due to its standing as a revered fairytale creature, our common frog should also be cherished for producing one of the earliest and most eagerly anticipated spectacles of the spring season – the production of frogspawn. Potentially confused in most of Britain’s comparatively cold ponds with only the common toad, the common frog’s relatively smooth and moist skin, bandit’s mask, long, powerful legs and rounded pupils should all help distinguish this species from its squatter and wartier relative. Despite widespread declines in the farmed landscape, the good news is that the very visible fruit of frogs’ labour is still a refreshingly common feature in many garden ponds across Britain. However, precisely when spawning will occur at a pond near you depends on…

IT WAS A BLUE-SKY day on the west coast of Scotland, as I stood at the side of a familiar track, gazing across a lonely stretch of moorland overlooked by a domed mountain with a rocky escarpment on its southern slope. I had travelled along this track countless times over the years, regularly informing my companions that this is Eagle Country. Little did I know on previous visits how true that statement was. As I discovered on that summer’s afternoon, on a high ledge on the bouldery, craggy face of the escarpment was an eagle’s nest. I’ve visited different eyries many times over the years, and the moment always sweeps me away: my eyes strain through binoculars to catch a glimpse of the chicks; my neck cranes in all directions…

Fox forays The Tibetan fox is widespread in the steppe and semi-desert regions of the Tibetan Plateau, its dense coat offering protecting from the bitter cold. It lives in burrows and is an obligate predator of plateau (or black-lipped) pikas: without them, the fox would not survive. Rock in a hard place Several species of pika – small mammals related to rabbits – are found on the Tibetan Plateau. Some are burrow-dwellers, but Glover’s pika (right) prefers rocky clefts and crevices. Incredibly, despite the cruel winters here, these animals don’t hibernate. Mountain high The Tibetan Plateau is a vast expanse of rolling, montane grassland fringed by icy peaks. It’s both the largest and highest plateau in the world, sprawling across 2.5 million km2 of central Asia and clocking an average altitude…

Blue iguana Carribean success story following a chance find ALL OTHER IGUANAS LOOK RATHER BORING once you’ve clapped eyes on this beauty, only found in the Cayman Islands and once on a fast-track to extinction due to the combined forces of development, human disturbance, increasing road traffic and introduced animals. By 2002, just 15 or so remained. The reptile’s fortunes changed when Cambridge University student Fred Burton took up a post in the islands’ Mosquito Research and Control Unit in the 1980s and stumbled across one individual while out on a survey. Smitten, he dedicated his work life to protecting this iconic animal through a breeding programme launched in 1990. In 2018, the 1,000th blue iguana was released into the wild. With the population restored, work is now focussing on…

Despite the broad wingspans of swallowtails and hawkmoths, our largest flying insect is likely a beetle. There are three contenders: the stag beetle, great silver diving beetle and sawyer beetle. These large, impressive insects all make a clockwork modelaeroplane buzz when they take to the air of a warm summer evening, and the approach of any is enough to make you duck. Beetles are renowned for their diversity, and one of their secrets is the ability to fold their delicate wings, origami-style, under tough, protective wingcases so they can push out of sight into the herbage, among the root thatch or under logs. Though each is about 45-55mm long in the body, once the spring-loaded wings are unfolded, they can have a span approaching 130mm. Large dragonflies also reach this,…

Attenborough’s Wonder of Song Catch up on BBC iPlayer IT’S AN EARLY SPRING MORNING AND WE join David Attenborough in Richmond Park to marvel in the cacophony of the dawn chorus at its peak. “There are surely few more enchanting natural soundscapes than this,” he says. But as he points out, this beautiful avian chorus is not performed for our benefit, but for the purposes of attracting mates and defending territories. And, in what may come as a surprise to some, it’s actually a rather dangerous activity for a bird to perform, giving away an individual’s location to predators. In this hour-long documentary, Attenborough explores seven recordings of song taken during his lifetime that have particular interest to him. The oldest was recorded when he was five years old, and…

SIÂN MERCER WON THE MARSH AWARD FOR Young Ornithologist. It was awarded by the British Trust for Ornithology in recognition of her volunteering and for being part of the charity’s Young Representative Scheme. Where do you volunteer? Most of my volunteer and survey work takes place on my local reserve in Shropshire, called Fenn’s, Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses. It’s a lowland raised peat bog that’s been special to me for years. It’s home to a massive variety of incredible species, such as white-faced darter dragonflies, raft spiders, and a range of specialist bog plants. Why do you volunteer? Ever since childhood I’ve had a passion for nature and the wild world around me, and being able to spend time outdoors is not only hugely rewarding for me, it’s also beneficial…

Why wildlife photography? I loved animals growing up, and watched all the BBC natural-history series, especially Big Cat Diary. I never believed I could make a career photographing wildlife. I still don’t. Which shot gave you your first break? A fox facing a stencil of a fox on a wall. It’s probably my most recognised image and took me six months to get. What is it about foxes? I love how resilient they are. They’ve been persecuted for hundreds of years and yet have found salvation in parks, gardens and allotments. They are the last relic of wild Britain. They exhibit an incredible range of behaviour too. Ever had the police called on you while snapping foxes in the dead of night? No, but a lady once accused me of…

“I HAVE A CONFESSION TO MAKE: species identification is not my strong point. In fact, I’m pretty terrible at it, having once pointed out a family of beavers only to discover it was a female mallard and her entourage of young ducklings. But when it came to searching for the iconic mountain hare in Scotland’s Monadlhliath Mountains for my book, I had renewed hopes for my identification skills. Arriving in Aviemore via the Caledonian Sleeper train in late February, I ventured into a remote glen. Part of a managed deer estate bordered by grouse moorland, I entered a vast glacial valley flanked by snow-capped peaks, dissected by a river in high flow. The sun had just risen, flooding the scene. Having never seen one before, my mission was simple: find…

NICK BAKER Meet the mud scud, the keystone species that spends its life buried in Britain’s estuaries P.36 GILLIAN BURKE The sun’s light and its effects can be found in unexpected places at this time of year P.17 MARK CARWARDINE “It’s time I’m a Celebrity found some animal friendly alternatives to the Bushtucker Trials” P.29 LUCY COOKE With big feet and an even bigger sex drive, the female jacana is an extraordinary bird P.27 MIKE DILGER Spring is on the horizon and amphibians are getting amorous. That means only one thing: frogspawn P.32…

Birds use feathers to decorate their nests like an avian crime scene to keep potential usurpers away. Pied flycatchers, blue tits and tree swallows were hesitant to enter nestboxes that were decorated with white feathers, reports Royal Society Open Science. Researchers suggest that birds may perceive feathers in nests as the result of a predation event, and owners decorate nests with bright feathers to deter others from entering.…

THE PLANET’S 36 MILLION KM OF ROADS exact a heavy toll on wildlife. A remarkable 49 per cent of all UK badgers meet their ends in collisions with vehicles. While this is not driving them to extinction (European badger numbers have been increasing for decades), the same cannot be said elsewhere in the world, as highlighted by new research that identifies the species least likely to survive current roadkill rates. Published in Global Ecology and Biogeography, the study collates roadkill data for hundreds of mammal species on all continents except Antarctica and combines it with life-history characteristics to identify those most at risk. This reveals more than 100 vulnerable species – mostly long-lived, slow-maturing ones that produce small litters. Four species are deemed to be at particular risk of extinction…

Each winter, fieldfares descend on Britain and Ireland from northern and eastern Europe to scour the countryside for earthworms and berries. The nomadic thrushes make “military-style gleanings of fields… all moving the same way,” notes Nicola Chester in On Gallows Down. Research by the BTO found that thrush flocks indicate a field has plentiful earthworms and thus good soil health.…

ART MAY NOT BE A UNIQUELY HUMAN endeavour. Apes, monkeys, elephants, dolphins and even rabbits can be encouraged to express themselves via pencil and paper. And new research on the artistic efforts of orangutans suggests that their work varies according to changes in the world around them. The new study, published in the journal Animals, focuses on hundreds of drawings produced by five female orangutans at Japan’s Tama Zoological Park, where keepers provided them with crayons and paper over many years as part of a behavioural enrichment programme. One of the apes, named Molly, was especially prolific. She only started drawing on her 54th birthday, but from that point on, until her death five years later, she produced about 1,300 pictures. According to Cédric Sueur of the University of Strasbourg,…

Toady interlopers Frogs can breed in colder conditions than toads, which means they will often mate earlier in the year. Toads also tend to be more site faithful, but at those lucky ponds where both breed, a mild spring can see the two mating seasons overlap, with hilarious consequences when love-blind males jump on the wrong species. Spring feast Emerging tadpoles should make up a vital part of the food chain in any healthy pond. Dragonfly larvae (right), water boatmen, birds, grass snakes and even hedgehogs will take their pick, and consequently only about 10 per cent of tadpoles will eventually reach dry land. Skipping a season At some sites, tadpoles will seemingly make the decision to overwinter in larval form before developing into frogs the following spring. The reason…

IT BEGINS WITH LIGHT. OR PERHAPS I SHOULD say, it begins with David Attenborough. Life, and our endeavour to understand the way it works on this planet, is certainly the greatest of all subjects. And, for decades, it’s been taught to us by the greatest of all teachers. Attenborough started to show and explain the nature of life on Earth in 1954 with the first Zoo Quest programme, and continues to do so to this day. His latest is a five-part series on the organisms that make every other kind of life possible. It’s called The Green Planet and it’s about plants. The most savage carnivore and the most committed of vegetarians equally owe their lives to plants. And, once again, we have Attenborough to expound on these wonders. In…

Golden eagles are translocated using tried-and-tested methods derived from other raptor reintroductions. Project manager Cat Barlow from South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project (SSGEP) explains. 1 First, we identify potential habitat where eagles could thrive in the south of Scotland. Then, we look for occupied nests in the Highlands that are home to twin chicks. Eyries are often on steep cliff sides, so team members have to abseil down rock faces to access them. 2 Raptor experts and vets assess the youngsters, and the healthiest is removed. Older chicks often kill their younger sibling, so leaving just one chick in a nest ensures a better chance of survival. 3 The eaglet is transported in a mosslined basket to an aviary at a secret location in the Moffat Hills, where it…

“WAKE UP, WAKE UP! WE HAVE A NEW wolf!” It’s June 2021 and it’s past midnight on the high plateau of West Morebowa, in Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains. We pile out of our tents, eyes bleary. Muktar Abute, vet team leader for the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Project (EWCP), grabs his vaccination kit, while the rest of us pull on boots and head torches. Thunder rolls in the distance as we pick our way down the steep mountain path. We’re at an altitude of almost 4,000m and it’s raining, but the prospect of finding a wolf distracts me from the icy chill. I’ve made the journey to these remote slopes to document the work of the EWCP, an organisation dedicated to saving the species from extinction. We soon find our quarry, its…

It stands to reason that giraffes, like trees and church steeples, would attract more than their fair share of lightning strikes. Data, though, is thin on the ground. At least four captive giraffes have been killed by lightning in the past couple of decades, and a rare account published in the scientific literature describes the deaths of two giraffes on a reserve in South Africa. One was struck directly on the head, shattering the skull; the other probably died from the same strike as the electrical charge dissipated through the ground. Significantly, both animals were taller than the surrounding vegetation, and intriguingly, both carcasses gave off a strong, ammonia-like smell and were ignored by scavengers, a phenomenon that has been reported for other animals killed by lightning. In the scheme…

To answer this, we need to go back 13,000 years to an age when megafauna roamed the ancient forests of the Americas. Avocado seeds were large because their fruit was destined to be eaten by large animals. Giant ground sloths, huge beasts weighing as much as a modern elephant, would travel miles to gorge themselves on avocados, swallowing the fruit whole. It was the perfect symbiotic relationship: by the time the seeds had worked their way through the sloth’s slow digestive tract, they were far from the parent tree. The avocado’s oversized seed is probably the reason why it continued to survive long after the sloth had died out. It afforded the plant all the necessary energy and nutrients to begin life in the darkness of a covered forest, and…

Who is Richard of Richard’s pipit? French naturalist Charles Richard, born in 1745. ‘His’ pipit breeds in Central and East Asia, migrating to South-East Asia for winter. The bird was previously considered a vagrant to western Europe, but recent tagging studies have shown that it is now regularly wintering in north-eastern Spain and southern France – the home of its namesake. SM Can plants catch viruses like humans? Yes. Plants cannot sneeze or cough, but they can still catch viruses. These afflictions, such as the tobacco and cucumber mosaic viruses, can lead to stunted growth, and can even result in the death of the plant. Viruses usually rely on insects (such as whitefly or greenfly) or soilborne organisms (such as nematodes) to spread from one plant to another. However, for…

Who came up with the idea for a documentary on animal song? We had previously made Attenborough’s Big Birds and Attenborough’s Wonder of Eggs, and wanted to complete the triology with Attenborough’s Wonder of Song. We always talk to David about an idea and see if he’ll consider presenting it before trying to get it commissioned. Then throughout the production process, we chat with him and incorporate his ideas. That was particularly true with this film – it was David who suggested that we include the indri. It’s also extraordinary to learn that David was a sound pioneer. Very few people were recording audio in the field in the 1960s yet there he was at the vanguard. The archive footage of him with his tape recorder in Madagascar is a…

You might not associate butterflies and moths with the colder months, but there’s actually a fair few to be seen. Of the former, there are five species that overwinter as adults and may be woken by central heating or warm early spring days. For more ID guides, head to our website: discoverwildlife.com/identify-wildlife PEACOCK BUTTERFLY The underwings of the peacock butterfly are dark and nondescript, perfect for being tucked away. SMALL TORTOISESHELL BUTTERFLY The patterning of the small tortoiseshell butterfly’s underwings distinguishes it from the peacock. TWENTY-PLUME MOTH Despite its name, each wing of this little moth is actually split into six plumes. Adults can be seen all year.…

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Best places to photograph wildlife in the UK • In need of some new and inspirational nature spots to hone your photographic skills? We have asked some of the country’s best wildlife photographers to share their favourite locations around the British Isles. • Discover how David Chapman is drawn to the seabirds of Newlyn Harbour; why Nigel Blake can’t get enough of the changing light in the Yorkshire Dales; and which insect species Ross Hoddinott captures at his local lake in north Cornwall. • Your next epic wildlife encounter might be closer than you think… SEE THE FULL ROUND-UP Visit discoverwildlife.com photography-locations-uk…