Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2025 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

Where the Polar Bear Waits As scientists in Churchill, Canada, race to understand how to protect polar bears that are threatened by climate change, the town works to keep increasingly hungry bears away from its population. Catch up on iPlayer Birdsong Follow Irish ornithologist Seán Ronayne as he sets out to record the sound of every bird species in Ireland – that’s nearly 200 birds. Seán travels to some of the country’s most beautiful locations to capture its most elusive species. Catch up on iPlayer This Natural Life Martha Kearney meets wildlife cameraman Hamza Yassin in a bird hide at the London Wetland Centre. As birds fly past the hide window, Hamza speaks of hope in the face of all the difficulties facing our natural world. Catch up on BBC…

AFRICA’S GRASSLANDS ARE PROBABLY WHAT most people imagine when they think of the continent – vast plains teeming with wildlife. But beyond the famous tourist reserves, grasslands are also vital areas for people. In Kenya, for example, they support 60 per cent of livestock as well as 70 per cent of wildlife outside of protected areas. In some areas, overgrazing and climate change-related droughts are leading to degradation of these ecosystems, leading to both conflict with species such as elephants, giraffes and lions as well as conflict between the people who use them. Researchers from the nature NGO Conservation International tested whether grassland restoration reduced these conflicts for the benefit of both people and wildlife. They surveyed more than 1,500 households in the Chyulu Hills of southern Kenya, where 11,000…

IF YOU WERE TO RANK THE 11,276 BIRDS currently known on Earth on a scale of recognisability, the Indian peafowl surely deserves a place in the top 10. In the wild, peafowl are found across most of the Indian subcontinent, including Sri Lanka. But thanks to widespread introductions across Europe, the Antipodes, the USA and South Africa, you might not have to travel too far to catch up with the males’ extravagant looks and astonishing display. Being a sexually dimorphic species, the males (peacocks) are very differently plumed to the females (peahens). Sporting an electric-blue neck and head, topped with a small crest, the male is best known for his impressive train, which extends for more than a metre beyond his rump. These plumes are only fully formed when the…

BENEATH A WINKING fluorescent light in the corner of my childhood classroom was a fish tank within which floated something incredibly weird. It was a blob. A gooey, slimy mass, just below the surface. If you told me that aliens had snuck in overnight and put it there, I would have believed you. It wasn’t aliens, of course – it was frogspawn. And it marked the start of my first egg obsession. In the weeks that followed, the tiny life forms that generated within the slime commanded almost all of my attention. The blob was like a fortress. Hungry snails and flatworms would cruise along its surface, as if testing for weak spots, while the embryos, merely dots of dividing cells, slept their dreamless sleep. In a matter of days,…

SHAKA THE AFRICAN SAVANNAH ELEPHANT is standing in the middle of an expansive field, staring intently at us. His ears are forward, his face is alert and he doesn’t appear stressed or, can we say, unhappy. He’s a 33-year-old bull in the prime of his life at Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm just outside Bristol, and he will be forever captive because of society’s prevailing view that “Daddy’s taking us to the zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow, zoo tomorrow,” goes the song – a celebration of an exciting and wholesome day out. As Noah’s Ark CEO Larry Bush says, visitors can encounter “the power of an African elephant” or watch an “Andean bear climbing a tree trunk”, experiences that are arguably more intense and longer-lasting than watching the same species in a…

ELECTRICITY IS THE RESULT OF interactions between objects with electric charge – and batteries aren’t the only things that can be charged. Like the top and bottom of a battery, the inside of a living thing can have a negative charge while the outside is positive, or vice-versa, making it electric. What is electroreception? It’s the ability to sense an electric field, the physical forces produced by attraction and repulsion (electromagnetism) between charged objects, which spreads through a surrounding medium like ripples in a pond. In water, the charge across an animal’s surface interacts with dissolved molecules in the medium: opposite charges attract, like-charges repel. Electroreception can be passive or active. For the passive sense, an animal detects electric fields created by other individuals (such as nearby predators, prey or…

How did your career start? Out of curiosity. I’ve always been fascinated by the natural world and then I fell in love with photography, so I decided to use my new skills to raise awareness. Which of your images is the most important to you, and why? Two come to mind, showing undeniable love. The first is of a baby orangutan clinging to its mother, finding safety in her arms as we all do in our early years. The second is of an adult elephant with its trunk embracing a youngster’s trunk, as if hugging. So relatable. Is there a shoot you’ll never forget? Camping on the shores of the Antarctic Peninsula with my wife, I saw a full moon rising, so I took out my telephoto lens to capture…

The Killer Hornets is available on iPlayer IT’S EARLY APRIL AND YELLOW-LEGGED, or Asian, hornet queens that managed to evade the nest-destroyers from the UK’s National Bee Unit (NBU) last year are just waking up from their long winter hibernation. Though it is native to the generally much warmer climate of south-east Asia, the yellow-legged hornet is extremely adaptable and has found continental Europe and the UK much to its liking since it arrived in France back in 2004. “She’ll lay up to 2,000 eggs, feeding them once they hatch. That’s when she starts to wreak havoc” A hornet queen spends April building up her reserves by feeding on sugar-rich foods, such as tree sap and nectar. She also constructs the year’s first nest from rotting wood, which she mixes…

Mike shares his adventure in Radio 4’s Rare Earth, which airs on 4th April IF THERE WAS EVER proof that good things come to those that wait, it was my recent and unforgettable visit to the renowned birding destination of Papua New Guinea. Reading Alfred Russel Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago as a teenage birder, I recall being transported to a land of astonishing birds with unparalleled beauty and wonderfully bizarre ornamentation. More inspiration came with Bruce Beehler’s Birds of New Guinea, the first definitive field guide to the island. Flicking through page after page of sumptuous illustrations, it was always the birds of paradise that flew straight off the pages and into my imagination. I knew I would see them for myself one day but I never imagined that day…

Email your questions to wildlifemagazine@ourmedia.co.uk TERRESTRIAL HABITATS DON’T GET ANY higher than the summits of Himalayan peaks. And Himalayan peaks don’t get any taller than Everest. At 8,849m above sea level, the summit is exposed to extremes of wind, cold and oxygen-deprivation. Life is sparse at such heights. Humans are almost certainly the only mammals to have set foot up there and, even then, only with technological assistance, and we don’t tend to hang around for long. The only other mammal that gets close is the large-eared pika, a relative of rabbits, which reaches 6,400m in the Himalayas (though yellow-rumped leaf-eared mice have been recorded on the 6,739m-high summit of Llullaillaco in the South American Andes). It might be that no life-forms bigger than a single cell can eke out…

PUFFERFISH ARE TOXIC WATER ‘balloons’ that know how to defend themselves against predators. But their impressive arsenal isn’t the only thing that’s fascinating about them. They have evolved a beak-like mouth and some of the most unusual teeth you’ll see underwater. Some are even sand artists – their beautiful seabed creations puzzled scientists until 2011, when the mystery was solved. Where do pufferfish live? Pufferfish are primarily found in warm tropical and subtropical waters but some live in brackish and even fresh waters. How big are pufferfish? The largest species of pufferfish is the giant freshwater pufferfish (Tetraodon mbu), which is found in Africa and can grow to more than 60cm long. The smallest species is the dwarf pufferfish (Carinotetraodon travancoricus), which lives in India and is approximately 2.5cm long.…

The crossword ACROSS 1 Bunny colonies (6,7) 8 Journal of the British Ornithologists’ Union (4) 9 Heathery (10) 10 East ___, region of England, rich in fen and farmland (6) 11 Former term for a sloth or anteater (8) 12 ___ tailorbird, species discovered in Phnom Penh in 2009 (9) 14 Hawaiian goose (4) 15 Insects in the order Hemiptera (4) 16 Wildflower in the genus Meconopsis (4,5) 20 Red-___ merganser, saw-billed duck (8) 21 Shrub in the mint family, native to the Middle East (6) 23 Shark in the family Sphyrnidae (10) 24 Mountain goat (4) 25 Cranefly larva (13) DOWN 1 Locust tree genus (7) 2 Aromatic herb (5) 3 ___ gull, seabird of the far north Atlantic (7) 4 Widespread American ungulate (5-6,4) 5 Vocalised like a…

Two decades ago, California’s Elkhorn Slough was polluted to the verge of ecological collapse, its rich seagrass meadows smothered by mats of algae. Then, something remarkable happened: sea otters arrived, and the estuary made a dramatic recovery. This is the story of a habitat brought back to life by one of nature’s most charismatic ecosystem engineers. ON SALE 1st MAY…

A SMALL REEF CRAB IMPROVES OUTCOMES for stressed corals during heatwaves, according to a new study in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Some crab species have mutualistic relationships with coral, and scientists now think these can help coral in times of stress. They carried out an experiment during a heatwave, using samples of the branching coral Acropora aspera and hoof-clawed reef crabs (Cyclodius ungulatus), placing them in tanks fed with water from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The tanks replicated various scenarios. Some of the corals had wounds, some were exposed to harmful algae, and some were housed with crabs. Some were exposed to multiple combinations. Over a month, the scientists found that, as expected, the higher water temperatures triggered coral tissue loss as a stress response, particularly for…

In December, the world’s largest iceberg, known as A23a, broke free from Antarctica after being trapped for months in an ocean vortex. It is now on a collision course with South Georgia. Some scientists think it could obstruct feeding routes for penguins and seals, increasing juvenile mortality. Others think it may bring rich nutrients to the surface, encouraging plankton blooms and, in turn, prey abundance.…

THE MALE SUPERB lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae) is a king of avian karaoke, notorious for his vocal mimicry. A clip from David Attenborough’s The Life of Birds, featuring a lyrebird riffing on a chainsaw, kookaburra and car alarm, has been viewed on YouTube more than 22 million times. We’re told the lyrebird’s extraordinary skills evolved in his quest for mates. What’s not mentioned is that the lyrebird’s paramour shares these mimetic skills. Females are capable of freestyling their own complex songs but, until recently, no humans had noticed. There has been a longstanding androcentric bias in birdsong study, dating back to Darwin. The melodious calls of songbirds such as the superb lyrebird are a textbook example of sexual selection: a male ornament evolving to be ever more elaborate over generations of…

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER Based in Dorset, Guy Edwardes is a wildlife and landscape photographer who specialises in the wildlife of the British Isles. He also runs photography workshops and is author of 100 Ways to Take Better Nature & Wildlife Photographs.…

GLIDING DOWN THE TAMBOPATA River in the Peruvian Amazon, I understand the luxury of being on a boat at night in the jungle. The air is thick with 35°C heat and 99 per cent humidity. The constant breeze generated by our moving vessel offers much-needed respite from the sweltering conditions, while also keeping the relentless mosquitoes at bay. Chris Ketola, head field research coordinator for conservation NGO Fauna Forever, is standing at the bow. Using a powerful torch, he is searching for caimans lurking in the dark waters. Caimans are mostly nocturnal, which is why we are out at night. Three species inhabit this region: the white, black and dwarf caiman (Caiman crocodilus, Melanosuchus niger and Paleosuchus trigonatus). I am part of a crew of five and we are here…

SHARE! Send your pics to discoverwildlife.com/submit-your-photos to see them in print!…

I AM BELATEDLY MAKING MY WAY THROUGH the February issue and have just read James Fair’s piece about feeding birds. What a brilliant article! Some years back, my family unwittingly contributed to the decline of greenfinches (and probably other species as well) because we never cleaned our birdfeeders. Since learning about trichomonosis, we regularly clean our birdfeeders now and encourage friends and family to do the same. I agree with James’s sentiments that we should be incorporating at least some wildlife-friendly features into our gardens, whether that’s planting native flowers, letting flowers go to seed, or providing logpiles and other dark and overgrown areas for slugs, beetles and other invertebrates. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a garden, and they are such important habitats for so much of our…

1. African bush elephant Not only the largest living land animal, the African elephant is also thought to be the strongest animal on Earth in terms of the sheer amount it can lift. It is capable of lifting the equivalent of its own body weight – all seven tonnes of it. Much of the species’ strength is found in its complex trunk, which contains up to 40,000 muscles. 2. Dung beetle Elephants may lead the pack by sheer lifting power but, when it comes to strength relative to body size, dung beetles – which get their name from their diet of animal poo – are even more impressive. One species, the horned dung beetle, which is just 10mm long, can pull more than 1,000 times its own body weight. 3.…