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SAVING WHALES IN THE THAMES

TWO WORLDS Surface-level photography reveals contrasting lives

CALIFORNIA’S REDWOODS Can the world’s tallest trees survive?

RIDDLE OF THE ROAN The rare antelope bucking the trend in South Africa

Discover Guyana A Birding Paradise

© Pete Oxford

© AshelyHolland

© Leon Moore

© Jamie Lafferty

For more information visit

www.guyanatourism.com #DiscoverGuyana

ife: there’s nothing else quite like it, as my brother once quipped to me. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve come back to that line. There’s such an extraordinary amount of it, and in every conceivable form. Just look at our features this issue.

Our cover feature explores the vastly different worlds separated only by the surface of the ocean. Those two worlds

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above and below couldn’t be more different, as David Doubilet’s remarkable photographs illustrate (p36).

Then, on the west coast of the USA, we gaze up at the tallest living things on Earth (p52) – many of these redwoods were already hundreds of years old when the first Europeans made landfall.

We also meet a rare antelope in Africa (p60), an even rarer songbird in the South Pacific (p46), and explore how and why whales veer off course (p68).

I hope you enjoy this month’s little slice of life on Earth!

Cover: Green sea turtle: David Doubilet; This page: redwood: John Trax/Alamy

Paul McGuinness Editor

Nothing can prepare you for the sheer scale of California’s redwoods – page 52.

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October 2021

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Roan: Mark Eveleigh; fatu hiva monarch: Benjamin Ignace; lemon sharks: David Doubilet; redwood: Alamy; brent goose: David Tipling/Alamy; illustration by Peter David Scott/The Art Agency

October 2021

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The people behind our stories

October 2021

CONTENTS 46 Fading queen

WILD MONTH 12

Meet the Fatu Hiva monarch – a small Polynesian songbird in need of help

Seven species to spot

52 California’s redwoods

What to look out for in October

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23 Nick Baker’s hidden Britain

60 Riddle of the roan

24 News

28 Truth or fiction?

COVER STORY

Africa’s second-largest antelope has suffered worrying population declines.

Can two new conservation projects turn things around?

The ancient British cave shrimp

Beaver numbers have experienced a boom in Scotland over recent years

COVER STORY

The USA’s famous and celebrated giant trees have been with us for hundreds of years. We investigate their future

On the mudflats Be awed by flocks of migrating birds along the shoreline this autumn

68 Saving whales in the Thames

COVER STORY

News stories of stranded cetaceans abound. Find out why it happens and how they can be helped

Do the blades of wind turbines pose a threat to golden eagles in the UK?

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COVER STORY

DAVID DOUBILET The photographer shares his love of life beneath the waves. “These photographs invite you to look through the surface, imagine, dream and come to know the sea,” he says.

See p36

LIV GRANT “The trusting innocence of the Fatu Hiva monarch is an anachronism, a relict of a time before humans wrought calamity on these islands and taught the birds to fear,” says the film-maker. See p46

Mark Carwardine Why are those responsible for damage to the natural world not held to account?

32 Meet the scientist Alexander Bond studies the impact of plastic waste on oceanic birds

OUR WILD WORLD 82 At home Natural history TV, books and more

86 Your photos

FEATURES

88 Feedback

36 Photo story: Two Worlds

Your letters and Tales from the Bush

COVER STORY

Ocean photographer David Doubilet shares some of his favourite images revealing life at the water’s surface

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91 Puzzles

LYNN HOUGHTON The travel writer heads to Highway 128 in California. “Redwoods dominate the landscape for miles, a breathtaking sight that compels drivers to stop and stand among giants.” See p52

REGULARS 6

In focus Kamchatka brown bear, aphid nymph, black caiman crocodile

74 Behind the image A jaguar in the forests of French Guiana

76 Q&A Which lizard packs the most power?

Why do squirrels strip bark?

98 Megan McCubbin The TV presenter tells us why she has taken a shine to sand lizards

October 2021

EMMANUEL RONDEAU The wildlife photographer, writer and film-maker lugged 150kg of equipment through a Guianan jungle to get his prized shot of a jaguar. “Amid this vast ocean of forest I felt insignificant,” he says. See p74

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Andy Parkinson/Comedywildlifephoto.com

IN FOCUS | Lean on me Mum provides a handy leaning post for baby bear in this amusing image shortlisted for the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2021 (the winners will be announced on 22 October). For brown bears in the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia, summer has been spent gorging on protein and fat-rich salmon. Nursing her cub in between fishing sessions, at the end of the glut the mother may have gained up to 200kg. Her efforts will see them through the lean winter months when plants and berries are the only thing on the menu.

Alex Hyde/naturepl.com

IN FOCUS | One small step An aphid nymph reaches the summit of its walk along the edge of a fly agaric mushroom – the round, red fungi with white spots beloved of fairytales and garden gnomes. Adult females can asexually produce living young (as opposed to eggs) throughout the summer and these pinhead-sized green sapsuckers can quickly crowd plant shoots, buds and leaves. Gardeners often reach for insecticidal sprays to kill these ‘pests’ but they provide a meal for ladybirds, beetles and birds such as blue tits.

Karine Aigner/naturepl.com

IN FOCUS | Getting an eyeful These emerald-winged horseflies are feeding on a black caiman crocodile in Yasuni National Park, Ecuador. Sitting above its eye they can remain undetected, but this crocodile’s prey don’t usually have such luck. The biggest of the six species of caiman, reaching 5m in length, black caiman typically hunt at night, relying on their acute eyesight and sense of smell to locate and grab birds, insects, small mammals and other reptiles from the dark waters, usually swallowing them whole.

WILDMONTH Golden leaves, delicate fungi and migrant wildfowl in all their finery – it’s time to embrace autumn.

By Ben Hoare

ONLINE

THE MEANING OF TREES Professor Fiona Stafford on birch.

1 | SILVER BIRCH

Lady of the woods past, birch forest sprang up across the British Isles as the ice sheets retreated. Nowadays, this pioneering role is reprised as birches quickly take advantage of new road verges, railway cuttings and brownfield sites.

They also march up hillsides, taking over from other trees as the ground gets steeper and more exposed – and, were it not for the browsing of sheep, would grow higher still.

In autumn, the branches of birch trees are full of dark red mature female catkins packed with tiny seeds.

These attract roving flocks of finches, especially redpolls and siskins.

FIND OUT MORE Learn how to identify trees by their bark: discoverwildlife.com/identifytree-bark

Colin Varndell

Among our native trees, the silver birch puts on one of the most spectacular autumn displays. Golden leaves provide a beautiful contrast with pale, peeling bark, enhanced by the dappled effect created by the tree’s naturally open and airy structure. In a breeze, the burnished foliage dances and shimmers. Birch was known as the ‘lady of the woods’ in Irish Gaelic poetry, and more recently, in Coleridge’s romantic poems.

This isn’t a large or long-lived tree.

Many birches don’t see out a century; some will already show signs of rot and decay in their sixth decade.

Their importance to the landscape comes not through longevity, but as environmental pioneers: birch saplings are often the first trees to colonise open areas. In the distant

WILD OCTOBER 2 | BALLERINA WAXCAP

Pretty in pink

Wax cap: Christine Whitehead/Alamy; pintail: David Tipling; boar: Drew Buckley

Behold a mushroom in a tutu. This pretty species has a pointed cap with a delicate upturned skirt, in the most gorgeous shade of soft pink. The cap soon starts to fray and fracture, but a fresh specimen is spectacular. Sometimes you will come across several together: a veritable dance troupe. While the ballerina waxcap looks like nothing else, other members of its rainbow-coloured family can be tricky to separate. All waxcaps prefer wild, damp grassland – grazed, but not fertilised or reseeded. They are a sure sign of naturefriendly farming.

GET INVOLVED Join the WaxcAPP survey: plantlife.org.uk/ uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/habitats/ grassland/waxcaps-fungi/waxcapp-survey

3 | PINTAIL

Dapper drakes October sees wildfowl begin arriving from the north and east, swelling the flocks of resident ducks, geese and swans. They include pintails, which mostly come from western Russia. Some of our best-looking ducks, male pintails have a long neck and a pair of extremely long central tail feathers, which give them a uniquely rakish profile. Females lack these and are also much plainer, but usually mix with the drakes, so can be identified by association. Look for pintails on estuaries and coastal pools, including on the sea itself.

FIND OUT MORE UK ducks guide: discoverwildlife.com/ ducks-of-the-uk

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October 2021

WILD OCTOBER

ONLINE

OPEN COUNTRY Wild boar in the Forest of Dean.

4 | WILD BOAR

Pigging out Autumn is a time of plenty for these wild pigs, which feast on fungi and fallen nuts and fruit. They even eat tannin-rich acorns, which are poisonous to cattle and sheep and distasteful to red (though not grey) squirrels. Classed as feral in the UK, boar are nonetheless native and their rootling and seed-spreading play a key part in forest ecosystems. Today, they are restricted to a handful of wooded areas, notably the Forest of Dean.

Rewilded estates, such as Bamff in Perthshire, often have traditionalbreed pigs roaming instead.

FIND OUT MORE Wild boar in the UK: bit.ly/3yhRuAo

WILD OCTOBER 5 | DIPPER 6 | BEECH

Going with the flow Uplands tend to empty of birds after the breeding season, before harsher weather sets in. Dippers, which are closely associated with rushing mountain torrents – the nature writer Mark Cocker describes the rotund birds as “river-sculpted like a pebble itself” – often simply move downstream.

For the next few months they can thus be seen beside wider rivers and around the shores of lakes and reservoirs, looking strangely out of place. Listen for their song: like thrushes, dippers are unusual in singing more or less year-round.

It is far-carrying, with a rich and sweet quality.

Crunchy nuts Go for an autumnal stroll under an avenue of beech trees, and you may find yourself walking over a crunchy carpet of beech nuts. Also called mast, they have a prickly husk that splits open underfoot to form a four-pointed star. The nuts are devoured by squirrels, deer and birds such as finches, including the bramblings that visit Britain each winter. Wherever there are plenty of beeches, it is worth keeping an eye out for these orange-and-brown birds, which often mingle with flocks of chaffinches.

GET INVOLVED Record the changing seasons: naturescalendar.woodlandtrust.org.uk

ONLINE

TWEET OF THE DAY David Attenborough on the dipper.

7 | SEA BUCKTHORN

Coastal feast Dipper; Drew Buckley; beech nut: Laurie Campbell: fieldfare in sea buckthorn: Oliver Smart

With its bright orange fruit, sea buckthorn bucks the trend for red and black berries this month. Garlands of golden berries form heavy clusters on its thorny branches. They are popular with migrant fieldfares, redwings and blackbirds that have just made landfall from Scandinavia. Though sour, they can also give a colourful twist to juices and cocktails. Sea buckthorn is a tough shrub, whose silvery foliage (reminiscent of olive trees) thrives in salty coastal air.

It grows in dense thickets over sand dunes, especially along the east coast, but is widely planted elsewhere to stabilise eroding slopes.

FIND OUT MORE Enjoy wild fruits: discoverwildlife.com/ identify-wild-fruits 16

BBC Wildlife

October 2021

wanderers

I leave this place for you

Leaving a gift in your will protects the places you love. Find out how to make your will for free at nationaltrust.org.uk/gifts-in-wills, call 01793 817699, email legacies@nationaltrust.org.uk or scan this QR code and quote LA202113.

© National Trust 2021. Registered charity, no. 205846. © National Trust Images/Chris Lacey

MIKE DILGER’S

WILDLIFE WATCHING ON THE MUDFLATS

In his series of great places to watch wildlife in the UK, the star of BBC One’s The One Show points out the surprising joys to be taken from the muddiest of places, teeming with invertebrates and a refuge for waders and wildfowl.

ccupying that space where land, sea and sky seem to merge, intertidal mudflats must surely be one of the most ‘natural’ of all the many highly modified habitats now enountered in modern-day Britain. Entirely framed at its lower reaches by the sea, the area of mudflat closest to land – and therefore furthest away from the daily scouring effects of the tide – will eventually morph into vegetated saltmarsh.

Located in estuaries and bays, mudflats will form in any relatively sheltered location where fine silt and clay sediments that have originated from rivers are

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allowed to settle, before ultimately forming the wide, open expanses so familiar along large sections of our coastline. To the untrained eye, mudflats can appear superficially similar to both sandbanks and sandy beaches, however, the physical properties of mud enable it to retain moisture far more easily, giving estuaries a watery sheen even at low tide.

Mudflats also differ in possessing far more organic matter than their sandy counterparts, making them a very fertile habitat, often teeming with bristleworms, bivalves and mud snails. In fact, 1m² of the finest estuarine mud may well contain more than 1,000 worms, which in turn provide

vital sustenance for a vast array of waders and wildfowl arriving for the winter to gorge on this huge invertebrate banquet.

Brent geese and wigeon will also be attracted to feed on mudflat plants such as eelgrass.

Welcome break Additionally, the comparatively mild British winters further enhance mudflats’ attractiveness to wildlife migrants right across the northern hemisphere. Numbers of birds build from September onwards as these muddy sanctuaries provide a pitstop for recuperation after the rigours of the breeding season. Here, the travellers can gradually return to their fighting weight in preparation for the long flight back north the following spring.

October 2021

WILD OCTOBER

Clockwise Spiral from left: Mick Durham/Alamy; Ernie Janes/NPL; Paul Marriott/Alamy; Bill Coster/Alamy; David Tipling/Alamy; iStock/Getty

Clockwise from top left: a flock of waders – mainly dunlin – flies along the Solway Firth coast at RSPB Mersehead; an oystercatcher feeding on mussels as the tide recedes; photographers are drawn to RSPB Snettisham; knot in winter plumage; a rare sighting of a lugworm; the brent goose is the smallest of our geese in the UK.

In many places, mudflat habitat has been reduced as a result of the land being ‘reclaimed’ from the sea for agriculture or building development, and the creation of artificial defences.

Pollution from agricultural, industrial and domestic run-off is an ongoing issue, while dredging for shipping access can impact the quantity of sediment available. On top of that, fishing, bait-digging and recreation continue to put further pressure on feeding and resting birds.

Thankfully, however, mudflats and saltmarshes tend to require minimal conservation management, and these robust habitats continue to play a much under-appreciated role in both coastal protection and carbon sequestration.

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WILD OCTOBER To enjoy mudflats at their most marvellous – and to ensure you are not left stranded or with wet feet – timing is everything. Getting yourself into position on the landward side of mudflats as the tide is rising will ensure that the birds are slowly brought to you, and not the other way round. This is particularly important given that many wader, wildfowl and geese flocks are incredibly susceptible to human

To enjoy mudflats at their most marvellous – and to ensure you are not left stranded or with wet feet – timing is everything.

disturbance. It is worth bearing in mind, too, that while in some places the mud may be relatively firm underfoot, in others it can be soft, slippery and treacherous – so tread carefully! Another, safer option is to choose a slightly higher (and drier) vantage point, from which you will be able to take in the spectacle of swirling or feeding flocks within a wide and uninterrupted vista. Binoculars must be considered essential.

Last and not least, it’s also worth remembering that the position of the sun will likely have an impact on how well you are able to observe and identify the birds. With the sun either on your back or to one side, the flocks should be presented in the best light for maximum viewing pleasure.

C H OI CE LO CAT I O NS 1

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1 Findhorn Bay is the largest of the Moray Firth’s three estuaries. This huge tidal bay, covering 6km² and situated at the mouth of the River Findhorn, holds huge flocks of waders, wildfowl and geese through the winter.

S P EC IES TO LOO K O U T FOR Knot Breeding in the High Arctic, this mediumsized, dumpy wader will have lost its brick-red breeding plumage by October, making its key distinguishing feature no longer a distinguishing feature! With knot, however, it is all about the power of the collective, with large swirling, whirling flocks often forming when pushed off the mud by the advancing tide.

Oystercatcher Large and stocky, with black-and-white plumage and a distinctive carrotlike bill, this noisy and excitable wader is an ever-present feature across our mudflats from autumn onwards. The oystercatcher’s main foods during winter are mussels and cockles, which are either prised or stabbed open with a strong bill.

Shelduck

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north shore of the Solway Firth and the extensive mudflats and saltmarshes are famed for their huge barnacle geese and wildfowl flocks in winter.

Numbers of shelducks swell on the coast during winter.

and a bright-red bill, the shelduck is a handsome addition to any mudflat during winter. Following a post-breeding moult, shelduck return en masse to our mudflats, principally for a tiny estuarine snail called Hydrobia, which they sieve from the mud using their bills with a scything action.

Brent goose No larger than a mallard but distinctly plumper and with short black legs.

The head, neck and small bill are all dark, apart from a distinctive white neck slash. Breeding in the High Arctic, three

subtly different races visit Britain’s mudflats for the winter to feed on eelgrass and a variety of other saltmarsh plants.

Lugworm Living its life out of sight, the lugworm is rarely seen at close quarters except by those who dig it out for fishing bait. Evidence of its presence, however, is obvious in the form of coiled mud castings at low tide. Reaching 20cm in length, this large marine worm lives in a U-shaped burrow and is often only observed naturally when extracted by the bill of a curlew or godwit.

3 RSPB Snettisham in Norfolk is prime muddy real estate in the Ouse Washes and one of the best places to see a whirling wader spectacle in Britain.

4 Poole Harbour in Dorset is the second largest natural harbour in the world. Tidal mudflats and saltings surround the harbour, with the richest areas for wildlife found on the west and south shores.

5 WWT Steart Marshes in Somerset is one of the UK’s largest new wetland reserves. Situated at the mouth of the River Parrett and encompassing part of the Severn Estuary, the huge tidal range provides abundant feeding opportunities for wildfowl and waders.

Don’t go without checking tide times. At many locations the incoming tide is capable of outpacing even Usain Bolt. Tide timetables can be purchased either in paper form or via an app such as My Tide Times.

October 2021

FLPA/Alamy

Larger than a mallard, with a bottle-green head, chestnut breastband, black shoulders

2 RSPB Mersehead is situated on the

The

Possibilities are Endless

Recycle your magazine and seven days later it could come back as your newspaper

www.recyclenow.com

WILD OCTOBER

Hidden very now and again, a strange eyeless creature – pale, delicate and glassy – turns up in a washing-up bowl or kettle. This frail thing has come from a world so close but so far removed from the one dominated by the dance of the Earth around the sun that we are familiar with. Where this creature originates, light doesn’t figure at all.

At a maximum length of 3mm, the British cave shrimp (Niphargus glenniei) is at first glance underwhelming, but is actually rather special. It is one of just a handful of truly endemic creatures found in the UK. And it comes out of taps.

Well, in all fairness, this only happens to those whose private water supplies are connected to bore holes in the counties of Devon and Cornwall.

The first British cave shrimp was discovered in 1948 by Brigadier EA Glennie (to whom it owes its scientific name) in the cave systems around Buckfastleigh, South Devon, and was identified as a new species to science by the Plymouth Marine Laboratory shortly after. But since then

Illustrations by Peter David Scott/The Art Agency

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NICK BAKER Reveals a fascinating world of wildlife that we often overlook.

The British cave shrimp lives in subterranean waters.

they have turned up in caves, mines, bore holes and other stygian waters connected to aquifers from Land’s End across the moors to Exmouth.

In common with other cave-adapted creatures, these shrimps appear to be phantom forms of the more familiar.

They have cousins on the topside that they superficially resemble – freshwater amphipods (commonly referred to as freshwater shrimps), found swimming in ponds and ditches.

DID YOU But down in these KNOW? If the common freshwater depths, there is no shrimp (Gammerus pulex) light, and so they enters a cave, subsequent have done away generations will lose with energetically their pigment. expensive and superfluous features such as pigments in their body, and organs such as eyes. Instead, these pallid JUST THE RIGHT SIZE crustaceans have a bristling Being small brings this cave shrimp big benefits. array of longer-than-usual The tiny size of Niphargus surive without food for over sensory limbs, antennae and glenniei is a handy adaptation six months. Additionally, hairs to grope their way around in a world of no sunlight and low in the event of water levels and find morsels of food in energy flow. A smaller dropping in the pools where the form of bacterial films and body is less it lives, its small size and, particles of organic material expensive to run more importantly, its washed down into the cracks and gives it flattened profile allow and crevices of their dark an energetic it to retreat into tight world. So slim are the pickings advantage crevices. Here it can that they have to be remarkably – the remain alive in the thin efficient and frugal with their British cave film of water coating shrimp can energy consumption. the stones.

October 2021

BRITISH CAVE SHRIMP

The distribution of this species is, as far as we can tell, very restricted and endemic to the south-west of England.

However, there are other equally enigmatic species of cave shrimp within the British Isles – six in total. Two live in Ireland and three others are found in scattered localities in southern England – including one that lives in an ancient subterranean lake below Southmead in Bristol. By far the largest, at up to 15mm long, is Niphargus aquilex, which is found across southern England and Wales, and sometimes appears on the surface.

Old timers The lives of the British cave shrimp have remained almost unchanged for millennia.

Insulated from historical temperature changes and the Ice Age, which wiped the land clear of life like a giant, frigid Etch A Sketch, our little crustaceans have survived in the homeostatic conditions of the refugia hidden beneath our feet for at least 19.5 million years in Britain. It makes them, along with a couple of other similar cave shrimp species, arguably the oldest resident species.

NICK BAKER is a naturalist, author and TV presenter.

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WILDNEWS

By SIMON BIRCH, STUART BLACKMAN, ANDREW GRIFFITHS, MEGAN SHERSBY and KENNY TAYLOR

K E E P I N G YO U U P TO DAT E W I T H T H E B I G N AT U R E STO R I E S

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

Scottish beavers on the rise Eurasian beaver numbers are expanding fast, but not without conflict with farmers and landowners. cotland’s beaver population has more than doubled in the last three years and spread to many new areas, according to the largest beaver survey carried out in Britain to date. The survey also revealed the extent of killing licensed by the Scottish government’s nature agency, leading one group to take legal action to try to block it.

Eurasian beavers began to re-establish populations in the wild in Scotland around the year 2000. Initially, this was due to escapes and probable unofficial releases in the catchment of the River Tay, until a five-year re-introduction trial, backed by the Scottish government, began in Knapdale in the west Highlands in 2009.

There is no evidence yet of Knapdale beavers colonising beyond that area.

It’s a different story in the River Tay system and some of its neighbouring rivers however, where a survey carried out for NatureScot between late 2020 and early 2021 recorded 251 active territories. This is an increase of 120 per cent from the 114 active territories logged in 2017–2018, with areas west and south of the Tay catchment being colonised most rapidly. Researchers estimate that the current population in central Scotland is in the range of 602 to 1,381 animals.

Since 2019, when Scottish beavers were given European Protected Species status, they can only be killed legally under licence from NatureScot. So the survey’s conclusion that

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licenses were issued to kill more than 200 beavers in 2019–2020 has alarmed a number of conservationists.

“This is such a waste of life and opportunity when nature is in crisis,” said the conservation manager for Trees for Life, Alan McDonnell.

Trees for Life is now seeking a judicial review of the licensing decisions, arguing that such killing was not a “genuine last resort” and that beavers causing land management issues should be relocated.

This legal move is being challenged by NatureScot, farmers and landowners.

“We have been working with partners for 25 years to bring beavers back to Scotland because they provide multiple benefits to people and nature,” said Robbie Kernahan, NatureScot’s director of sustainable growth.

“But in certain circumstances, beavers can cause problems.” Kenny Taylor

FIND OUT MORE Read the full survey report: bit.ly/ScottishBeavers2020-2021

October 2021

The current population in central Scotland is in the range of 602 to 1,381 animals.

The success with which Eurasian beavers have established territories in Scotland is a problem for some people and welcomed by others.

October 2021

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WILD NEWS

A Phillip Island centipede encounters a black-winged petrel.

Inset: the centipedes inject poison into their prey through their forcipules.

ZOOLOGY

Seabird chicks fall foul of giant centipedes Petrels are among the unexpectedly varied diet of the very hungry arthropods. predation clearly reduces the reproductive esearchers have found evidence of output of the petrels, the centipedes giant, carnivorous centipedes killing appear only to be able to prey on chicks and eating up to 3,700 black-winged that are young and small,” said Luke petrel chicks annually on a remote South Halpin, one of the researchers.

Pacific island. It is believed that this is “Our study found that after reaching the first time that such behaviour has a certain age and therefore been documented. size, chicks tended not to Phillip Island centipedes DI D YOU be preyed on by centipedes.

(Cormocephalus coynei) can At this population level the grow to almost 30cm in K NOW ? black-winged petrel is resilient length. They subdue their Island gigantism and appears to be growing prey by using two pincer-like occurs when animals with many more petrel chicks appendages, called forcipules, living on islands grow surviving to adulthood than to inject a toxic venom into larger in the absence chicks that are preyed on,” their prey, which, apart from of the predators and explained Halpin. seabird chicks, includes geckos, competition present on “It’s an entirely natural skinks and crickets. the mainland. predator–prey relationship Despite devouring so many and, in some sense, the chicks, researchers found that centipedes have taken the place of the giant centipedes were not having predatory mammals that are absent any long-term negative impacts on petrel from the island.” numbers, which currently stand at almost The giant centipede is now restricted to 20,000 breeding pairs.

Philip Island, part of the Norfolk Island “The population of black-winged group that lies 870 miles (1,400km) off petrels is large, so while the centipede

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FIND OUT MORE The American Naturalist: journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715702

October 2021

Petrel: Luke Halpin; centipede: Daniel Terrington

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the east coast of Australia, and was only formally described as a species in 1984.

At the time, it was thought to be very rare, due to the impact of feral pigs, goats and rabbits on its habitat, after their introduction in the 18th century, Following the eradication of these animals, black-winged petrels began breeding on Philip Island and have become the most common of the 13 species of seabirds now present.

The population of giant centipedes has since recovered thanks to an abundant food supply (the petrel chicks), though their precise number remains unknown. Simon Birch

A limestone pavement winds across the Wild Ingleborough project’s site.

WILDLIFE RESTORATION

Joined-up scheme to rewild Yorkshire n ambitious project in the Yorkshire Dales National Park aims to rewild 1,200ha (3,000 acres) of land, restoring peatlands and expanding native woodland and scrub to help tackle the climate emergency.

Currently, much

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of the land is heavily grazed pasture and the project plans to demonstrate a new future for the uplands around Ingleborough, the second highest peak in the Yorkshire Dales.

Over the next 12 months, the Wild Ingleborough project will create around 40ha of new native woodland including rowan, hawthorn and hazel, half of which will be created by planting 30,000 trees and It’s hoped the the other half restoration project through natural will help cuckoos. regeneration.

Landscape: Joseph Gray/WWF-UK; cuckoo: Jon Hawkins/Yorkshire Wildlife Trust; tobacco plant: Maarten Christenhusz

NEW SPECIES DISCOVERY

WHERE IS IT? All the new species are found in the Australian arid zone. N. insecticida was found by a truck stop on the Northwest Coastal Highway in Western Australia.

Megan Shersby

October 2021

Andrew Griffiths

FIND OUT MORE Yorkshire Wildlife Trust: ywt.org.uk/wildingleborough-vision-future

IN NUMB ERS

Killer tobacco plant WHAT IS IT? This wild tobacco plant is one of seven newly described species in the Nicotiana genus. The ‘killer tobacco plant’ (N. insecticida) was so-named as it’s covered in sticky glands that capture and kill small insects – the first wild tobacco plant to do so. It is not known if it gains nutritional benefit from the insects and thus isn’t yet classified as carnivorous.

Wild Ingleborough will connect existing nature reserves in the area and create a bigger, more joined-up space for wildlife, including black grouse, red squirrels, cuckoos and curlews.

Project partners include the WWF, the Woodland Trust, Natural England and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF, said: “Climate change and nature loss are two sides of the same coin. Through this project, we want to show that a wilder world is a more stable one, with nature more resilient and able to adapt to change.”

84 hen harriers have fledged from 31 nesting attempts, their most successful breeding year in England since 2002, according to Natural England.

2,018km Nicotiana insecticida can capture gnats, aphids and flies.

FIND OUT MORE Curtis’s Botanical Magazine: bit.ly/N-Insecticida

The record-breaking distance travelled by a pipistrelle bat that flew from London to the small Russian village of Moglino.

Sadly it was then killed by a cat.

150 Gorgan cave salamaders are left in Iran’s Hyrcanian forest, their only habitat, says the People’s Trust for Endangered Species.

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WILD NEWS ENTOMOLGY

Chemical combo is a lethal cocktail for bees he threat that agrochemicals pose to bees may have been underestimated, according to new research showing that the lethality of cocktails of approved pesticides is greater than the sum of their parts.

While the safety of pesticides is routinely assessed on a chemicalby-chemical basis, commercial pesticide products frequently combine multiple compounds.

The research found that, overall, exposure to these cocktails causes higher mortality than would be expected from the additive effects of the individual chemicals.

Although some of the most harmful individual pesticides – several neonicotinoids, for example – have been banned in recent years, it’s not yet clear whether this has benefitted bees.

“I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest that bee declines are

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slowing or halting,” says Harry Siviter, who led the research at Royal Holloway, University of London. “Given that there are so many other drivers of bee declines, such as habitat loss and climate change, I’d be very surprised if this was happening.

“Changes to the regulatory processes globally are required urgently,” he adds. He argues that commercial pesticide cocktails should be assessed for their effects on bees before they’re licensed for sale. Stuart Blackman

FIND OUT MORE Nature: nature. com/articles/s41586-021-03787-7

A honeybee visits a rapeseed blossom to collect nectar.

TRUTH OR FICTION?

Wind farms kill golden eagles

WANT TO COMMENT? Email wildlifeletters@ immediate.co.uk

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A golden eagle soars over Strathdearn, Inverness.

– where the number of fatalities can be counted on one hand.

A rigorous UK planning system might have something to do with it. And perhaps a long history of persecution in the UK has made our golden eagles more cautious than most. Indeed, two recent studies of satellite-tagged Scottish birds, published in the journals Ibis and PLoS ONE, show that they avoid wind farms almost entirely.

We probably know more about golden eagles’ behaviour around turbines than we do about any other species.

But they’re not the only species at risk.

Between 2005 and 2016, Norway’s Smøla wind farm killed 73 white-tailed eagles.

As the RSPB puts it, “There is an urgent need to understand how wind farm developments within the UK uplands will affect birds.” Stuart Blackman

FIND OUT MORE Ibis: onlinelibrary. wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ibi.12996

October 2021

Bee: Frank Bienewald/Getty; golden eagle: Scotland: The Big Picture/NPL

Colossal blades spinning through the air at high speeds – how could they not be a threat to eagles?

THERE’S NO DOUBT that wind turbines – the tips of their blades slicing through the air at more than 100mph – pose a threat to birds. Up to 2,000 golden eagles have died in turbine collisions in California’s Altamont Pass since 1987, for example.

But the situation is very different in Scotland – home to most of the UK’s golden eagles and lots of wind turbines

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O Expert advice to use out in the field O Tips on using equipment for the best shots O Behind the scenes with the professionals O Advice on where and when to go

discoverwildlife.com/ photography-masterclass

WILD OPINION

MY WAY OF THINKING

MARK CARWARDINE The conservationist discusses the urgent need to make powerful individuals culpable for the environmental damage they wreak.

m I the only one who believes the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, should be behind bars?

I doubt it. So should top executives at Southern Water, directors and CEOs of Big Oil and, indeed, anyone else responsible for deliberately or negligently causing serious and lasting damage to the natural environment.

The technical term for their crimes is ecocide. Committed repeatedly over many decades, it’s ecocide that has created the climate and ecological emergency we now face.

There is growing scrutiny of the environmental performance of companies around the world (about time too) and they are occasionally found guilty of damage to the environment and ordered to pay fines or legal costs. But they’ve already budgeted for these ‘expenses’ and simply carry on regardless. The individuals responsible are not being held to account.

Southern Water is a good example.

The privatised firm was recently fined a record £90 million for deliberately pouring between 16bn and 21bn litres of untreated raw sewage into highly sensitive protected seas off Kent and Hampshire. Southern Water has a long history of criminal activity – with 168 previous offences and cautions – but, to quote from the official sentencing, continued to “show a shocking and wholesale disregard for the environment”.

Why should the individuals responsible for such a wicked crime be allowed to hide behind their corporate façade? After all, the prosecution highlighted “long-term corporate

Chris Valle/Getty

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knowledge” of what was happening. The culprits should be fined and thrown into jail. No more richly undeserved bonuses for them.

Ecocide is also committed by governments, of course. Bolsonaro is one of several presidents who many view as guilty of horrendous environmental crimes. Brazilian academics and activists have warned that, if he remains president, the collapse of the Amazon rainforest is inevitable under the relentless onslaught of fire, drought and land clearance. His determination to placate the powerful agribusiness lobby has global repercussions – an utterly shocking loss of biodiversity and, even worse, a dramatic acceleration of global warming (burning of the Amazon rainforest now produces three times more greenhouse gases than the remaining forest is able to absorb).

Perhaps the worst offenders are the top executives of Big Oil. We now

should be fined and thrown into jail. No more bonuses for them. T

Personal responsibility could curb polluters.

know that the fossil fuel industry’s own scientists were warning them about global warming at least half a century ago. What did they do? They spent a fortune on PR campaigns designed to confuse both the press (which regurgitated their lies to an unsuspecting public) and gullible or corrupt politicians about the dangers posed by burning fossil fuels. While concocting a counter narrative to undermine scientific consensus on global warming, they even funded sham ‘research’ organisations to deny the real science. This is corporate deception on a mind-bending scale.

There is pressure to add ecocide to the list of crimes judged by the International Criminal Court (ICC), along with genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression. This would enable the individuals responsible to be prosecuted.

But the ICC’s 123-member states do not include the USA, China or India – three of the biggest culprits – and they would never consider a domestic atrocity like the one committed by Southern Water.

So national legislation is urgently needed too.

Companies don’t make decisions.

People do. If they knew they could be made personally responsible for their crimes, maybe they would think twice about sacrificing the health of the planet for their own personal gain? After all, they only care about themselves.

MARK CARWARDINE is a frustrated and frank conservationist.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? If you want to support Mark in his views or shoot him down in flames, email wildlifeletters@immediate.co.uk

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WILD NEWS

MEET THE SCIENTIST

Alexander Bond Senior bird curator at the Natural History Museum Studying the human impact on remote oceanic wildlife – particularly seabirds – and advocating and supporting LGBTQ+ in STEM is all in a day’s work for the biologist. lexander Bond is a conservation biologist who focuses on marine birds and remote oceanic islands. His main interest is to better understand human-induced changes to the natural world, and much of his research involves marine birds and their ingestion of plastic waste.

Bond goes to some of the most far-flung places on Earth to study animals that many of us would think are the very epitome of wildness: birds such as the albatross and the shearwater,

Bond handles a petrel, which spend most of their time flying over the world’s oceans.

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S Whole plastic bottle caps

come out of shearwaters; albatross have their bills

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patrolling the vast oceans.

to death.

Bond’s team once recorded 274 pieces of plastic in one shearwater.

was originally set for a career in optometry until an inspirational teacher steered him towards conservation biology and then ornithology. But it was the oceans and the islands that initially drew him. “For me it was the fascination with these islands first, and the birds followed later,” says Bond.

Identifying as gay and queer, he describes being LGBTQ+ in a STEM environment as having all the pressures of a scientific career, and then the pressures of being LGBTQ+. “But it is not additive, it is multiplicative,” he says.

Bond also spent time as a semi-professional improvisational actor for 15 years when he lived in Canada, and thinks scientists could benefit from the techniques of improvisational thinking.

“What is science but storytelling with a different set of vocabulary?”

FIND OUT he says. “Sitting around, whether it MORE is in the pub or at a field site with Documenting the somebody, and just riffing on ideas, that is where some of the most threat of plastic fascinating, and most interesting to birds on an Australian island: and more innovative ideas have come from, in my experience.” bit.ly/2VKZT1K Andrew Griffiths

October 2021

Alexander Bond

“It is easy to become desensitised to it, but what always brings it home to me is when I am in the field with somebody – either a new student or a collaborator or an artist we are working with – and they see it for the first time,” says Bond. “I almost relive that experience through their eyes.”

“We see whole plastic bottle caps come out of shearwaters, we document albatross who have had their bills mutilated by fishermen,” he continues. “The fact of that becoming routine in your day is in itself quite sad, but seeing the reaction of others reminds me of how important it is.”

Bond grew up in eastern Canada, on the Bay of Fundy, “which has the highest tides in the world; a natural playground when you are a kid”. He

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LIFE ON THE Land and sea, air and water. Two startlingly separate realms but also inextricably linked. Ocean photographer David Doubilet has spent a lifetime capturing the space where these two worlds meet.

Photographer David Doubilet Words Jane Williamson

Photo story

PHOTO STORY OCEANS

EDGE

With his camera encased in a state-of-theart waterproof housing, David shoots with a super-wide-angle lens through a 240mm glass dome. This corrects the distortion that occurs when light travels through water.

Here he captures a double-header wrasse patrolling the waters of volcanic Lord Howe Island in the Tasman Sea, site of the world’s most southerly coral reef.

PHOTO STORY OCEANS

BELOW A group of chinstrap and gentoo penguins rest on a small iceberg near Danco Island, Antarctica. “I was mesmerised by these Chaplinesque birds and their conversations as I swam alongside their small island of ice,” says David. At first wary of the human interloper, the penguins then became bolder, taking turns to dive in and speed past the photographer.

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RIGHT In a career spanning over 50 years, David has witnessed the effects of rising sea temperatures: “I began photographing this reef four decades ago, not realizing then that the pictures would be a testament to coral through the lens of time.” This 2009 image captures gardens of plate coral in Opal Reef, Queensland, Australia that later suffered from severe bleaching.

October 2021

PHOTO STORY OCEANS

ABOVE A harp seal pup learns to swim and dive in the Gulf of St Lawrence, Canada. These are a species David returns to every year: “They are a face of climate change and may soon confront a gulf without ice. Each time I descend into their shrinking world, I am reminded that our daily choices have consequences.”

October 2021

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Kimbe Bay in Papua New Guinea is a treasury of marine life, where species thrive in the combination of deep-water basins and vibrant coral-covered seamounts and reefs.

Swimming in the still waters around one tiny island, David was enraptured by the pristine underwater meadows of coral when “a father and son in their outrigger glided past in absolute silence”.

PHOTO STORY OCEANS

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October 2021

TOP LEFT A young green sea turtle in the crystal-clear waters of Marutea Atoll, French Polynesia, makes for open waters. Green turtles typically travel thousands of miles, with only the females coming to shore again in order to lay her eggs. If they avoid being hunted, caught in trawl nets and having their eggs harvested, mature turtles can reach 180kg.

ABOVE Lemon sharks swim in the Bahama Banks. “A rapid blink of the strobe turned a wave into crystal, revealing a squadron on patrol beneath a luminous sky,” says David.

LEFT Beneath the curl of a wave lies the bleached and dessicated remains of a coral reef in shallow Tumon Bay, Guam. David shot the reef in 2005 and then again in 2017 (pictured) after successive years of ocean warming and extreme low tides had taken their toll.

October 2021

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PHOTO STORY OCEANS

ABOVE A tangle of lilies rises from the dark depths of Botswana’s Okavango Delta and breaks through into the sunshine. Fed by tributaries from the wet highlands of north-east Angola, the delta is an oasis for wildlife. “Working below the surface here is like photographing inside a Monet painting,” says David, “except you never know if a Nile crocodile or hippo will appear.”

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October 2021

PHOTO STORY OCEANS

ABOVE Southern stingrays cruise the shallows of Grand Cayman Island. When David first photographed the rays, just a handful appeared each day for scraps from fishing boats. Following the introduction of conservation laws, they have now become the island’s number one tourist attraction, with dozens of rays greeting thousands of tourists each day.

October 2021

DAVID DOUBILET has been documenting the underwater world for five decades. His new book,Two Worlds: Above and Below the Sea, is published by Phaidon, £39.95, phaidon.com

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By Liv Grant | Photos by Benjamin Ignace

choing across a valley on the island of Fatu Hiva in the South Pacific Ocean is a sound heard nowhere else on Earth. Few have ventured into this narrow gorge of yellow blooming hibiscus and razor-leaved pandanus, for the only pathways are those forged by wild pigs.

Anyone foolhardy enough to follow these trails must come armed with a machete and a willingness to scramble over sharp, slippery boulders.

Scientist Caroline Blanvillain describes the unusual cry heard here as “So powerful you believe the dinosaurs are coming”.

Others liken this peculiar noise to the squeals of a dying cat. It emanates not from some mythical creature but from an insectivorous songbird called the Fatu Hiva monarch. At the time of writing, there are precisely 17 individuals left, making this little bird one of the most endangered animals in the world.

Fatu Hiva is the most southerly of the Marquesas Islands, an archipelago in north-eastern French Polynesia. There is no airstrip on Fatu Hiva and it can only be reached by boat. When drawn on a map, it is often depicted as a mere dot, and at only 15km long, it is indeed of miniature proportions. However, to visit Fatu Hiva is to witness the grandeur of a volcanic eruption frozen in time; a crest of mountains forms the spine of the island, from which ridges and ravines descend into the ocean. The island emerged from the sea so recently (a few million years is, of course, recent in geological timeframes) that its shores have not yet softened to sandy beaches; instead, black basalt columns rise like battlements, sheltering the rich green interior of the island from the vagaries of the waves.

E

Looks deceive

An adult Fatu Hiva monarch with its glossy purple-black feathers.

Bands attached to the legs of these flycatchers help with surveying their dwindling population.

The Marquesan name for the Fatu Hiva monarch is ’Oma’o ke’e ke’e, meaning ‘black bird’. As the name suggests, despite sporting magnificently fluffy eyebrows, these flycatchers are not the most visually splendid of birds, and during the three years it takes for the downy, buff-coloured fledglings to don the glossy black plumage of adults, they look downright scruffy.

However, it is not for its looks or even its rarity that the Fatu Hiva monarch is fabled, but for its behaviour. The birds live in monogamous pairs and raise a single chick BBC Wildlife

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FATU HIVA MONARCH

every year, both parents carefully tending to their young until it is ready to claim its own territory. Once a male monarch has acquired a mate and a patch of forest to call his own, he will proudly patrol the boundaries of his kingdom, greeting all those who enter, be they fellow bird or sweaty scientist, with a tail-flicking dance and ear-splitting declaration.

Caroline is a conservationist and veterinarian with BirdLife International partner SOP Manu, the French Polynesian Ornithological Society. She describes how when she first encountered the Fatu Hiva monarch, she was so enchanted by its curiosity and lack of guile that she saw the birds as “The fairies I was looking for when I was young in the forest”. Caroline can even imitate the chirruping call of the monarchs by smacking her lips against the palm of her hand, summoning birds down from the treetops. To any onlooker, it briefly appears as though woman and bird are engaged in conversation, each spellbound by the other.

There are just over 600 islanders living on Fatu Hiva, and stories abound of the monarch’s ability to imitate human language and foretell disaster. Field scientist and photographer Benjamin Ignace recounts a typical tale in which a family were working in the forest when suddenly the monarchs began to sing urgently, calling out the names of the family members. The family were spooked and rushed back to the village, arriving in the nick of time to rescue their belongings from a tsunami.

Splendid isolation The Marquesas archipelago is not home to any native mammals, amphibians or reptiles, simply because the islands are many thousands of kilometres from the nearest continent, and so the only animals to have reached their rocky shores must have been able to fly on the trade winds or drift on ocean currents – and then have been extremely lucky. Over time, the descendants of the pioneering ancestral Fatu Hiva monarch lost the instinct of fear. This has rendered the birds spectacularly vulnerable to the threat of predators, and they will walk

Juveniles can be distinguished by their pale brown feathers.

They greet fellow birds or sweaty scientists with a tail-flicking dance and an ear-splitting declaration. up to and investigate anything within sight, unaware that a flash of fangs may indicate foe rather than friend.

Islands are the perfect crucibles for evolution: their isolation and small size inflicts unique pressures upon the animals that arrive there, so while islands smaller than Greenland represent just 5 per cent of the Earth's land area, they are home to roughly 20 per cent of known species.

But today, islands are losing species at an astonishing rate.

More than 90 per cent of all extinct birds were island dwellers, and over half of the native birds of the Pacific Islands – close to 1,000 species – are estimated to have become extinct since the arrival of humans.

The Marquesas Islands were one of the last habitable places to have been reached by humans when Polynesian explorers discovered them over 1,000 years ago,

Clockwise from above left: a Fatu Hiva chick in a twig-cup nest; the island's dramatic coastline; a young adult is examined; a three-week-old fledged chick.

bringing fruits to cultivate and pigs to hunt.

European sailors soon followed, claiming ownership of the islands and introducing cats and goats, both of which left an indelible impact. The grazing of goats has hastened the erosion of the islands, leaving vast swathes of land so bare they are more akin to desert than tropical forest, and cats swiftly slaughtered colonies of cliff-nesting seabirds that once cloaked the archipelago.

Nautical nemesis However, it is a more recent arrival that poses the greatest existential threat to the endemic birds of the Marquesas – the black rat. One of the most cosmopolitan animals in the world, also tellingly known as the ship’s rat, this invasive species arrived on Fatu Hiva in the 1980s as a silent stowaway on a cargo boat. Fatu Hiva local and SOP Manu fieldworker Arthur Matohi remembers how there were hundreds of October 2021

There could be as few as 2,000 ultramarine lorikeets left on Ua Huka island.

BEAUTY IN THE BLUE

October 2021

chicks hatched and survived to adulthood, and numbers grew by a few individuals. The species clung on.

Today, despite more than a decade of conservation work, the population of the monarch has failed to surpass a sustainable number. News came earlier this year that all four chicks hatched in 2021 have perished. The latest to die, in June, was the third its parents had lost since 2018 – the chick was thin and scientists are undertaking analysis to understand the cause.

Not only does the loss of this individual fledgling represent a huge blow to the conservation effort, there is also the concern that as these breeding

Dora: Liv Grant

pairs of monarchs on the island when he was a child, “So many that people would get irritated at their incessant calling”, but within his lifetime their population has plummeted. Black rats proliferated on the island, with its abundant fruit trees offering an ample supply of food and the paucity of predators, save for the many feral cats, providing a liberated existence. The twig-cup nests of the monarchs, sitting in low-boughed trees, were easily raided. All the parents could do was watch and flutter helplessly as their young were taken.

By 2007, the population of the Fatu Hiva monarch had reached its nadir of just 11 individuals in a single valley. Director of SOP Manu Thomas Ghestemme implemented a desperate plan of action: safeguard each and every nest. With the consent of the landowners, the valley was declared a protected area, domestic cats were caught and neutered, and rat traps were set. Fieldworkers were stationed on the island to constantly observe the nests, each chick so precious that in wet and windy weather the team would install tarpaulins to catch any that fell.

Still, there were signs that cats and rats continued to infiltrate the protected area, several adult monarchs mysteriously lost their tail feathers and others inexplicably went missing. The work was tough, the terrain steep, and the invasive species relentless. Yet the plan was working:

The Marquesas Islands are also home to a unique parrot species, the ultramarine lorikeet. This dazzling parrot is found on the island of Ua Huka, the only rat-free inhabited island in the archipelago. The island is protected by a specially trained terrier called Dora, who carefully checks each incoming boat for hitchhiking rats. Ultramarine lorikeets are nectivorous birds, and unlike the Fatu Hiva monarch, they are very shy and most often found hanging from the petals of banana flowers.

The islanders of Ua Huka are fiercely proud of their sapphire-winged treasure, locally known as the pihiti, and celebrate it in an ancient dance called the Haka Manu, where they elegantly mimic its courtship display.

Dora the dog – ready to perform rat patrol duties.

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CHASING WATERFALLS While working with the Tahiti monarch (a conservation success story, with numbers climbing from 19 in 1998 to 103 in 2020), scientist Caroline Blanvillain had to abseil down treacherous waterfalls to reach the species’ last enclaves, but today drones are used to access the most hard to reach places.

Audio recording technology is also being used in new and exciting ways to collect long-term data. Scientists are placing recording microphones on uninhabited islands across French Polynesia and the audio is run through software that reveals which species have vocalised nearby – a brilliant way to discover nesting populations of rare seabirds without having to maroon a researcher on an island.

If we lose this species, the very landscape of one of the last remote places on Earth will be destroyed.

pairs age, their fertility may decrease. It is currently thought that only four females remain on the island.

Generation game Ultimately, it is what happens outside of the protected area that will determine the fate of the species. Regardless of how well the protected area is managed, the population will be unable to grow because once the juveniles leave their parents, they venture away across the island to establish their own territories and disappear, falling victim to cats and rats. The only way for the birds to survive beyond the immediate future is for the protected area to be expanded. It is too late for a zoo population to be established – these birds have never been successfully kept in captivity, and besides, numbers are so low that the risk of capturing and transporting them is too great.

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Above: the Fatu Hiva monarch might be considered dull were it not for its charming bushy eyebrows and slate-blue beak and legs.

Some may say that the epitaph appears already written for the Fatu Hiva monarch: four of the nine species in the Pomarea genus to which it belongs are extinct.

Nevertheless, the SOP Manu team remains resolute. A larger scale cat and rat control plan, followed by their eradication, could be implemented across the island and save the species. This is possible, but it would take unprecedented support from local people, and it is also difficult to raise funds for a species living in such a remote place.

Arthur Matohi is Fatu Hiva’s most passionate monarch advocate. He explains that, though his work is hard, he must continue because “these birds are part of the natural heritage of the island. They are a part of our identity. They have always been here. I will continue to work until we reach at least 10 breeding pairs, and then the next generation of people must take over.”

The trusting innocence of the Fatu Hiva monarch is an anachronism, a relict of a time before humans wrought calamity on these islands and taught the birds to fear. If we lose this species, the very landscape of one of the last remote places on Earth will be irrevocably destroyed, drained of the very thing that imbues it with vitality. The hope for this little bird is tenuous but true – if the conservation work can continue, then the Fatu Hiva monarch may still welcome people to its island for many years to come with a strange and wild cry.

LIV GRANT is a conservationist and film-maker currently working at the BBC Natural History Unit. @livggrant

FIND OUT MORE The French Polynesian Ornithological Society: manu.pf October 2021

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The UK’s red squirrel population is in decline, but by supporting the Woodland Trust, you can help it grow again

THE RED SQUIRREL FACT FILE Common name: red squirrel

Photo: Laura Corbe WTML

Scientific name: Sciurus vulgaris IF YOU’VE BEEN lucky enough to catch sight of a red squirrel, you’ll know how striking these elusive creatures are. Although they’re often defined by their distinctive russet colour, the fur of a red squirrel can vary in shade from bright ginger to dark brown. One feature they all share is a large, bushy tail that can grow almost the length of their body, as well as the characteristic tufts of fluff that sit above their ears.

Red squirrels may be beautiful, but they’re not always easy to spot. They spend most of their time hidden high up in the treetops, and come down to ground level far less often than grey squirrels. The best time to look for them is during the autumn, as they spend most of this season rummaging for food to fuel them through the winter months.

A SECOND CHANCE Though they were once widespread across the nation, the UK’s red squirrel population is currently in decline, and most can now be found living in pockets of Northern England, Scotland and Wales. Largely, this is because they can’t compete with the grey squirrels who were first introduced in Britain in the 19th century. Grey squirrels challenge red squirrels for living space, plus they have the advantage of being immune to the fatal squirrel pox virus, which means they’re likely to survive for longer than their colourful counterparts. Currently, there are an estimated 287,000 red squirrels in Britain, in comparison to 2.7 million greys.

Fortunately, all hope is not lost, and there are things we can do to help. The Woodland Trust is working hard to

Habitat: coniferous, mixed and broadleaf woodland

Diet: nuts, seeds, tree shoots Predators: pine martens, birds of prey, foxes

Origin: UK conserve wooded areas in the UK, which is the natural habitat of red squirrels.

Safeguarding these spaces helps to ensure they have the resources they need to survive and safely raise their offspring.

If you want to help build a better future for Britain’s red squirrels, become a member of the Woodland Trust today and help support the charity continue its valuable work.

Become a member of the Woodland Trust for as little as £4 a month.

For more information, visit woodlandtrust.org.uk/join Registered charity numbers 294344 and SC038885

Yva Momatiuk & John Eastcott/Minden/NPL

Some 30 million people a year make a pilgrimage to northern California to see the towering coastal redwoods. But can the remaining stands of these remarkable trees survive the triple scourge of climate change, drought and wildfires?

Warning: marvelling at coastal redwoods can lead to neckache.

These are among the fastest growing trees in the world – healthy seedlings can grow more than 30cm a year.

By Lynn Houghton

or sheer heart-stopping excitement, nothing quite compares with driving up Northern California’s photogenic, cliff-hugging Highway 1, with its dramatic vistas over the Pacific Ocean.

This landscape of wave-soaked beaches and rugged, precipitous promontories rivals the best of the Hawaiian islands.

Yet turn inland and the scenery is just as spectacular. Mist-saturated forests run the entire length of the coast (800km from Big Sur to the Oregon border), and are awash with monumental redwood trees.

Motor north up Highway 1, turn east onto Highway 128 in Mendocino County and follow it along the Navarro River, and you’ll find hundreds of these magnificent specimens. Redwoods dominate the landscape for miles, a breathtaking sight that compels drivers to stop and stand among giants.

Often referred to as the blue whales of the plant world, coastal redwoods are the tallest living things on the planet, able to exceed more than 100m in height. Equally impressive

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Often referred to as the blue whales of the plant world, coastal redwoods are the tallest living things on the planet. is their longevity, with many trees reaching their 1,000th birthday. The oldest known redwood is thought to be an eye-popping 2,200 years old.

The tallest individual, a roughly 600-yearold specimen known as Hyperion, is located in Redwood National and State Parks, Humboldt County (a UNESCO World Heritage site). Located on a steep, remote slope, it commands the landscape from a height of nearly 116m.

This lofty spectacle draws millions of campers and day-trippers every year, as does the Pacific forest wildlife. Mountain lions leave tantalising clues, though these notoriously shy creatures are seldom encountered. Smaller mammals that live among the trees include ground squirrels,

racoons, woodrats, muskrats and several varieties of vole and chipmunks, to name but a few. Many are nocturnal and difficult to spot, but their existence is given away by the turkey vultures circling overhead.

Birdwatchers are frequently drawn to the coastal cliffs, populated with guillemots, grebes, California brown pelicans, cormorants and Caspian terns. In the campgrounds, Steller’s jays squawk noisily at humans invading their space, though flycatchers, warblers, owls and woodpeckers have their feathers less ruffled by human presence. In the heart of the forests, bald eagles, peregrine falcons and rare marbled murrelets nest in tree hollows.

“Coastal redwoods provoke the human spirit,” says Candace Tinkler, chief of education and interpretation at Redwood National and State Parks. “People are naturally curious about the superlatives and October 2021

colonists

Clockwise from above left: highways take visitors straight through the forests; the largest patch of old-growth redwood forest is located in

Humboldt Redwoods State Park; thick, fibrous bark helps to protect coastal redwoods from periodic wildfires; a resident raccoon.

broader ecological questions, but for many the experience goes beyond science and can be reflective, even restorative.”

From left: George Ostertag/Alamy; K Menzel/Getty; Michael Nichols; Juan Carlos Munoz/NPL; Henk Wallays/Alamy

Golden oldies Redwoods are the survivors of the plant kingdom and their ability to withstand drought, floods, fire and pestilence is key to their longevity. They have evolved several unique traits to ensure a long and healthy life. Redwoods are able to absorb moisture from the air, with 40 per cent of their needs supplied by the dense fog that blankets the Pacific Northwest. In addition, these are sprouting trees, with new growth generating from the ‘crown’ of a single organism. Even if an entire forest burns down, redwood stumps are able to regenerate – and with gusto. Studying a single old-growth tree in Redwood National and State Parks, scientists discovered that no less than 148 trunks had October 2021

Thanks to the work of intrepid, rope-climbing scientists, a unique ecosystem was discovered in the redwoods’ high canopy back in the 1990s. Each year, redwood trees shed needles, cones, bark and other debris, which become caught in their high limbs and notches, and ultimately turn into spongy mats of what is known as canopy soil. Seeds and fungi colonise this soil, while epiphyte plants and even other trees, such as elderberry, huckleberry, Douglas fir and Sitka spruce, take root and grow, more than 100m above the ground.

There are 238 additional varieties of plant and many species of bird and insect that reside in this microhabitat, including the clouded salamander (above) and yellow-cheeked chipmunk.

resprouted from the main bole. Five of these had diametres of over a metre; the largest was more than 40m tall.

Yet another adaptation lies in the redwood’s bark. A mature tree’s bark often exceeds 30cm in thickness and protects the core of the tree. Tannin in the bark helps to repel insects such as termites, as well as fight fungal pathogens including oak blight.

Despite their armoury of survival tools, coastal redwoods are in peril. Climate change, drought and non-sustainable commercial practices are all impacting the health of these iconic giants. Though only 4 per cent of old-growth forests remain, these trees are still being harvested. Logging is the single most damaging practice responsible for the trees’ demise, triggering an unprecedented loss that brings with it a fundamental change in the diversity of

coastal forests. To rub salt in the wound, timber companies don’t stop at felling the redwoods – they also plant Douglas firs in their place, a faster growing, popular commercial choice that disrupts these delicate forest ecosystems even further.

Climate change is impacting weather and increasing the trend of drought frequency in California. Another occurrence attributed to global weather changes is a reduction in the amount of fog rolling in off the Pacific Ocean, which is critical for coastal trees’ survival. Some studies have already found a reduction of 33 per cent in frequency compared with only a few decades ago.

Ferocious wildfires now plague the state too. The ecology of this region’s wilderness has always included natural fires, largely created by lightning strikes, but authorities in land management and fire services agree that these events are more widespread BBC Wildlife

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COASTAL REDWOODS

Clockwise from above: young redwood trees can sprout from the base of a parent’s trunk; firefighters struggle to contain a lightningtriggered blaze; a fallen giant.

For hundreds of years, controlled burning was scrupulously carried out by tribal elders.

meant not only a natural but also a cultural loss to the area.”

But there is some good news: fresh ‘sprouts’ were already appearing from the burnt carcasses less than a year later and “the upside is that this tragedy gives us the opportunity to re-imagine management of this park in a more sustainable way,” he says.

and intense than ever before, possibly or primarily due to climate change and ensuing droughts, but also because of the abolishment of controlled burning.

For hundreds of years, controlled burning was scrupulously carried out by tribal elders. Small fires cleared the undergrowth, ensuring that chaparral (tangled shrubs and thorny bushes) never became too dense.

An excess of this sort of vegetation creates a ticking tinderbox, with just one spark capable of causing a catastrophic blaze. The practice is critical as a preventative measure, but was eradicated as early as 1850 as indigenous peoples were exterminated or displaced.

“California has had a fire-adapted environment for millions of years, and we can tell from tree-ring data that there were tremendously destructive fires in the 56

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past, certainly every 10-15 years,” says Sam Hodder, CEO of Save the Redwoods League.

“In the wetter climate of the north, fires were less frequent, and the trees were able to withstand these events. With the climate crisis, this has changed.”

In August 2020, flames roared through the forests north of Santa Cruz and San Mateo, devouring large sections of the Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Known as the August Lightning Fires, the blaze was in fact five fires blown together by the wind, destroying some of the oldest redwoods known to exist.

“With the addition of houses and buildings as fuel, combined with droughtstressed conditions, we saw extreme fire behaviour and destruction as never before,” says Scott Sipes, state park supervisor. “This

So, how can these iconic trees be better safeguarded? As ever, mitigating habitat loss is key. “With only a few stands of old-growth forests and original redwoods remaining, our mission is procuring property to protect them,” says Hodder. “Over the past 100 years we have acquired 220,000 acres.

We look after this land, nurture the trees and eventually transfer it to the state park system. We also work with owners who have redwoods on their estates.”

Genome sequencing is another exciting new response, with restoration of the redwoods the long-term goal. David Neale and colleagues at the University of California, Davis have cracked the DNA code of coastal redwoods and hope that by pinpointing certain genomes, they can identify those trees more able to withstand climate change in the years to come.

October 2021

Clockwise from top left: C A Gonzalez/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty; Ethan Daniels/Alamy; Alamy; George Ostertag/Alamy; illustration by Acute Graphics

Taking a stand

Standing among colossal coastal redwoods can be a humbling and spiritual experience.

PUTTING IT IN PERSPECTIVE: TREES vs BUILDINGS

The redwood genome is nearly nine times larger than the human genome.

“We’re basically building a database. A manager or forestry professional will send in their samples and get a risk evaluation of their forest populations, if not individual trees,” explains Neale.

From top: Ethan Daniels/Alamy; Carolyn Van Houten/ The Washington Post/Getty; Ed Reschke/Getty

It’s in the genes Neale’s team have discovered that the coastal redwood genome is nearly nine times larger than the human genome. In fact, they are ‘hexaploid’, meaning they have six sets of chromosomes (compared to conifers, which have two, for instance), but the development of new sequencing technologies has enabled the team to identify the particular genes best adapted to environmental pressures such as drought and rising temperatures.

Paul Ringgold, chief programme officer of Save the Redwoods League, describes the process in further detail: “Marker trees are selected from among representative healthy redwoods, and then needles, cones and bark are extracted in a non-destructive way and dissolved to study their DNA. Seeds are then preserved for future planting; this allows the growing of trees in the future.”

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Redwoods have a remarkable genetic diversity, as Ringgold explains: “The explosion of diversity in redwoods is due to the hexaploid nature of their chromosomes.

This creates different colours, variations in bark pattern and even albino specimens. The goal with sequencing is to map the entire genome of the redwoods to find the ins and outs of their adaptability in its entirety.”

The last step on the ladder to safeguarding the redwood is preserving the remaining unspoiled habitat. The shoreline from the community of San Luis Obispo north to the Oregon border is currently protected from development by regulations that came into effect in the 1970s. This law was enacted, in part, to save the beaches and resources of the northern California coast from the unsightly and environmentally damaging sprawl of its southerly neighbours.

If land in the north’s coastal areas can be saved from development with tighter regulations, and larger, protected areas such as the Redwood National and State Parks created, surely it’s a step in the right direction – not only for the redwoods but

Clockwise from left: Save the Redwood League is mapping the trees; shadeloving plants thrive on the forest floor; a redwood cone.

for their ecosystem and the species that rely on them. Another recent positive development is the concerted assistance of tribal communities, such as the Yurok, in returning their ancestral homes to a more pristine condition.

With new science and a growing public interest in sustainability, we can only hope that the redwoods have a chance of recovery, and continue to tower over the Pacific Northwest for generations to come. “We are actually fortunate that this landscape and its woodland are so forgiving,” says Hodder.

“Otherwise there might be nothing left.”

LYNN HOUGHTON grew up on Canada’s west coast and is a travel and nature writer and photographer.

FIND OUT MORE Read about the conservation work of Save the Redwoods League at savetheredwoods.org October 2021

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The population of roan antelopes has been in dramatic decline, but two projects in South Africa’s little-known Waterberg Biosphere aim to bring the species back from the brink.

RIDDLE ROAN Blighted by clumsy conservation could there now be signs of hope for Africa’s second largest antelopes?

Story & photos Mark Eveleigh

ROAN

“R

oan antelope are the most enigmatic of large antelopes and remain relatively misunderstood.”

It’s the end of a long summer and Leanne Huber is gazing across the grasslands that are home to 40 roan antelope. She’s been working with these animals for more than a decade and has come to know them well.

“Because their babies are quite easily taken by predators they have a reputation of being bad parents, but it’s not true at all.

When they’re defending their young they can seem intimidatingly huge!”

Leanne and her husband, wildlife veterinarian Dr Paul Huber, run the roan breeding programme at Ant’s Hill on South Africa’s Waterberg plateau.

“We also breed sable, eland and gemsbok here,” she continues, “but the roan are my favourites. They’re particularly protective during the weeks when their young are hidden in the long grass. If we even walk

close to a hiding place the dominant cow will come racing over.”

Roan are the second biggest antelope (after the eland) and their barrel-chested, horse-like build does indeed give them a powerful appearance. Named for their reddish colour, roan are sometimes mistaken for the darker sable. Their Afrikaans name bastergemsbok (‘bastard gemsbok’) relates to the distinctive gemsbok-like black-and-white facial markings, but their distinctive fringed ears give them a comically startled appearance.

Even these unique appendages remain an evolutionary mystery, though it is possible that they might provide protection in the Highveld habitat, where winter temperatures can plummet below freezing.

“Roan are certainly prone to frostbite,” says Huber, “and when it gets really cold they can lose the tips of their ears.”

As he manoeuvres his Range Rover game vehicle through a breeding compound where two-week-old roan calves suckle from their mothers, he continues: “In most

Roan are misrepresented as gentle giants, but even lions think twice about attacking fully grown adults.

A young roan already equipped with its long mulelike fringed ears.

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ROAN

Part of the Ant’s Hill roan breeding programme on South Africa’s Waterberg plateau.

Roan mothers are fiercely protective of their young.

of Africa the roan population has suffered from predation, habitat loss and disease.

They’re particularly susceptible to theileria – a tick-borne disease that affects them almost as malaria affects humans. Sometimes the mother transmits the disease through the placenta so that the young are born with it.”

Wild roan populations suffer heavily from predation and numbers frequently plummet even in areas where zebra and wildebeest flourish by comparison. For this reason, they’re sometimes considered to be relatively helpless – a sort of gentle giant.

But this is far from the truth. As biologist Wendell Swank wrote in his 1971 book African Antelope: “It is said by people who have spent a lifetime in the bush that even the lion will not attack a full-grown roan.”

Tricky to track This thought was at the front of my mind earlier that morning when I left my cottage at Ant’s Hill to set out on horseback in search of the free-range roan that had been October 2021

In most of Africa the roan population has suffered from predation, habitat loss and disease. released from the breeding compounds.

Ant’s Hill is one of the few places in Africa where you can ride among roan, as these animals – like all the reserve’s wildlife, including white rhinos and giraffes – are accustomed to grazing alongside horses.

Within less than an hour, ace guide Sekhwiri Langa had managed to track down a bachelor herd in the midst of a dense acacia thicket. As we approached almost within touching distance I realised that, even from horseback, these antelopes seemed intimidatingly big, their horns

sharp and sturdy. Though roan were traditionally hunted for meat, they were never particularly targeted by trophy hunters: with the longest recorded horns measuring 128cm, they are unspectacular next to those of the sable (165cm) and greater kudu (188cm).

This bachelor herd was made up of about 10 fairly young males, still far from being statuesque dominant bulls, yet their powerful build lent them a noble appearance.

“At around two years of age, roan bulls are driven from the herd by the dominant bull,” Sekhwiri whispered. “They spend the next three or four years in bachelor herds until they have the strength to attempt to take over a herd for themselves.”

A little further down the track we came across a lone female that was clearly not in such fine fettle. “Animals can be inhumane,” Sekhwiri pointed out ironically.

“Weak animals struggle to keep up with the herd or are driven away because they invite the attention of predators.”

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South Africa’s large antelopes ELAND The common eland (shoulder height 1.7m, max weight 900kg) is widely considered to be Africa’s biggest antelope, but the giant eland – found in sporadic groups from Senegal to northern Uganda – is slightly larger, measuring 1.8m at the shoulder and weighing up to 907kg. For such a huge beast the eland is typically surprisingly timid.

GREATER KUDU A kudu bull with twisting horns rising to almost 188cm is surely one of Africa’s most majestic ungulates.

These talented escape artists are capable of clearing a 2m fence from a standing jump. Addo Elephant National Park (South Africa) – with an estimated population of around 2,000 – is arguably the best place on the planet to see kudu.

It was unusual that this young female should be so skinny after what had been the best rains in 60 years. As Huber had pointed out, roan are susceptible to disease, and this specimen was fortunate to be on a reserve where she would be darted and treated.

Shrinking from view Roan have disappeared from most of their original range, which stretches from South Africa to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia. Even where they are still found in large numbers, they are typically elusive and shy. Many dedicated safari connoisseurs admit to never having encountered one of these spectacular animals in the wild.

“Historically there were probably large numbers of roan in what is now Kruger National Park,” Huber tells me as we drive back to his headquarters in an old farmhouse overlooking the breeding compound, “but I’ve only seen two roan in

TSESSEBE The southern African tsessebe (shoulder height 1.2m, max weight 160kg) is known as the topi in East Africa. It occurs under various names (with several subspecies from West Africa southwards) and is the world’s fastest antelope, able to reach up to 83km/hr. Breeding herds are often sighted from a distance because of the territorial males’ habit of posing on top of termite mounds.

SABLE The sable (shoulder height 1.35m, max weight 270kg) is named for the intense black of the male’s coat. Females and young are tan or chestnut and all have white underbellies. The sable’s backwardarching horns are perhaps the most spectacular in the animal kingdom with one bull’s (from the giant sable subspecies in Angola) reaching a record-breaking 164.7cm.

Tsessebe: Ann & Steve Toon/Alamy; sable: Alamy

NYALA Distributed southwards of Malawi, nyala (shoulder height 1.2m, max weight 108kg) are colourful in more ways than one, having evolved to the the stage that the nyala ram is the dandy of the antelope tribe. Their stiff-legged ritualistic battles – more a dance than a territorial fight – are one of Africa’s strangest sights.

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A total of 60,000 wild roan antelope are left in Africa. The 12,500acre reserve at Ant’s Hill is home to a herd of 40 animals.

ROAN the 40 years I’ve been travelling in Kruger.”

I’d looked for roan every time I’d been in Greater Kruger but I’d never even found tracks. In Zimbabwe’s immense Hwange National Park, however, I’d seen a bachelor herd of roan mixed with herds of wildebeest, zebra and sable. During an assignment in the Serengeti, rangers told me of the mysterious appearance of a single roan bull travelling in the thick of the southbound wildebeest migration. “Nobody knows where it came from,” they said. “We think maybe it was Kenyan and perhaps just got caught up in the excitement of the migration.”

Sadly there are now only a dozen individuals left in Kenya (in Ruma National Park). Could it be that this animal escaped that local extinction crisis, to find safety in numbers within the migration?

There are said to be around 60,000 wild roan left in Africa, with large numbers in Burkina Faso, Zambia, Cameroon and

Tanzania. In most parts of their range, however, disease, habitat loss, overgrazing and predation – and sometimes misguided conservation decisions – have played a part in their decline.

Misguided methods In 1986, Kruger National Park was home to about 450 roan, but in less than two decades the figure dropped to about 25. In Shaping Kruger – a must-read for anyone fascinated by African wildlife – Mitch Reardon investigated “the riddle of the disappearing roan”. In an effort to boost their numbers, the park’s conservation experts had instigated the Water for Game project in the mid-’70s, and 35 man-made waterholes were constructed, along with six dams. It was a disaster as far as the roan were concerned. The water enticed large numbers of zebra, wildebeest and buffalo into the area and predators followed in their

Even where they are found in large numbers, roan are typically elusive and shy.

wake. Roan require long grass in which to hide their young, and with the grass cropped short, they were now easy pickings for lions, leopards, hyenas and even opportunistic jackals. It was the first of a run of ecological disasters to beset the park’s roan population.

A ranger I met in Kruger (who asked to remain nameless) had worked on a South African National Parks (SANParks) gamecapture programme in 2014, in which most of the remaining roan in northern Kruger were rounded up and concentrated in a protective enclosure, prior to being reintroduced to suitably remote habitats.

During the relocations, disaster struck when vultures transmitted anthrax from the carcass of an infected elephant into a waterhole in the enclosure, leading to the death of every roan inside. Then, in July 2020, South African journalists reported that a SANParks section ranger was dismissed for gross negligence after almost

Only around 400 roan remain in the wild in South Africa, so the Waterberg breeding projects provide a crucial foothold for the species.

ROAN

Oxpecker: Alamy

Roan tend to avoid the company of other prey animals but will graze alongside zebra, wildebeest and horses within the reserve.

a third of the park’s remaining roan died of dehydration in a protective breeding boma that had been allowed to run dry.

By most estimates there are probably fewer than 60 roan in Kruger today, and only about 400 surviving in the wild throughout South Africa. Lapalala Wilderness Reserve is home to around 90 – probably the largest single population in South Africa.

The bush fairly crackled around us with a breeding herd of about 30 healthy roan antelope.

Signs of hope

species when fighting or wounded and utters a blowing snort when surprised,” Walker wrote in his seminal Signs of the Wild. The museum offers an unexpected opportunity to get close to habituated roan on foot.

“When I first visited the area that would become Lapalala Wilderness Reserve, it was one of only three places in the country that had any roan at all,” Clive recalled as we sat among his collection of memorabilia from 60 years in conservation. “They were incredibly rare.”

Forty years later they’re still rare but, thanks to its successful breeding programme, Lapalala is probably the best reserve in all Africa in which to see large numbers of wild roan.

It was a rare privilege therefore to sip gin-and-tonic sundowners at Lapalala Wilderness Reserve one evening while the bush fairly crackled around us with a breeding herd of about 30 healthy roan antelope. For once they actually outnumbered the zebra and wildebeest that also grazed among the acacias.

This, a rare success story for roan, was the brainchild of conservation legends Clive Walker and Dale Parker, who established Lapalala Wilderness Reserve in 1981, with the roan as a flagship species.

Clive and his son Anton recently founded the fascinating Waterberg Living Museum, which also has its own small herd of eight habituated roan antelope grazing throughout the grounds.

The oxpecker’s “This is an aggressive taste for ticks was October 2021

crucial for the roan’s recovery.

While rock art proves they were historically in the area, Walker believes they were driven here by hunting pressure from white settlers. It was probably not hunting, or even habitat loss that decimated their numbers in this area, however. The sourveld nature of the grass was largely unpalatable for what is apparently a rather finicky species. Also, ranchers brought cattle-dip pesticides that not only attacked ticks but also poisoned the oxpeckers that fed on them.

Once farms began to switch from cattle to game-ranching, they abandoned the use of pesticides and the ticks returned in overwhelming numbers. It was not until oxpeckers were physically reintroduced into Lapalala in 1989 that the roan population had a chance to rebound.

Few could have guessed that part of the solution to the riddle of the roan would be provided by the little red-billed birds that ride on the back of some of the world’s rarest large antelopes. An example of symbiosis in its purest form.

MARK EVELEIGH is a travel writer and photographer who specialises in wildlife. markeveleigh.com

FIND OUT MORE Ant’s Hill Reserve waterberg.net/south-africa-game-reserve; Lapalala Wilderness Reserve lapalala.com BBC Wildlife

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LOST SOULS

Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty

By Jo Caird

RIVER STRANDINGS

Crowds watch the lost juvenile minke whale at London’s Teddington weir.

RIVER STRANDINGS A humpback whale near the Dartford Crossing of the River Thames in October 2019.

In 2012, longfinned pilot whales mass-stranded at Anstruther in Fife.

A northern bottlenose whale breaches alongside warships in the Clyde, October 2020.

Hundreds of military personnel were deployed to steer the pod back to the North Atlantic.

he arrival of a whale in a city river never fails to capture the imagination.

It’s hard to articulate why: there’s something otherworldly, almost magical, about these unknowable creatures from the deep sea making a sojourn into our busy, urban lives.

Whatever the reason for our fascination, when whales swim up rivers – whether it’s the Thames, the Trent or the Clyde, their appearance always draws a crowd.

Take the juvenile minke that turned up in the Thames at Teddington Lock in May. Hundreds of onlookers lined the riverbanks, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stricken creature, while news helicopters overhead reported on its every move – and those of the rescue teams trying to save its life.

Around 1,000 cetaceans – that’s whales, dolphins and porpoises – become stranded in the UK each year, according to the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation

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Programme (CSIP). Funded by the British government and its counterparts in Scotland and Wales, the programme’s scientists investigate 100 to 150 of these events annually, conducting post-mortems that provide data on causes of death, disease, diet and the general health of cetaceans in UK waters.

Strandings in rivers make up a tiny proportion of the total – less than 1 per cent, estimates cetologist Rob Deaville, CSIP’s

The primary challenge is lack of food – whales simply cannot access their prey in even our deepest river.

project manager – with the overwhelming majority of cetaceans who get stuck high and dry doing so on the coast.

So what’s behind the highly unusual scenario of whales coming into rivers? “As they’re entering the abnormal habitat of the southern North Sea – and there may be an underlying issue there, we’re still investigating that – they’re hugging the coastline,” explains Deaville. “The whale doesn’t realise when it enters an estuary system, and it keeps going, and then unfortunately ends up in the river system.

Unless it goes back out the other way, it’s going to be in trouble.”

The primary challenge for these animals is lack of food. While some cetaceans – species such as harbour porpoises, for example – are able to hunt in shallow water, whales simply cannot access their preferred prey in even our deepest river. Northern bottlenose whales might dive to depths of more than 1,400 metres to find deep-water squid, their favourite food, while an adult humpback October 2021

WHAT TO DO IF YOU FIND A LIVE STRANDED CETACEAN O REPORT THE STRANDING to BDMLR as soon as possible. Describe the animal and the circumstances in which you found it, making a note of any injuries and its breathing rate (count breaths through the blowhole over a minute).

O TAKE PHOTOS and videos of the animal and its location.

O DO NOT ATTEMPT to return the cetacean to the sea – it may need treatment or a period of recuperation before it can swim by itself. Instead, support the animal in an upright position, digging trenches under its pectoral fins.

O COVER IT with wet sheets or towels – or seaweed if you have nothing else to hand – and keep it moist by dousing with water.

O ENSURE THAT the blowhole is kept clear and free of water – cetaceans breathe air just like we do, and the blow hole, situated on the top of its head, is the equivalent of our nostrils.

Be calm and careful in your movements so as not to stress the animal any further.

O AVOID ITS BREATH, which can contain bacteria harmful to humans, and its tail, which can inflict serious injury.

Humpback: Invicta Kent Media/Shutterstock; pilot whales: Getty; northern bottlenose: Mark Harris/Alamy

BDMLR rescue hotline (for live strandings): 01825 765 546; CSIP reporting line (for dead strandings): 0800 652 0333

can consume up to 1,360kg of plankton a day. These species – others known to have stranded in the UK include long-finned pilot whales and orcas – have an extremely wide distribution around the world, often migrating between warmer and cooler waters to feed and breed. River systems are a totally alien environment for them.

There’s also the issue of injuries sustained by bumping into boats or fixed structures such as weirs, and the general stress of being in unfamiliar, noisy, urban surroundings. Unsurprising, therefore, that the pod of Northern bottlenose whales that turned up in the River Clyde in 2020 and the humpback that was spotted in the Thames in 2019 didn’t fare well. All died, despite attempts to encourage them to return to deeper water.

Not that it’s necessarily the river environment itself that’s to blame. The whales that end up in rivers are often found to be malnourished and exhausted, conditions that likely pre-date – or even cause October 2021

– the navigational errors that led them there.

These species are vulnerable to all manner of threats, from manmade pressures such as entanglement in fishing gear, to natural difficulties like unweaned calves becoming separated from their mothers.

That’s what happened with the Thames minke whale in the spring, believes Deaville. “They’re weaned quite young as a species – around 5–6 months, when they’re around 4.5m [in length] – so that animal may well have been just around weaning age,” he says. “It had nothing in its stomach so it was pretty thin, and we think that was the primary factor in its death.”

Cetacean first aid The odds may be stacked against whales that enter our rivers, but that’s not to say that we shouldn’t make every effort to save them. At the forefront of those efforts is British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR), a charity dedicated to the rescue of marine mammals around the

UK. Originally set up in response to large numbers of seal deaths in East Anglia in the late 1980s, BDMLR has now been rescuing cetaceans stranded on British beaches and riverbanks for more than 25 years, alongside its work with seals.

Sometimes it’s a call from a member of the public that alerts the charity to a potential stranding (the charity runs a 24-hour rescue hotline 365 days a year).

Sometimes an organisation gets in touch – the Port of London Authority (PLA) for animals spotted in the Thames, for example, or the Royal National Lifeboat Institution in the case of coastal strandings. On receiving the alert, the charity sends text messages to its volunteers in that area to report for duty.

There are around 2,000 active BDMLR volunteers around the UK, individuals who have completed the charity’s one-day Marine Mammal Medic Course. In the case of cetaceans, volunteers are taught about keeping an animal wet and protected from sunburn, ensuring that its blowhole is BBC Wildlife

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HOW DOES A PONTOON WORK? With the help of the tide, inflatable pontoons can move and refloat stranded whales

The mat is attached to two inflatable pontoons either side of the animal. These are filled with compressed air.

2

A heavy duty mat is manoeuvred under the stranded whale, by rolling the animal a little from side to side.

1

Whales have to be stabilised in the water for some time so they can be monitored before release.

4

When the tide comes in, the inflated pontoons lift the animal and enable the team to control it while the reflotation procedure takes place.

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clear, how to handle a dolphin or porpoise, and how to use the charity’s bespoke pontoons to refloat whales.

Race against time

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The worst-case scenario Tucker is referring to is stranding. Cetaceans haven’t evolved to support their own weight like we can, instead relying on the neutral buoyancy of water. Too long on land and they begin to become crushed under their own weight.

While smaller, healthy cetaceans can often be lifted back into the water and released, this isn’t an option for whales, which are typically too large to move without inflicting even more damage. “It really doesn’t give us much time,” says Jarvis. “The outcome usually isn’t very good.”

That outcome is dependent not just on the condition of the animal but on environmental factors entirely outside the rescuers’ control. In January this year, BDMLR volunteers in Orkney were able to save a young orca that stranded in Newark Bay, their success partly due to the fact that the incoming tide made it possible to lift the animal onto a stretcher. This allowed them to stabilise the whale until it was strong enough to swim away unaided. Had it been

a longer wait until high tide, the situation could have ended very differently.

Rescue coordinators need to consider the safety of their volunteers too – BDMLR have had to abandon rescues when conditions have deteriorated. “We would have had the Coast Guard and the RNLI out rescuing us instead, and that’s not a situation we should ever be putting ourselves in.”

A tragic ending There are, unfortunately, situations when nothing can be done to save a stranded cetacean. The minke in the Thames is a case in point.

“The animal had been without its mum for some time already and had starved. If you put it back out, it still doesn’t have its mum and there’s no other way of taking care of an animal in that situation,” says Jarvis.

Deaville was among those on site with the calf after it became stranded for a second time, when a veterinary team from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) made October 2021

Rescue: Jeff Moore/Alamy; illustration by Acute Graphics

The first objective in any rescue situation is to gain as much information about the animal as possible. People on the ground are encouraged to send in photos and videos, explains Dan Jarvis, welfare development and field support officer at BDMLR. “Observations on how it’s swimming or behaving can help us to identify the species and potentially any injuries,” he says. “That sort of detail can be really useful early on.”

Then, next steps are co-ordinated, from sending out rescue equipment such as pontoons, to calling in vets to undertake assessments. “It’s a case of monitoring,” says Molly Tucker, ecology advisor at the PLA, “making a plan with the right organisations about what would happen in the event of the worst-case scenario.”

The same procedure is followed if the animal is not in an intertidal area and therefore still partially submerged in the water.

BDMLR rescuers used a pontoon to reorientate a female northern bottlenose whale that swam up the Thames in January 2006.

the difficult decision to put the animal to sleep. He remembers “long heated debates” with members of the public that evening about the morality of what they were doing.

“It is difficult. You won’t always get it right, but I think in this instance it was the right decision. But people feel very passionately about cetaceans.”

Nonetheless, death on the riverbank is not the end of the story for the Thames minke whale. Like all the cetaceans investigated

While smaller cetaceans can be lifted back into the water and released, this isn’t an option for large whales.

October 2021

by CSIP, that calf will yield huge amounts of data that will be used by researchers for decades to come. The organisation has conducted around 4,500 postmortems since it was established in 1990.

“These animals are hard to study,” says Deaville. “A lot of work we can’t pursue through other means we can learn about from stranded animals. We can look at their gonads and life history, their diets and what they’ve been feeding on. We can look at their contaminant profile to see what they absorbed during their lifetime. It’s beyond just how they’ve died – it’s also how they lived.”

CSIP data and samples taken from cetacean postmortems have been used in 273 peer-reviewed papers to date, covering topics as broad as the impact of industrial chemicals, bycatch and noise pollution on cetacean populations and mass strandings.

This data also has the potential to tell a wider story about the health of our oceans.

“You have that trite phrase about canaries in the coalmine: that’s exactly what cetaceans

are – bio-indicators of a healthy or unhealthy marine ecosystem,” says Deaville.

Despite the sad loss of the minke, the cetologist is hugely encouraged by the enthusiasm of people around the UK for our cetaceans. “If that whale came up the Thames 50 or 60 years ago there would have been an entirely different response: it would have been an object of curiosity, a freak, maybe even killed to get it out of the way of the shipping lane,” he says. “We used to be the epicentre of the whaling industry, particularly in London. And now we’re a nation of conservationists, not a nation of whalers, which I think is quite positive.”

JO CAIRD is a freelance journalist. Read more about her work at jocaird.com.

FIND OUT MORE Interested in becoming a volunteer? BDLMR Marine Mammal Medic courses take place all over the country and are open to anyone aged over 18. Visit BDMLR.com BBC Wildlife

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S In six weeks I

captured only four or five shots, all of the same big male. T

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Behind the image

Spotted among the trees 2018

by EMMANUEL RONDEAU

Capturing the perfect shot of a jaguar in the vast tropical forests of French Guiana proved a tough challenge for Emmanuel.

EMMANUEL RONDEAU is a wildlife photographer, writer and film-maker. emmanuelrondeau.com

inding a jaguar can be a needle-in-a-haystack job. True, the Americas’ largest wild cat is hardly small; males grow to 1.7m long and 120kg. But consider the size of the haystack scoured by photographer Emmanuel Rondeau in French Guiana. Perhaps 1,600 jaguars prowl this overseas département, which spans 83,846km².

In addition, this Near Threatened predator is hit by habitat destruction, human-wildlife conflict and, in French Guiana, illegal gold-mining. Jaguars have been eradicated across almost half their historic range, from Mexico to Argentina, and are extinct in El Salvador and Uruguay.

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Welcome to the jungle Emmanuel was working in the Nouragues Nature Reserve, over 1,000km² of pristine tropical forest, an estimated 80 per cent of whose biodiversity remains unidentified.

“In all my experience photographing big cats around the world, Nouragues is among the few true wildernesses,” he recalls. “Amid this vast ocean of forest, I felt insignificant.”

It took him a week, lugging 150kg of equipment through dense jungle, just to reach the research base, another to scout locations on regular jaguar trails, then another to set up camera-traps.

“In six weeks I captured only four or five shots, all of the same big male,” he says. “But this one achieved the effect I was aiming for, like Rousseau’s painting Tiger in a Tropical Storm: to show the jaguar as part of its environment, to give a sense of scale.

“We associate big cats with power: their size, their strength, their roars,” he adds. “But pictured surrounded by huge trees, you realise just how small the jaguar is – a tiny, vulnerable element in this enormous ecosystem.”

Paul Bloomfield October 2021

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This month’s panel

ALEX MORSS

ST UA RT B L AC K M A N

DAV E H A M I LTO N

RICHARD JONES

L EO M A W I L L I A M S

E M I LY L A M B E RT

P O L LY P U L L A R

Ecologist

Science writer

Horticulturalist

Entomologist

Science writer

Founder of Seedball

Naturalist

We solve your wildlife mysteries.

Email your questions to wildquestions@immediate.co.uk More amazing facts at discoverwildlife.com

There are at least 17 species of horned lizard, found in dry regions of North America.

Pound for pound, these tough little reptiles are said to be stronger than a bull – which is handy, as they aren’t built for speed.

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Q&A

REPTILES

Which lizard packs the most power?

Y

ou might think the obvious answer to this would be

in the world, with a venomous bite to boot. But power isn’t always about size. North America’s horned lizards are just 9cm in length, yet are equipped with an impressive arsenal of novel, powerful defences. They boast excellent camouflage; have armoured, spiky skin; and can inflate their bodies to double their size.

But their real super-power is their ability to shoot blood – loaded with foul toxins gleaned from a diet of venomous ants – from their eyes, to a distance of up to nine times their bodylength.

So precise is their aim that these little lizards can see off wolves and coyotes many times their size, blasting the predators square in the face.

Alex Morss

Claudio Contreras/naturepl.com

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Q&A A nictitating membrane: one in the eye for humans when it comes to people vs cats.

BOTANY

Why do so many plants look like nettles? espite being unrelated, many types of plant – especially those in the mint family, such as the white and red deadnettle, woundwort and yellow archangel – all closely resemble the stinging nettle, but lack its famous weaponry. A nettle’s sting protects it from predators, particulary grazers such as rabbits, horses and sheep. However, creating both the compounds in the sting and growing the hairs to deliver it requires a lot of energy. Rather than go to all that effort, many plants have evolved to simply resemble the nettle, much like hoverflies mimic bees or wasps. Dave Hamilton

D

FELINES

Why do cats have three eyelids? ats do indeed possess a third eyelid, which can sometimes be glimpsed when a pet wakes or yawns. The nictitating membrane (or palpebra tertia, as it is formally known), lies behind the other two and sweeps horizontally across the eye.

It’s not only cats that are blessed with this ocular equipment. Nictitating membranes are the norm among birds and mammals as well as some fish and reptiles, providing additional physical protection for the delicate

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cornea, and helping to lubricate and clean the eyeballs. They may be translucent to allow partial vision even when closed.

Humans and most other primates lack a functional nictitating membrane, perhaps because we tend to lead with our hands rather than our faces when exploring the world, making our eyes less vulnerable.

All that remains of our own are the fleshy, triangular bumps that sit in our eyes’ inner corners. Stuart Blackman

Stinging nettle – or something masquerading as such?

ORNITHOLOGY

Do hens ever have teeth?

A

It may not have teeth for gripping and ripping, but a goosander’s serrated bill is an effective alternative.

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Beaks perform many of the functions fulfilled by teeth. They are less adept at chewing and grinding food, but the gizzard, a muscular section of the gut often filled with swallowed stones, can help there.

Sometimes, though, only teeth – or something like them – will do. Goosanders and other sawbill ducks have tooth-like serrations along the edges of their bills to grip slippery fish. And some birds, such as flamingos, geese and penguins, have teeth-like barbs on their tongues or in their throats. SB

October 2021

Lion: Heinrich van den Berg/Getty (captive); nettle: Judith Haeusler/Getty; goosander: Joel Walley/Alamy; scorpionfly: FLPA/Alamy; toad: Chris Ison/Alamy; Gillian Pullinger/Alamy

vian dentition really is as rare as proverbial hen’s teeth. While birds’ dinosaur ancestors had gnashers aplenty, as did the earliest birds, the lineage lost them about 100 million years ago as they developed their horny beaks.

But evolution has a long memory, and birds have retained most of the genetic instructions for building teeth. These can be activated in chickens by geneticists, causing embryos to grow reptilian, peg-like teeth, but those individuals don’t survive to hatching.

Q&A The male scorpionfly can be identified by its long, beaklike head, yellow-and-black coloration and huge eyes.

Not forgetting its genitals, shaped like a scorpion’s tail.

INSECTS

Why do scorpionflies have fake stings? corpionflies are named for their bulbous, up-turned, red-tipped, scorpion-like tails.

Only the males have these appendages, which are not stings, but genitalia (females, in contrast, have short, narrow, cylindrical tail tips).

That scorpionflies acquire some anti-predator protection by association with the arachnids seems unlikely, since they naturally occur – Britain included – where scorpions don’t.

A best guess is that the bulbs are analogous to the swollen palp ‘boxing gloves’ of male

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spiders, delivering sperm via a key-in-the-lock style fit into the female genitalia of the same species, thus preventing hybrids that may be infertile or unviable. Indeed, males of all three British Panorpa species have distinctively shaped valves, pegs and grooves on the bulb, whereas the simple pointed tails of the females all look outwardly identical, making them indistinguishable to the human eye, even under a microscope.

Richard Jones

3 questions on

Biological pest-control

1

SO, WHAT EXACTLY IS IT?

Biological pest-control is the use of a pest’s natural enemy to eradicate it from crops, gardens and houses, and is an alternative to harsh chemicals or removal by hand. There are three types: importation (introducing a new enemy into an environment); augmentation (the boosting of natural enemy populations); and conservation (where a habitat is modified to allow the enemy to thrive).

SUCCESS: Ladybirds prey on aphids and are the gardener’s best friend.

2

WHEN HAS IT WORKED?

There are many successful examples.

Ladybirds have long been a popular control for aphids; cactus moths have been instrumental in constraining invasive prickly pears in multiple countries.

More recently, pig-tailed macaques in Malaysia have been found to be curbing rat populations in palm-oil plantations. The monkeys consume the fruit-hungry rodents at such speed that they are preventing significant crop losses.

3

DOES IT EVER GO WRONG?

FAILURE: The cane toad ignored its intended beetle quarry and instead got busy breeding.

Oh yes – and spectacularly so. One famous failure was the introduction of cane toads to Australia in 1935, with the aim of controlling the beetles decimating sugar-cane crops. With would-be predators recoiling at their toxic skin, the toads started to multiply. Today, they exceed 200 million and are highly destructive. To add insult to injury, there is no evidence that they had any impact whatsoever on the beetles.

Leoma Williams

Q&A WILD GARDENING

What are the benefits of sowing wildflower seeds in autumn? pring is the season traditionally associated with new life and growth, which is why we often perceive it to be the best time to sow wildflower seeds.

For many species, however, such as poppy and viper’s bugloss (left), autumn is the best time to sow – and you can continue to do so until the first frost.

Autumn confers a number of advantages. It provides a ‘jump start’, allowing more time for seeds to germinate and potentially grow into bigger, healthier blooms the following spring. The soil is still relatively warm,

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The Explainer

Bee: Imagebroker/Alamy; camel: Wolfgang Kaehler/Getty; squirrel: Gillian Pullinger/Alamy; lobster: Wesley Oosthuizen

Fitness

having stored energy from the summer sun, and the air is often laden with extra moisture.

Some species, including yellow rattle and cowslip, also require a cold period prior to germination (known as stratification) in order to break their dormancy. So, planting in autumn means the impending winter will provide this necessary drop in temperature. The other bonus of autumn sowing is that watering will be taken care of, thanks to increasingly likely rainfall. Emily Lambert

Squirrels’ barkstripping habits don’t go down too well with foresters.

Camels are superbly adapted to desert life.

“Survival of the fittest” is probably the single best-known phrase from On the Origin of Species, though Darwin didn’t use it until the fifth edition, after it was coined by the sociologist Herbert Spencer.

Fitness remains a concept central to evolutionary biology, but its meaning is very different to our usual understanding of the word. It describes not the physical condition of an individual, but how well it is suited to its environment, as measured by its reproductive success over its lifetime.

Stuart Blackman

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BRITISH MAMMALS

Why do squirrels strip bark? oth red and grey squirrels strip bark for various reasons: to feed on the sugary, sappy, nutrient-rich layers (known as phloem tissue) found beneath its surface, to source material to line their dreys, and to chew on, to maintain the health of their continuously growing teeth (they also gnaw discarded deer antlers in spring for the same reason).

But stripping bark can cause damage, interrupting sap flow and impeding growth,

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and it’s often young trees that are targeted.

If a squirrel rings the entire circumference of a trunk, the tree will die. Both species do it, but because greys are more widespread and occur at higher densities than reds, they inflict more damage. A recent report estimated that grey squirrels in England and Wales will cost the UK economy £1.1 billion over the next 40 years, as a result of lost timber value, reduced carbon capture and replacement trees. Polly Pullar October 2021

What is it?

SLIPPER LOBSTER Viewed from above, a slipper lobster’s markings can give it an uncanny resemblance to a human face – in this case, one that is simultaneously creepy and comical, like one of the toothier members of the Bash Street Kids. Belonging to a group that lacks the fearsome pincers of their relatives, slipper lobsters compensate with an abundance of armour plating.

Even their usually slender, delicate antennae have been moulded into broad, flattened shields to protect the headend. Here, you can see them at the top, resembling enormous cartoon eyebrows. SB

OUR WILD WORLD

At home

Bring a little extra wildlife into your life with the best of this month’s TV, books, podcasts, streaming and much more.

The magnificence of the monarchs of the glen

Neil McIntyre

A lifetime of watching and being fascinated by red deer in Scotland is showcased in this new book.

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OUR WILD WORLD

McIntyre saw this dramatic light developing while driving home one evening. The stag watched as he got out of his car and headed up the hillside to capture him silhouetted against the loch.

Book choice

CHASING THE DEER

BY NEIL MCINTYRE, SANDSTONE PRESS, £24.99

This impressive photographic portrait of Britain’s largest living land mammal is full of the wild wisdom that comes from spending countless hours outdoors, watching and tracking animals. Neil McIntyre grew up in the Highlands in a deerstalker family and first came face to face with a red when he was just six. “His breath seemed like smoke in the freezing air,” he says.

“I remember holding up my hands and realising that one antler would be longer than my arm.”

Now McIntyre is a well-known wildlife photographer, and his lifelong passion for deer shines through in wonderfully atmospheric pictures and brief, but insightful, commentary. We follow them in all weathers, on exposed high slopes,

October 2021

among precious Caledonian pine forest, and down in sheltered glens.

It takes superb, old-school fieldcraft to capture such intimate images of naturally wary subjects.

Context is provided by landscapes and close-ups of species that share the habitat, including a red squirrel nibbling shed antlers for the valuable calcium. A nuanced discussion of Scotland’s ‘deer problem’ sees McIntyre challenge the view that red deer numbers are out of control: the population is actually in decline. He favours a more balanced approach than the ‘zero-tolerance’ policy of some of the rewilding estates that cull or fence out all deer, arguing that while restoration of native woodland is hugely important, deer should be a key part of woodland regeneration.

Ben Hoare BBC Wildlife editorial consultant

BBC Wildlife

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BOOK

Nests

W I LD STRE A M TV SERIES Growing Up Wild Each episode of this six-part series follows a different mammal from the safety of the womb to their first steps.

Disney Plus TV SERIES Chris and Meg’s Wild Summer Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin go on a roadtrip to explore the UK and its wildlife.

BBC iPlayer YOUTUBE SERIES ART LAB Science writer and presenter Emily Graslie’s new show explores the worlds of art and science, and how they intersect. youtube.com/emilygraslie

was a jewel to behold, and she started painting the different nests that she and her family and friends came across (relying on finding either adandoned or displaced nests). Each beautiful nest illustration is accompanied by information about the bird species, as well as where that specific nest was found.

Megan Shersby BBC Wildlife editorial and digital co-ordinator

A blackbird nest (left), a goldfinch nest (top right) and a chaffinch nest (bottom right) are among the 50-plus birds’ nests painted

by Ogilvy in this new hardback.

PODCAST

BOOK

Wild Crimes

Light Rains Sometimes Fall

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON

Sadly the murky world of wildlife crime is big business, worth around $23 billion a year. This 10-part podcast series from the Natural History Museum, London, hosted by evolutionary biologist Tori Herridge and science communicator Khalil Thirlaway, explores this world. They interview a range of guests from the museum and a variety of other wildlife institutions and charities. Each episode focuses on a species or a group, starting with the pangolin – the world’s most trafficked mammal, with all eight species facing extinction due to the illegal trade in their scales. Other topics include bird of prey persecution, reptile and eel smuggling, and the ivory and orchid trades. MS

BY LEV PARIKIAN. ELLIOTT & THOMPSON, £14.99

If you know someone who enjoys discussing the weather at length, they have a kindred spirit in Lev Parikian. His nature diary on his local patch in West London is structured around the 72 micro-seasons of a traditional Japanese calendar. As such, the attention to detail is exhaustive.

However, his open style welcomes the reader into his bubble to experience the natural world alongside him. I found the chapters that reflected the current seasons most satisfying, suggesting it will be a book to dip in and out of through the year. If you’re seeking a book to improve your nature focus, you’d do well to take a look at Parikian’s observations.

Ella Davies Nature writer

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Susan Ogilvy

Birds’ nests have long fascinated naturalists and artists, thanks to their intricate construction (the exception being the baffling mess that is a woodpigeon’s nest), and the variety between different species in their sizes, locations and materials used. Susan Ogilvy is a botanical illustrator but veered into the world of birds’ nests after finding a sodden and unfinished

OUR WILD WORLD PRODUCT

Aqualin

BY MARCELLO BERTOCCHI. THAMES & KOSMOS, £18.50

If The Little Mermaid had played Connect Four using the starfish, crabs and seahorses around her, the resulting game would look a lot like Aqualin.

The game’s concept is relatively simple: two players compete to collect groups of sea creatures with their tiles.

One is hoping for groups of the same creature, while their opponent tries to arrange the board so that colours are grouped together. But, with every turn, a player is allowed to move one piece already on the board before placing their next tile – a twist that is truly satisfying if you manage to mess up your opponent’s group. Aqualin makes for short-but-sweet games, though dedicated players could develop their own strategies to gain an aquatic advantage. It’s a real shame that the manual doesn’t include information about the reef and its inhabitants – a missed educational opportunity.

Amy Barrett BBC Science Focus editorial assistant

O N O UR WEBS ITE FORAGING FOR FILBERTS Author Christine Iverson shares her recipe for making hazelnut butter discoverwildlife.com/ hazelnut-butter BABY ANIMALS Wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas shares adorable images of baby animals from her latest book New On Earth discoverwildlife.com/ baby-animals-gallery IDENTIFY SEEDS Autumn is a time of seed dispersal for many plants and our illustrated guide will help you identify 12 distinctive species discoverwildlife.com/ autumn-seeds

October 2021

We Have A Dream

BY MYA-ROSE CRAIG, ILLUSTRATED BY SABRENA KHADIJA. MAGIC CAT PUBLISHING, £12.99

Since she was a young girl, Mya-Rose Craig has passionately advocated for the voices of young and diverse people in the environmental movement. Such vital viewpoints are often missing from these important climate change discussions. Her new book is a visceral, powerful collection of global voices from indigenous people and people of colour discussing their hopes for a

better future. Young readers will be deeply humbled by their stories, especially those contributors who describe the impacts of climate change on their communities, such as Carlos Manuel and Caitlyn Baikiean. The illustrations are striking and dynamic, giving force to the narrative, which centres on a call to action for the benefit of all. This is a vital and impressive read and one that will inspire climate activists, both young and old.

Anjana Khatwa Earth scientist and presenter MORE CHILDREN’S NATURE BOOKS

BOOK

BOOK

On Gallows Down

Rebugging the Planet

BY NICOLA CHESTER. CHELSEA GREEN, £20

BY VICKI HIRD. CHELSEA GREEN, £12.99

Nicola Chester’s memoir has been much-anticipated and it doesn’t disappoint. From the difficulties of bringing up a family in a tied cottage and squeezing in a job and time to write, to the history buried beneath the landscape and the resistance and protests that surface when that land is threatened, it’s a true page-turner. She is an artist with words, whether it’s the sight of a herd of fallow deer or the song of a nightingale, you’re there, seeing and hearing it as she adds brushstrokes to the page. Her words not only left me questioning my own place within the natural world but also with an overwhelming desire to help conserve it.

A passionate, thought-provoking and engagingly written book.

Entomologist and bug-fanatic Vicki Hird delves into the fascinating world of little critters, celebrating life on the small scale and why it’s vital to our very existence.

Written with engaging and non-technical vocabulary, she seeks to reconnect us to the creepy crawlies around us by highlighting some fascinating star species. From their role in the food chain, to their amazing biology, insects and invertebrates are discussed in a positive light often lacking in literature. For once, this hugely diverse and complex group of organisms doesn’t sit in the shadow of animals with backbones. Her argument for a world crawling with insects and a society connected more intimately to invertebrate life is a compelling one.

Jane Adams Nature writer

Lucy Hodson Nature communicator

BBC Wildlife

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OUR WILD WORLD

Your photos

Amazing images taken by our readers Enter our Your Photos competition at discoverwildlife. com/submit-your-photos

Star photo Two for the price of one While photographing a herd of red deer in Richmond Park in London, this male stonechat was flying around and perching on the dead and fallen ferns. As I had the camera lined up to take a photo of one of the large stags, the bird landed perfectly in between us. I was able to quickly change focus in time and capture it with the blurred outline of the stag behind.

Mitchell Lewis, London

This month, our star photo wins The Camden Watch Company’s khaki waxed canvas backpack A WAXED CANVAS worth £125. Widely used from the 1850s onwards, waxed canvas is a very durable woven fabric that is impregnated with wax, used for sails and waterproofing. Visit camdenwatchcompany.com.

BACKPACK

ENTER TO WIN

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OUR WILD WORLD 1 Surveying the scene I was shooting the desert landscape in UAE when I saw this Arabian toadheaded agama. With no time to change the lens, I took my chance and was able to capture this photo.

David Gabis, France

2 Morning courtship

1

2 3

I knew that a pair of grey herons were making a nest by one of the ponds in Richmond Park. The contour of the trees and the birds against the morning sunshine took my breath away.

Diana Buzoianu, London

3 Beach visitor During my stay in Ao Nang in Thailand, I was walking on the beach when I saw this 1.5m-long python, basking in the sun. Luckily, the beach wasn’t crowded and I managed to take a few photos.

Nenad Preradovic, Belgrade, Serbia

4 Who’s watching who?

A friend and I went searching for bobcats, but after hiking for a few hours, we hadn’t seen any. Just as we turned back, we spotted two – a mother and her kitten.

The kitten was initially obscured, but then suddenly appeared in the fork of this tree.

Vishal Subramanyan, California, USA

4

5 Mother’s love

5 October 2021

Every morning for a month, I went to the National Botanical Garden in Dhaka to photograph this lineated barbet nest. It was challenging to find the best conditions to get both in focus at the right exposure, but I managed to capture this image.

Nafis Ameen, Dhaka, Bangladesh BBC Wildlife

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OUR WILD WORLD

Feedback EMAIL US

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Vital funds for hoggy rescue Earlier this year, I found a small hedgehog heading for the road so I ran home and got a bowl to rescue him. I called the Suffolk Hedgehog Hospital and a lovely lady named Sue Stubbly said to bring the hedgehog over straight away.

We left the hedgehog with Sue, who named him Buckle. She swiftly recognised that he had a severe head injury and needed urgent attention, and said to me to not get my hopes up.

But, to my amazement, I received a call three weeks later to say that Buckle was ready for release. I was so excited and bought him home. He was placed inside my hedgehog house and is now a regular visitor to my garden.

Sue has run the Suffolk Hedgehog Hospital for 15 years and has devoted her life it. I was so inspired by Sue and her hospital that I took on the colossal mission of walking 1,000 miles to support her fantastic work. From

Arming rangers

BBC Wildlife

Claire with Buckle the hedgehog.

torrential rain to scorching hot days, I powered on walking in order to get Sue the recognition she deserves. I managed to clock up 13 miles a day over 12 weeks, and appeared in a few papers and a couple of radio shows.

Sue has made me a release volunteer, and I recently released a little female hog named Edith.

Claire Buckle Haverhill, Suffolk

no data on whether armed rangers are killed more, but most deaths are not from armed conflict. For me, the issue is not whether a ranger has a weapon, but whether they’re trained to use it properly and as a last resort. Sadly, rangers Barney Long from Re:Wild replies: are often outgunned in countries It is true that armed rangers with high-value species, conflict or are in the minority and law orgnaised crime. People working enforcement is just one of a in such countries have the right to ranger’s roles. Whether they need arms for their own safety, yet these arms is therefore a little moot – arms must only be part some do; most don’t. I have Should of the solution. rangers be image of a ranger with an AK47 is not a good one and rarely reflects the reality of the work.

John A Burton, former CEO of the World Land Trust

armed?

Animal welfare in China Mark says in his article on China (My way of thinking, June 2021), that he’s more optimistic about China.

I’m afraid that he needs a reality check. From the invasion and annexation of

WRITE TO US BBC Wildlife Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST

Tibet in 1950-51, to the reneging on the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong and the continued genocide of the Uighurs, China is allowed to do what it wants without a care in the world!

In these circumstances, two polar bears are nothing compared to hundreds of rhinos and tigers, and millions of sharks and pangolins that have been killed to satisfy consumption needs in China.

The Chinese will continue on their merry way unsustainably consuming the world’s resources and destroying Earth and no one, as has already been shown, has the will or ability to do anything about it!

Peter Thomas, Tourrettes-surLoup, France

Invertebrate feasts I found Jess Murray’s article (Putting insects on the menu, August 2021) very interesting, having seen various insects being sold as food in markets in Thailand and Cambodia.

I must however, take issue with her comment “Honey, in its truest essence, is simply bee vomit”. This is a common misconception and such statements are not only inaccurate but serve to put people off. Rather than vomiting, the bee collects nectar and carries it back to its nest in its crop, where it’s then regurgitated and stored in the honeycomb cells. It’s unfortunate that the crop is sometimes referred to as the ‘honey stomach’, which is probably where the misunderstanding arises.

The honeybee’s crop is an organ specifically designed for transporting nectar inside the body and the contents are never October 2021

Claire and hedgehog: Claire Buckle Haverhill; honeybees: Getty

I was disappointed to see the article (Protect the protectors, August 2021) on the problems rangers face illustrated with heavily armed rangers, and yet there was no discussion of the pros and cons of arming rangers. It’s a very difficult question and I would have been very interested to see any data on this issue. Are armed rangers more likely to be killed than unarmed rangers?

Are the armed rangers equipped as well as their opponents, and does being armed reduce the number of incidents?

I’ve encountered a very wide range of views on this in the field. There is probably no simple answer, but the macho 88

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Want to get something off your chest? This is the ideal place

OUR WILD WORLD

TALES FROM THE BUSH

The phantom female In the enigmatic realm of moths, even amateurs can make unexpected discoveries, as James Lowen learnt one spring.

Honeybees stor e nectar in cells.

Have a wild tale to tell? Email a brief synopsis to catherine.smalley@ immediate.co.uk

Claire Waring, Kettering (former editor of Bee Craft magazine)

Politics and carbon In his column (My way of thinking, July 2021), Mark Carwardine has neatly revealed the twisted thinking of our politicians, wherever they operate. Leeds City Council reckons that extra carbon emissions arising from its approval of a new terminal at Leeds Bradford Aiport is a national issue. And then perversely, when challenged about the deep coal mine in Cumbria, the politicians in Westminster wave it aside a local issue! How are we ever supposed to make meaningful inroads against the climate crisis with such manipulative arguments being used as deliberate barriers to progress?

Our report card ahead of COP26 should clearly state “Must do better!”

Dennis Sim, via email QUIZ ANSWERS (see p92) 1D, 2B, 3C, 4C, 5A, 6D

October 2021

The marsh moth – here a prized female – favours ribwort plantain and meadowsweet.

S Our shaking

mong conservation experts striving to save the nationally endangered marsh moth, “the Holy Grail is to find a female”, explained Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust reserve manager Matthew Blissett one blustery May evening.

The last – perhaps only – time that anyone encountered a female marsh moth in Britain, World War II had barely ended. Since then – and despite 30 years of surveys – only males and caterpillars of indeterminate gender had been found.

Females presumably did exist but they were chimeras. My friend Will and I, both amateur moth enthusiasts, stood no chance of finding one.

I was visiting Lincolnshire to research a book about moths, and Will and I had offered to help Matthew keep tabs on one of the country’s two remaining marsh moth colonies. But with a squally night forecast on the coastal dune slacks of Saltfleetby– Theddlethorpe reserve, we suspected that spotting even one male might be pushing it.

As dusk coagulated the skies, we turned on the lights of our moth traps. Surprisingly, given the wind and chilly air, hundreds of moths were soon drawn to investigate. Their

A

number included dozens of bubblegum-pink small elephant hawk-moths. But no marsh moths appeared.

As the clock struck midnight, we started to flag. Then an urgent cry jumpstarted my tiring body: “Marsh moth!”

A male was scuttling along the ground beside one trap.

Unlike the hawk-moths, he was no eye candy, being brown with browner bits. Within seconds, our joy multiplied.

Two more males were circling through the herb-rich sward. They were orbiting the stem of a ribwort plantain – as if this common-orgarden plant held some irresistible attraction.

As, indeed, it did. Enthroned atop the plant’s oval flowerhead was a smaller, darker and unfamiliar form. “Is that…?” Will gulped, “Is that… a female?”

It was. Barely able to process what we were witnessing, our shaking hands took the first-ever photographs of a wild female marsh moth in Britain. Against all odds, this particular Holy Grail was indisputably real. In the mysterious world of moths, even amateurs can do good.

hands took the first ever photographs of a wild female.T

JAMES LOWEN is an author and naturalist. His book, Much Ado About Mothing, is out now.

BBC Wildlife

89

James Lowen

Jess Murray replies: I’m pleased to hear that your experience in Asia resonated with our behaviour towards insects being influenced by cultural norms. Thank you for pointing out the misuse of “bee vomit”, which should have accurately been “regurgitation”.

I don’t think this servres to make the essence of honey sound more appealing, though. The key takeaway is understanding that our attitudes towards food are largely based on how they’ve been marketed to us where we live.

Discover wildlife

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OUR WILD WORLD

PUZZLES

Win a prize with our crossword, and test your wildlife knowledge.

Answers in our December 2021 issue

Wild quiz

AUGUST ANSWERS

DOWN: 1 Nepali, 2 ibis, 3 red panda, 4 wrasse, 5 subtropics, 6 marsh tit, 8 harlequin duck, 13 New Zealand, 15 nautilus, 16 azure jay, 18 wombat, 20 nutmeg, 22 kiwi.

AUGUST WINNER A Wilson, Fife ACROSS 7 Citrus fruit, ancestor of the grapefruit (6) 8 Whale’s spiracle (8) 9 Asian mountain range to which the rhododendron is native (8) 10 Insectivorous Old World bird that might be fork-tailed or spangled (6) 11 Secretive forest bird, related to the snipe (8) 12 Bear-like (6) 13 Brightly coloured marine fish in the family Balistidae (11) 18 ___ bee, social insect in the genus Bombus (6) 20 Large fish-eating raptor (3,5) 22 Diminutive relative of the puffin – could be crested or whiskered (6) 23 Venomous snake of south-west Europe (3,5)

24 One who studies plants (8) 25 Mountain lion (6) DOWN 1 Large, powerful lizard of Africa, Asia and Australasia (7) 2 Broadleaf tree of North America, Alnus rubra (3,5) 3 Fleshy red fruit of Solanum lycopersicum, native to South and Central America (6) 4 Wildflower in the genus Asperula (8) 5 Plant stem (6) 6 ___ tern, Pacific seabird, Thalasseus elegans (7) 8 Migratory songbird, often seen in built-up and industrial sites (5,8) 14 Common garden bird with a distinctive two-note call (5,3) 15 Plant in the honeysuckle family, also called pincushion flower (8)

16 John James ___, 19th-century US naturalist and illustrator (7) 17 Colourful North American corvid (4,3) 19 Himalayan ___, plant also known as policeman’s helmet (6) 21 Llama-like camelid of South America (6)

A Rüppell’s B griffon C Egyptian

2) Which of these cat species is not in the Panthera genus?

A lion B cheetah C tiger

3) How do marine iguanas get rid of excess salt?

A dribbling B sweating C sneezing

4) What is the latest population estimate for water voles in Great Britain?

5) What is a spotted gar?

A a fish B a nudibranch C a snake

6) What is the second-largest living shark species?

A whale B great white C basking

Find out the answers on p89

WIN BEAUTIFUL BIRD PHOTO BOOK HOW TO ENTER This competition is only open to residents of the UK (including the Channel Islands). Post entries to BBC Wildlife Magazine, October 2021 Crossword, PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA or email the answers to October2021@wildlifecomps.co.uk by 5pm on 21 October 2021. Entrants must supply name, address and telephone number. The winner will be the first correct entry drawn at random after the closing time. The name of the winner will appear in the December 2021 issue. By entering, participants agree to be bound by the general competition terms and conditions shown on this page.

October 2021

1) Which vulture species was spotted in Ireland for the first time in July 2021?

A 126,000 B 129,000 C 132,000

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ACROSS: 7 red beech, 9 Rousay, 10 bass, 11 parasitism, 12 lignin, 14 eye tooth, 15 New Naturalist, 17 mute swan, 19 ursine, 21 field mouse, 22 kite, 23 guinea, 24 knapweed.

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October 2021

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VIEWPOINT WILDLIFE CHAMPION

MEGAN McCUBBIN In our series about people with a passion for a species, we ask the wildlife TV presenter why she thinks sand lizards are special.

Interview by Catherine Smalley

What do you love about sand lizards?

I love to champion the unsung gems of British biodiversity and sand lizards are without a doubt one of the most beautiful. They’re a stocky, intricately patterned lizard and, with the males sporting vibrant green f lanks during the breeding season, they are such a treat to see resting on the sand dunes. They require mature habitats with undisturbed sands to lay their eggs, which makes them incredibly elusive... and a glimpse that much more special!

Why do they need help?

In the last 100 years there have been huge changes in land use.

New developments popping up around every corner have caused largescale habitat loss and fragmentation, forcing sand lizards onto the brink of their former natural ranges. At its worst, it’s suggested that Merseyside, Surrey and Dorset had losses of 97, 95 and 90 per cent respectively. In other areas, such as West Wales, Cheshire and Sussex, they were lost completely

Have you ever seen one? And if so, where/when?

S They are the

most beautiful, unsung gems of British biodiversity. T

– a scary fact that gave sand lizards the tag of the UK’s rarest lizard, a label no animal wants to bear!

But from 1970 to the present day, successful captive breeding and reintroductions have taken place, slowly restoring numbers in their original haunts.

Where can they be found?

They make their homes in two habitat types: sand dunes and lowland dry heathland. Today, established populations can be found in protected locations in Dorset, Surrey, Hampshire and the Merseyside dune system. There are now 10 captive-breeding centres across the country and with their current protection status, I am so hopeful that they will return in big numbers one day!

What is your favourite sand lizard fact?

Sand lizards dig their own burrows up to one metre deep for shelter during the cold nights and/ or for hibernation. The entrance is 98

BBC Wildlife

I have recently been on an eco-friendly roadtrip around the UK filming for the Chris and Meg’s Wild Summer series on BBC2. One early morning in Wales, we got the opportunity to visit a reintroduction site where the sand lizards were prospering. After hours of searching I had my doubts, but we spotted a beautiful female filled with eggs, soaking up every bite of warmth from the sand below. She was perfect and I was ecstatic.

What was the best wild place you visited this summer?

A tricky one because this series was jam-packed with so many special wildlife moments, but the one that sticks out for me was the visit to Bass Rock, off Scotland, and the thousands of gannets that call it home. It’s where I gave wildlife photography a go for the first time as a child, so it’ll always be a very special place to me.

MEGAN MCCUBBIN is a wildlife TV presenter, zoologist, conservationist and photographer.

Chris and Meg’s Wild Summer can be found on BBC iPlayer.

The expert view Sand lizards struggle with our natural climate and rely on sand dunes and lowland heath. Even here, they can only use just 1-2 per cent of optimum habitat on any site. ARC’s reintroduction programmes have brought over 11,000 sand lizards back to carefully restored reserves using captive-bred hatchlings. We have made excellent progress in re-establishing the range of this species, but more work is needed.

Nick Moulton, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation’s reptile conservation officer

October 2021

Megan: Jack Tunnicliffe/BBC NHU; sand lizard: Ross Hoddinott/naturepl.com

Male sand lizards have very green flanks when breeding.

usually narrow and very well hidden beneath the undergrowth.

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