Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2026 i BBC Wildlife Magazine

ABOUT 6-7 MILLION YEARS AGO, common rosefinches – which are today found across a vast expanse of northern Eurasia and are even occasional winter visitors to the British Isles – island-hopped their way from the Russian Far East across the Pacific Ocean and arrived in the newly formed, volcanic land masses of Hawaii. There, a single species evolved into an extended family of 56 Hawaiian honeycreepers, many of which only barely resemble their pioneering ancestor. Take, for example, the gorgeous scarlet honeycreeper or i’iwi, with its huge downward curving bill that is perfectly adapted for extracting nectar from endemic Hawaiian flowers. At first glance, it looks nothing like a finch. “The team is seeing whether Hawaii’s mosquito population can be modified such that it’s no longer able to transmit avian…

IT’S 6.45AM ON A CRISP autumnal morning. I am 183m up, standing on the roof of Tower 42, in the middle of London’s Square Mile. The morning light has stirred and the sun is about to rise. I watch as commuters emerge from buses and Tube stations, scurrying in all directions like streams of ants. My attention, though, is on a peregrine that is sitting on a ledge of the Oxo Tower, across the River Thames in Southwark. Through my telescope I can see that the bird is focused intently on something. Suddenly, it leaps forwards off the ledge, wings folded at first. As it spreads its wings I realise it must have spotted some prey and locked onto it as it powers north across the Thames. It’s exciting to…

A SPECIES IS THE NAME OF A GROUP OF individuals that can mate to produce fertile offspring. If individuals cannot mate, or can mate but cannot produce fertile sons and daughters, then they are not the same species. For example, while lions and tigers can mate to produce ‘ligers’ or ‘tigons’, their sons are always sterile and therefore lions and tigers are classified as different species. Different species often form due to geographic barriers, such as mountain ranges or rivers, which separate populations of the same species until they become so different that they can no longer mate to produce fertile offspring. Breeds are different ‘types’ of domestic animals that humans have created over the years through artificial selection. Great Danes and chihuahuas are breeds of domestic dog, but they…

How did your career start? My interest in wildlife began when I was three, watching ants in the garden. When I was seven, my dad bought me a cheap digital camera. I started taking photography more seriously, and while studying zoology at university, realised it was more than a hobby. Which of your images is most important to you? Two stand out. The first, taken from my Bristol flat, shows a lesser black-backed gull dive-bombing a builder who was pointing his drill at the bird like a gun. It’s funny at first glance, but reveals a darker truth – the building site was far too close to the gull’s nest and the bird was defending its chicks. The second is a camera-trap image of a jaguar in the Amazon. I’d…

In Finland, the Eurasian lynx is an incredibly secretive cat, spending its days slinking furtively through remote boreal forest. Long captivated by this ethereal species, adventurers Edwin Towler and Harry Read spent two weeks camped out in the chilly wilderness, searching for tracks and signs and desperately hoping for a lucky sighting. Don’t miss their story!…

SAN MIGUEL ISLAND, part of California’s Channel Islands National Park, lies 50km off the coast of Santa Barbara. The waters surrounding this windswept island teem with marine life, particularly seals and sealions – in fact, Point Bennett, on the island’s western tip, hosts the largest congregation of these animals anywhere in the world. On any given day, spotted harbour seals, California and Stellar sealions, Guadalupe and northern fur seals, and northern elephant seals haul out on gritty sandspit beaches and craggy outcrops, frolic through dense kelp forests and body-whomp in pounding surf. There are some 30,000 to 50,000 pinnipeds in these waters. Of course, where there are plenty of pinnipeds, there are also plenty of predators. Great white sharks are known throughout this region – on some maps, the area…

RESEARCHERS IN THE Arctic have recorded narwhals hitting deep-sea hydrophones. Though they don’t yet know the reasons for this behaviour, the findings, published in Communications Biology, raise questions about whether marine species are disturbed by underwater acoustic monitoring. In a vast ocean, scientists have had to overcome the difficulty of recording the marine environment and monitoring animals without disturbing them in noisy boats or by taking intrusive samples. “Using passive acoustic monitoring to detect acoustically active animals helps to census biodiversity, understand animal behaviour and habitat use, and reduce the negative impacts of human-made noise,” says Evgeny A Podolskiy from the Arctic Research Centre at Hokkaido University in Japan. To set up the study, Podolskiy and colleagues worked with local Inughuit hunters to place three underwater recorders between 190m and…

Their full-throated roar is wellknown, but African lions have a newly described ‘intermediary roar’, according to a study by the University of Exeter. Understanding the sounds these big cats make can help experts identify individuals and estimate population sizes, which can then be used to monitor and protect this vulnerable species.…

“IN BRIGHTON, THE STARLINGS shapeshift against an orange sky on the seafront fringes of the city. They’re known for their displays at the Palace and West Piers, but you’ll also find them dancing around an electricity pylon on the Old Shoreham Road, and above warehouses, shopping centres and allotments – cityscapes that bring birds and people together. Our resident starlings seem to start thinking about murmuration in late August, after their second brood of chicks has fledged. I watch them on the rooftops, from where they seem to practise their dance moves (I like to imagine one of them is curating the whole thing, like a ballet teacher shouting ‘one, two, three, four’ at a class of particularly dedicated five-year-olds). When I’m at my allotment, I hear them rattling off…

Air force In the heart of South America, the world’s most powerful eagle perches high in a tree on the fringe of remnant rainforest. Female harpy eagles like this individual can weigh up to 9kg. “These birds are sheer power,” says photographer Karine Aigner. “They are the superhero predators of the rainforest.” Life on the edge Across Central and South America, the harpy eagle is increasingly endangered as loggers and farmers fell its rainforest habitat. But here, in Mato Grosso, Brazil, the harpy is breeding on the edge of deforested cattle-grazing land. “They can thrive as long as they have what they need, which is a really tall tree – and food,” says Karine. Harpy hearkening Like an owl, the harpy can raise or lower its facial disk feathers to…

IN THE GÖTA RIVER, UPSTREAM FROM THE massive stone ramparts of the Bohus Fortress and the estuary in Gothenburg, strong currents churn the murky waters. There’s a palpable sense of history along this stretch of Sweden’s west coast: the medieval castle, strategically located on the former border between Denmark and Norway, was besieged 14 times, yet never taken by force. Today, an equally well-planned but far more benevolent campaign is poised to make its own history. Inside a large metal cage, which has been partially suspended in the Göta’s dark, swirling waters for two days, a school of 25 torpedo-shaped fish perform lazy circles, deftly avoiding one another with flicks of their pectoral fins. Linnéa Jägrud, a freshwater scientist working for the Swedish Anglers Association (Sportfiskarna), reaches over from a…

A CROSS THE PLANET, SCIENTISTS ARE observing ecosystems lose the colours that once defined them. Coral reefs turn ghost-white during marine heatwaves, their once-fluorescent pinks, greens and blues draining away almost overnight. Vast stretches of ocean have shifted towards deeper, more homogenous blues. Forests fade from viridescence to a dusty yellow-brown during drought, distinct from the rich reds and golds of autumn. Even the plumage of some birds appears less vibrant. These changes may seem simply aesthetic, but colour is far more than beauty, especially under heat and atmospheric stress. It’s a biological signal, a measure of energy and, according to researchers in a growing field known as chromatic ecology, an indicator of ecosystem health. “Colour is far more than beauty – it’s a signal” One of the clearest examples…

A LABOUR OF LOVE. AND PAIN. The Schmidt Sting Pain Index is a scale rating the relative pain caused by different stinging insects. It was devised by the entomologist Justin Schmidt, who worked at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Arizona. Schmidt was interested in the origins of sociality in Hymenoptera, the large order of insects that comprises sawflies, wasps, bees and ants. He hypothesized that this trait depended on the insects’ ability to produce painful venom. But no one knew how painful the different stings were, so Schmidt decided to find out. Whenever he was stung during his fieldwork, he rated the pain on a scale of one to four and wrote a colourful description of how it felt. Over 35 years of research, he received more than…

ECHIDNAS ARE SPIKY AND SLOWmoving mammals that have long or short snouts known as beaks. They’re also called spiny anteaters because they lack teeth and rely on their long, sticky tongues to catch invertebrates. It is suggested that the echidna is named after Ekhidna, a creature in Greek mythology that is half-woman, half-snake, and so features a blend of mammalian and reptilian characteristics. Along with platypuses, echidnas are monotremes (they lay eggs rather than bear live young) but they also have fur and produce milk. How many species are there? There are four: the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus); the eastern long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus bartoni); the western long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus bruijnii); and Sir David’s long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi), named after the acclaimed broadcaster. Where do echidnas live? They are found in Indonesia…

The crossword ACROSS 1 Seaweed of rocky shores (7,5) 10 Former salt lake of central Asia (4,3) 11 Plant in the myrtle family, known for its aromatic oils (3,4) 12 Biogeographic area, such as the Nearctic or Palearctic (5) 13 Geological era in which the most recent ancestors of crocodiles evolved (8) 15 Nocturnal bird of South America (5,5) 16 Island of Indonesia, once home to an endemic tiger species (4) 18 Hearing organs (4) 20 Colourful fish of the Indian Ocean (6,4) 22 Seashore habitat, popular with wading birds (8) 24 Long white radish of east Asia (5) 26 ___’s sea eagle, Asian raptor (7) 27 ___ Water, East Midlands bird reserve (7) 28 Author of Silent Spring (6,6) DOWN 2 Greenery (7) 3 Tiny domestic arachnid (4,4) 4…

MARK CARWARDINE “Overwhelming evidence categorically shows that foxhunting never stopped.” p25 DAVID LINDO “Peregrines belong to London every bit as much as the foxes skulking in back gardens.” p27 KATE BRADBURY “In Brighton the starlings shapeshift against an orange sky on the seafront fringes of the city.” p29 MIKE DILGER “The movement of snow geese must represent one of North America’s finest wildlife spectacles.” p30 NICK BAKER “Like a large woody carrot, it has a long taproot that can penetrate desert soils to depths of 30m.” p34…

AFRICAN HORNBILLS, SHARKS, RAYS, OKAPIS and tigers were among the winners at the recent CITES CoP20 meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. But saiga, despite being seen as an international conservation success story, find themselves back in the hunter’s sights. CITES is a conservation treaty that regulates the international trade in more than 40,900 species of wild animals and plants. Moving species to Appendix I provides the highest level of international protection, followed by decreasing levels in Appendices II and III. Among the decisions this year was long overdue protection for African hornbills, whose skulls and casques are heavily trafficked. They now receive the same level of protection (Appendix II) as their Asian cousins, partly in recognition of their role in dispersing seeds and encouraging reforestation. Landmark protection was also given to…

Isn’t foxhunting illegal in the UK? Yes. After decades of campaigning, foxhunting (as well as hunting other mammals with dogs) was banned in Scotland in 2002, and in England and Wales in 2004. It is still legal in Northern Ireland, but a private member’s bill that would ban the hunting of wild mammals with dogs is currently being debated in Stormont (it passed the first stage with 113 votes for and 49 against). Why was it banned? It was deemed to be cruel – legislators stated that “causing suffering to animals for sport is unethical”. Foxes are chased for long periods and the independent Burns report (2000) concluded that “this experience seriously compromises the welfare of the fox”. If a fox hides in a hole, terriers are put down to…

The broadcaster, naturalist and tour guide shares the most breathtaking seasonal events in the world LIKENED TO BEING IN THE MIDDLE OF a snow globe, the biennial movement of snow geese to and from their high Arctic breeding grounds must represent one of the finest wildlife spectacles North America has to offer. Migration occurs along precise migratory corridors, though the exact arrival and departure dates of these intensely social geese at a number of key staging posts is also dictated by a combination of cues such as light, temperature and food availability. To catch Did you know? Food passes through the snow goose’s digestive tract in an hour or two, generating six to 15 droppings per hour. The highest defecation rate occurs when a goose inevitably swallows mud while grubbing…

WHEN FOUR SUBadult cheetahs arrived at Kuzuko Private Game Reserve, South Africa, in 2023, there were high hopes that the female among them would breed. There was just one snag: it turned out that all four were, in fact, male. A gender mix-up was the least of the quartet’s concerns, as their mother had been killed at Karongwe Private Game Reserve. “To increase their chances of survival, they came to live in our boma facilities,” explains Jim Tan, CEO of Kuzuko, referring to the traditional fenced animal enclosure. “We looked after them to adulthood. Two went off to Lolelunga Private Reserve, Zambia, in 2024; the other two were set to go to Mozambique, but were jumped by lions – sadly, one was killed.” Kuzuko is one of more than 70…

IT WAS ONCE ON the verge of disappearing altogether, but Canada’s most endangered mammal is making a comeback, thanks to a dedicated team of scientists, researchers and conservationists climbing mountains – quite literally – to save it. High in the cloud-covered alpine meadows of Vancouver Island’s Strathcona Provincial Park, a conservation success story is quietly unfolding. This landscape of boulder fields and windswept slopes is the only place on Earth where the Vancouver Island marmot survives. At first glance, the species might seem unremarkable: an oversized rodent, chocolate-brown with a white nose and a fondness for sunbathing. But appearances can be deceptive. The Vancouver Island marmot is among the rarest mammals in North America and, for a time, it was perilously close to extinction. Back in 2003, fewer than 30…

THE THEATRE HAS SEEN MANY A HUMAN stage a hammy death, but few are quite as dramatic as those that occur in the animal kingdom every day. The ability to play dead, otherwise known as tonic immobility or ‘thanatosis’, is found in a wide range of animals, including insects, crustaceans, amphibians, mammals, birds and fish. This is different to the freezing behaviour that some animals show as part of the fight or flight response. During tonic immobility, the animal becomes temporarily paralysed and shows no obvious response to external stimuli. And the Academy Award for the best faked death goes to… the one and only North American marsupial, the opossum. When it feels threatened, this cat-sized black and white creature will keel over and fall to the ground, catatonic. Lifeless…

Taking a break Diadasia chilensis is a bee native to Chile, primarily the central and southern regions. It is a solitary bee that constructs its own nests in soil or rocks. I photographed this one as it rested on a flower in the Talca University Botanical Garden. Anibal Gomez, Talca, Chile A hard stare I was visiting my local birding happy place, Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s Lackford Lakes, when I noticed a fluffy tail in a tree. Suddenly a stoat appeared, paused long enough for me to take a few photos, then just as quickly scampered away. Carly Culmstock, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Coupled up On a dog walk in Harewood Forest, I saw these two great spotted woodpeckers fly up from the undergrowth to an oak branch to begin mating. Caught in the…

I WANTED TO CONGRATULATE THE TEAM responsible for producing the current David Attenborough blockbuster, Kingdom, in Zambia’s fabulous Luangwa Valley. It’s such a gripping ongoing drama, showing wild Africa as it truly is: red in tooth and claw, but also indescribably beautiful. The night-time images filmed among the park’s oxbow lagoons and ebony glades are magical, and the intimate close-ups of mothers and cubs conjure memories of scenes I have witnessed only a few times in a lifetime of safaris. Brian Jackman, Dorset Rook club We have a large rookery in the beech trees in our garden. One bright, cloudless day in November, I saw rooks in numbers at nest sites, mainly in pairs, bowing and fanning tails to each other. What was going on, as I can’t ever remember…