Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

TROUBLED WATERS Highly commended in this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, this image shows a school of inquisitive European perch swimming amongst cloud-like blooms of algae in a lake in Posio, Finland. The algae is thriving in climate-crisis induced warming waters, causing problems for aquatic wildlife. See all the competition winners in next month’s special supplement. Elephants on the move Family herds darted for transport to new national park home in Malawi MOVING AN ELEPHANT IS A complicated business – first you have to locate the animal in a remote area, sedate it via a dart shot from a helicoptor, then use a crane to lift it onto the back of truck. Consider, then, the effort and logistics involved in July when African Parks and partners translocated 263…

PLANS TO BRING BACK THE thylacine or Tasmanian tiger – the dog-like marsupial predator that went extinct some time during the 20th century – have been met with a mixed reception. A biotech company called Colossal Biosciences, which is also currently working on a project to recreate the woolly mammoth, has announced it is in the early stages of engineering the thylacine using genetic material from dead animals and living relatives. “Once we have the engineered cells, we use stem cell technologies and cloning techniques to turn those cells back into a living animal,” says Andrew Pask, head of the Thylacine Integrated Genomic Restoration Research Lab (TIGRR), Colossal’s main project partner. Scientists hope to use genetic material from the thylacine’s closest-living relatives – the dunnart and the numbat – to…

THOUGH IT LOOKS LIKE A LOOSELY-coiled snail shell, this is more akin to the cuttlefish 'bones' enjoyed by pet budgies. It’s the internal buoyancy organ of a ram’s horn squid, a deepsea cephalopod that was observed alive in the wild for the first time only in 2020. The species is largely tropical, but the horns’ buoyancy means they do occasionally turn up on UK beaches.…

KARIM VAHED HAS BEEN FASCINATED BY insects for longer than he can remember: “My mother informs me that when I was still in nappies, I would spend ages watching ants in the garden.” Karim studied biological sciences, followed by a PhD. He joined the University of Derby as a lecturer in 1993, conducting research on crickets and bush crickets alongside teaching. Karim became professor of entomology in 2012: “Part of the appeal of insects is that they are incredibly diverse in terms of numbers of species, their morphology and behaviour.” “The conservation and environmental sector has been identified as one of the least ethnically diverse in the UK,” he says. “This is also reflected in the diversity of students at degree level.” This might be because people from ethnic minorities…

Watch six-part series Frozen Planet II on BBC One and iPlayer IT TOOK OVER FOUR YEARS TO make Frozen Planet II. Executive producer Mark Brownlow shares his highlights of filming on all seven continents and across 18 countries to create a series that tells an urgent story about the effects of climate change on our world. Frozen Planet (2011) looked at the passing of the seasons at the two poles. How does Frozen Planet II build on what came before? I was a huge fan of the original series, but a decade has passed since it aired and we now have a far greater understanding of our frozen habitats. A decade ago we were still debating whether climate change was caused by humans or not! This series tells the bigger…

IT’S A SUNNY SUNDAY in Mangabeiras Municipal Park, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. In spite of the pandemic, the park is crowded, and for good reason it is one of the largest urban parks in Latin America and a valuable green lung for the city’s residents. Children run around the Praça das Águas (Waters Square) with balloons and candyfloss, while their parents rest and cool down with ice creams. Strolling up to the Ilhas do Passatempo (Pastime Islands) – a pleasant picnic area in the woods – I spy a different kind of movement. A long tail, striped yellow and black, emerges from a rubbish bin. Seconds later, I spot another tail, followed by a long snout and a charismatic little face resembling a cross between a fox and a raccoon. There’s…

BOOK HIGHLIGHT OF THE MONTH Welcome to the world of plankton Planktonia By Erich Hoyt  Firefly Books, £28.00 WHILE MANY SPECIES MIGRATE TO their feeding ground or to their breeding area just once a year, there’s a migration that happens every night – but it’s by a creature so small you’d be forgiven for having overlooked it. For plankton, their migration begins at sunset, when they rise up through the ocean, eating plant plankton and other delicious morsels as they go. These microscopic creatures descend just before dawn to the depths of the ocean to hide during daylight hours. The next evening, the process begins again. Although the cloak of darkness provides a safer passage for plankton, there are still predators everywhere, with jellyfish, basking sharks and blue whales lurking…

How did you get into photographing wildlife in the first place? My love of wildlife started from a young age – learning about nature was instilled into me by my late mother. I used to draw what I saw as she couldn’t afford a camera. If you weren’t a photographer, what would you be? Something outdoors, with nature as my constant companion. Have you ever had any close calls while on a shoot? I was photographing grey seals in the UK and I didn’t realise the tide was coming in fast behind me. It nearly cut me off, but I was able to extract myself just in time. What’s your worse investment of time on a shoot? On a shoot in Madagascar, my companions and I received a tip-off that…

ACROSS 6 Marine snail in the family Haliotidae, also called an ormer (7) 7 ___ swallow, social songbird of the Americas (5) 9 Crow ___, alternative name for wild sweet William (4) 10 Gnu (10) 11 Colourful insectivorous bird, seen increasingly in the UK (3-5) 13 Large ground squirrel (6) 15 Small species of cormorant (4) 17 Large predatory reptile in the order Crocodilia (informally) (5) 18 Young whale, perhaps (4) 19 Thicket-forming wild plants (6) 20 Clawed marine crustaceans (8) 23 ___ lemur, primate of Madagascar (4-6) 26 Hawaiian goose (4) 27 Female ruff (5) 28 Antennae (7) DOWN 1 Large neotropical raptor (5,5) 2 Long-legged wader that might be bar-tailed or black-tailed (6) 3 Small dabbling duck (4) 4 Noisy South American bird that might be northern, southern…

DURING OCTOBER, ONE OF BRITAIN AND Ireland’s least-familiar wildlife spectacles is underway, witnessed by a handful of the most ardent nature enthusiasts. It occurs only after dark, but not even every night, and if you go, chances are you won’t be able to see anything. This is the autumn bat swarming season, best enjoyed with a bat detector. After breeding in summer, many bats abandon their maternity roosts and leave the breeding area, travelling to hibernation sites that may be some distance away. Species that hibernate underground have very particular needs, favouring caves, old mines and tunnels used by generations of bats. Among them are long-eared bats and several species in the genus Myotis, including Daubenton’s, Natterer’s, Brandt’s and whiskered bats. At the entrance to these special places, bats from…

Sloes are the fruit of the blackthorn, one of the commonest and most widespread hedging trees on account of its dense growth. October is traditionally when they are finally ripe enough for us to pick. They look like small, dark plums, with an attractive bluish-purple sheen – but don’t try one straight off the tree. Its intense, eye-watering tartness will almost certainly make you splutter and spit it out. Even birds normally leave sloes untouched, much preferring hawthorn, holly and mountain ash berries. Three species that will eat them are mistle thrushes, fieldfares (winter visitors from the far north) and hawfinches. Heavily sweetened, of course, sloes go famously well with gin, and are excellent too in whisky and grown-up chocolate. Unfortunately, excessive and frequent flailing of hedges can lead to…

THE WORLD’S OCEANS CONTAIN ABOUT as few insects as they do flowering plants, and yet new research shows that ‘pollinators’ do occur in the sea. It’s just that they are not insects and it’s not flowers they’re pollinating. Biologists have discovered that slender wart weed, a red seaweed that grows in shallow UK waters, is ‘pollinated’ by a woodlouse-like marine crustacean named Idotea, which transports the spermatia – the algal equivalent of pollen – from male to female plants. “When we found these crustaceans were highly associated with the algae, particularly during the reproductive season, that’s when we thought that maybe they are helping with fertilisation,” says Myriam Valero, who led the research from France’s University Paris-Sorbonne. In return for their services, the crustaceans find food and shelter among the…

THE TERM ‘AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS’ most likely comes from a false 19th-century theory that ravens were uncaring parents, prematurely expelling their young from their nests. Their association with bad luck, Halloween and death stems from their jet-black colour, ever-watchful eyes and scavenging around dead things. Their other collective nouns include ‘rave’, ‘treachery’ and ‘conspiracy’.…

AFTER YEARS OF CAMPAIGNING by conservation groups and the National Farmers’ Union, it was heartening to hear that tough new measures to tackle the illegal practice of hare coursing have at last been brought into force by the UK government. Hare coursing is barbaric. Typically, two greyhounds (or other fleet-footed dogs that hunt by sight rather than smell) are set onto a brown hare. The coursers bet on how closely each dog can follow the twists and turns of the hare as it tries to escape, and whether they will ultimately catch and kill it. It is a serious problem in many rural areas. Not only does it involve cruelty to the hares (and, often, the dogs), it is closely connected to organised criminals responsible for a range of other…

WITH FISHING TOPPING THE POLL of Britain’s most popular outdoor pastime, it is somewhat surprising that the fine art of fish-watching appears so far down the pecking order, when compared to birdwatching. But on a few key days spread across October and November, Atlantic salmon are capable of putting on a display that measures up to any performance our feathered friends are able to muster. The spectacle of salmon leaping up their natal river can be traced back to a previous autumn when they started their lives as pea-sized eggs laid by their mothers in gravelly riverbeds. In April or May, they hatch as ‘alevins’ before becoming fry and feeding on aquatic invertebrates. The minority that are not picked off by predators will then steadily develop into larger ‘parr’ with…

BBC WILDLIFE HAS TEAMED UP again with the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (DSWF) to support its internationally renowned annual competition and exhibition. This year’s competition attracted 850 artists from 55 countries, with a total of 1,654 artworks entered. The winners, runners-up and highly commended entries have now been chosen and we have a selection for you over the next few pages. Launched by celebrated wildlife artist and conservationist David Shepherd CBE, Wildlife Artist of the Year epitomises his ‘Art of Survival’ legacy – a concept on which DSWF was founded. Using the power of art to celebrate wildlife, support awareness and raise vital funds for species protection is at the heart of the wildlife charity. Since its inception in 2008, the contest has raised over £1.2 million to support vital…

In the limelight An iconic, fairy-tale fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria) stands proud in a damp autumn woodland in 2019 – the start of Dutch photographer Jan Vermeer’s voyage into the mysterious world of fungi. He used a 40-year-old camera lens to create the ‘bokeh’, soft focus effect. It’s in the name The shocking blood-red cap of the aptly named bloody brittlegill (Russula sanguinaria) can be seen in coniferous forests. The generic name of the mushroom, Russula, means red, and sanguinea is derived from the Latin sanguis, which means blood. Microscopic world “The blue dots are the slime mould Physarum album, which is closely related to mushrooms,” says Jan. “They are tiny, maybe 5mm so you need a special 25mm lens to capture them – a normal macro lens isn’t…

Email your questions to wildquestions@immediate.co.uk Does the UK have any coral reefs? HELEN SCALES ANSWERS: Corals are certainly not confined to the shallow, sunny waters of the tropics. More than half of around 5,000 known species of corals live in cold and deep waters. The main reef-forming coral in UK waters is a bushy, white species, Lophelia pertusa, or Desmophyllum pertusa as some scientists prefer to call it. Mostly located off the west coast of Scotland, Lophelia reefs are found from around 150m deep and are very slow growing. A huge reef off the coasts of Barra and Mingulay in the Outer Hebrides covers more than 100km2. In the Rockall Trough, 160km north-west of Scotland’s Cape Wrath, the Darwin Mounds are thickets of Lophelia, as well as another species Madrepora…

Enjoy the beautiful yellow, orange and red hues of falling leaves this autumn and learn to identify the different species. For more ID guides, visit our website: discoverwildlife.com/identify-wildlife ENGLISH OAK Turning yellow-brown from October, the lobed leaves of the oak are a familiar shape to many. HAWTHORN The hawthorn bears distinctive leaves, which drop from November, and bright red berries called haws. BEECH The pointed oval and copper-coloured leaves of beech can often stay on the plant over winter.…

MOUNT KINABALU, BORNEO As a child I was obsessed with plants. I conjured up a cloud forest in a fish tank, and grew my favourites: Nepenthes – a genus of carnivorous plants from South-East Asia. I would inhale gulpfuls of its mossy air, close my eyes, and dream I was on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo – Nepenthes capital of the world, and home to the largest of them all: the king pitcher plant (Nepenthes rajah). That dream came true when I was 21 and made my pilgrimage. At the start of the trail I was fidgety, like an athlete before a race. I met my guide and we set off over the eastern shoulder of the mountain along a trail now closed to the public. But for our footsteps and a…

NICK BAKER The larvae of a parasitic hoverfly live in the brood chambers of ant colonies, grazing on ant young P.40 GILLIAN BURKE The biologist and presenter explores what the summer’s drought means for British trees P.19 MARK CARWARDINE There are much-needed new penalties against hare coursing, but will they act as a deterrent? P.33 LUCY COOKE “Female dunnocks take two ‘husbands’, mating with them 250 times to start a family” P.29 MIKE DILGER “Leaping salmon put on a display that rivals any performance of our feathered friends” P.36…

The tallest wild birds in Europe at about 1.2m, common cranes have a distinctively slow yet somehow self-important stride. They have been doing well in our recovering wetlands and 2021 was their best breeding year since recolonising Britain in the 1970s, after a 400-year absence. In autumn, the birds form post-breeding flocks, in tallest wild birds in Europe at about 1.2m, common cranes have which the brownish juveniles stick near their parents. 10 misleading animal names Some species have very deceptive common names. IN BRIEF Critical habitat A new Zoological Society London report finds that the Thames estuary is an important habitat for porpoises. Surveys conducted in spring 2022 along the south-east coast of the UK found several groups of porpoises, with a significant number residing in the outer Thames.…

VAGRANT SPECIES DIARY Kelp gull, Cambridgeshire GULLS ARE A POLARISING FORCE IN THE field of birding. For some observers the identification and taxonomic challenges posed are irresistible, leading to long hours spent down the local refuse tip or gull roost; to others the complexities of ageing and moult, whilst studying the gonydeal angle (the point where the bill turns upwards near the tip) and the numbers of mirrors and tongues on the diagnostic wingtip patterns are, well… you’re probably starting to see the problem already. But recently many birders took a sudden interest in gulls because a rather special one had appeared at Grafham Water in Cambridgeshire. On 7 August 2022, a keen local birder recognised an odd ‘black-back’ with noticeably long pale blue-grey legs and a jet-black eye, the…

OCTOBER MARKS THE OFFICIAL START OF the British apple season, and since the 1990s, 21st October has been celebrated as Apple Day, with events held around the UK. Windfall apples left to rot on the ground do not go to waste, however, because the fruit nourish an entire ecosystem, the sweet, fermenting juices attracting a host of scrumpers, from the last of the year’s wasps to butterflies, earwigs, thrushes, badgers, foxes and small mammals. Apple trees themselves are great for birds and insects, particularly as they become gnarly with age. Nuthatches and treecreepers will feed on insects hiding under the bark and woodpeckers will often make their nest in old rotten holes. Europe’s native apple is the crabapple, with its smaller, tarter fruit. Domestic apple trees, found in orchards and…

Water vole droppings are found grouped together in latrines, which they use to mark their territories, and measure 8-12mm long. They can be confused with rat poo, but have blunt ends and are green-black in colour whereas rat droppings are larger, smelly and brown-black in colour. “Water vole droppings are odourless, so they mark their territories by rubbing their hind feet on scent glands and drumming them into their droppings, leaving a flattened appearance,” says Emily Sabin from the People’s Trust for Endangered Species.…

IT’S NOT ONLY BIRDS THAT FLY SOUTH FOR winter. Many of Europe’s death’s-head hawkmoths also head off to warmer climes in autumn. And new research reveals that they do so by means of a sophisticated navigation system comparable to that of our feathered friends. “They’re not just getting blown about,” says Myles Menz, lead author of the research, published in Science. “They have a place to go and they’re getting there.” Menz and his colleagues were able to track the insects as they crossed the Alps by fitting them with tiny, short-range transmitters that could be followed by scientists travelling in a light aircraft. This revealed that the moths routinely adjust their heading to compensate for wind direction, allowing them to maintain a consistently straight flight path. They also seek…

Michaela Strachan presents the story and sound of the house sparrow on Tweet of the Day THE CLATTER OF TRAFFC IS PIERCED MOMENTARILY by the sound of my drill screaming into the brickwork. I’m halfway up a ladder clinging to the chimney of my local pub, the Red Lion (which is ironically painted green), surrounded by an expansive landscape of concrete, interspersed by the occasional fluffy green bush. My assistant, Matthew, relays screws to me with an outstretched arm. He has offered his assistance in return for a supermarket meal deal. It’s August 2021 and we’re installing birdboxes around Portsmouth in the warmth of a golden sun. This is the seventh of the day. Four are already in place on the pub’s exterior and, earlier this morning, two went up…

WITH EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST JV CHAMARY Evolutionary history can be represented by a tree of life on which extinction stops some branches from growing while speciation – the process that produces new species – maintains or increases nature’s diversity. And although Charles Darwin’s revolutionary book is titled On the Origin of Species, it doesn’t really explain how or why species might originate. What is a species anyway? It’s controversial. A species is a population of organisms whose members share common characteristics. But biologists don’t agree on one definition for what a species is. Plants and fungi are typically defined by features (morphology), for instance, whilst animal species are traditionally based on whether members interbreed to create fertile offspring – and species are now often distinguished by DNA. Why does speciation occur?…

PRIZE-WINNING PHOTO Colour change I was mesmerised when I found these newly hatched stink bugs in my backyard under the leaf of a guava tree. Without disturbing them, I captured some photographs one evening with the help of a focus assist light and flash diffuser. When I checked on the insects a few days later, I found their colour had changed to almost deep brown and most of them had scattered – I could only spot two. Subhendu Debnath, Kolkata, India A thing for flamingos This image is the result of hours of patience, crawling knee-deep in the muddy water. Bhigwan Lake is home to many migratory birds, including the greater flamingos. Every winter they visit the lake in their thousands. In 2022 I went to see the flamingos before they migrated.…

MY SON AND HIS FAMILY LIVE IN southern Spain, between Malaga and Ronda, and last night he and my visiting nephew were treated to a wonderful spectacle of three beech martens on their neighbour’s roof, probably young ones, just before midnight! My granddaughter of 13 woke up, and with great forethought took her phone camera, and got some good footage of the three martens. This was an animal that I had not heard of before, as it does not exist in the British Isles, though is closely related to our pine martens, just a little smaller and with a more extensive white bib (the pine marten’s is cream-coloured). In all my years of reading your magazine, over 40 now, I have never seen mention of this animal, but Google of…