Britain’s Big Cats: Myth or Materiality?

By Maddie Stannard.

The wild roots of Britain lay dormant, with lynx, wolves, wild boar, disappeared from our once bountiful and full landscapes. In the current discussion of what it means to rewild Britain, and make our land less people-pleasing and more nature-friendly in terms of wild recovery, ideas of bringing back some of these species have been thrust into a colossal whirlpool of conservation and ecology. But what if Britain has already been ‘rewilded’, secretly, behind the theatrical curtain? What if our landscapes are already blessed by animals shrouded in myth and mystery? And what if, they’ve been here the whole time?

Are there big cats lurking in our landscapes?

The sensation of being watched despite being totally alone. Stumbling upon prints in frozen mud, larger than anything you’ve seen before. Folklore and myth shared over a pint in the pub, disbelieving stares. Tell-tale signs that we are not as alone on our countryside walks as we think are. Trademark remnants of something stalking our livestock, slinking across farmer’s fields and golfer’s greens, in the early mornings and the hazy glow of dusk.

Big cats.

Not just your larger than average domestic tabbies, not just your strolling Maine Coons, but felines once thought to be extinct in this country, or to have never belonged here at all. Lynx, puma, jaguar, leopard. What if they’re here, hiding in the shadows during their cat-like prowls, scaring dog-walkers or awe-inspiring lorry drivers who witness their fluid movements before the headlights? What if Britain’s big cats have rewilded themselves?

Black panthers are one such animal believed to be stalking the UK, with sightings and reports of farm animals being savaged.

It’s no secret that thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Britons have stumbled across a sighting of a supposed big cat; whether they are to be believed or not is a different matter. After all, big cats couldn’t survive here, correct? Big cats couldn’t breed here, no? And they certainly couldn’t have been living here for decades, unseen and unheard of, with no proof or evidence, no photographs or print marks found, surely?

But what if I were to tell you that these things have happened? That a surge in big cat releases after the 1976 Dangerous Wild Animals Act could have led to a potential estimated breeding population of around 250 cats in the UK, that a curated Canadian lynx found in the basement of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, a species which went extinct here in the 7th century, showed signs of release. Countless people have reported seeing the tawny coat of a big cat bounding over stone walls, scientists have forensically analysed sheep carcasses to find data suggesting predation and tooth marks by a large feline. Maybe we don’t need to re-introduce the Eurasian Lynx to British countryside; maybe, just maybe, it has re-established itself.

Eurasian lynx.

And excitingly, it isn’t just lynx that are rumoured to be making a home in our deciduous woodlands, our forested glades.  The elusive and most infamous black panther sightings, the ones which perhaps evoke the most fear-inducing, awe-inspiring, responses in us as we yearn for more, for another glimpse of a creature so shocking that we maybe keep our sighting to ourselves, for fear of being ridiculed or labelled crazy. But is it so crazy to believe that these animals, melanistic leopards or jaguars, have settled here, hardy and tenacious as they are? The ultimate predator, shy and secretive.

Is it so hard to believe that something can exist outside of what we rigidly allow ourselves to expect? Nature surprises me on the daily, and we can’t all be crazy. We can’t all be drunk, or fatigued, or suffering from a shocking lack of perspective when we see the graceful and languid swish of an elongated tail, from a perch upon a rock. We can’t all be daydreaming when we see a loping shape, so immensely feline, traverse the path or road ahead of us in the drizzling rain. Each and every sighting of a supposed big cat in this country has something to take away from the experience, regardless of truth and reality; there is an ancestral part of us, hidden away, entranced by the magic of the truly wild, that is rooting for a time long passed.

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The Scottish Wildcat – Chasing Ghosts

By Jamie Sneddon.

It’s an arctic day in February 2016. Two haggard looking men sit in a little car on Scotland’s wild west coast. Numb hands are clicking through camera trap images, in the fleeting hope that one could be what they had come all this way for. Suddenly, in between the false triggers and mice, a flash of stripes! They watch the footage again, and another 20 times. A distant, striped figure, stalks through a patch of sunlight in between the trees and is illuminated in striking detail. It’s a cat but not just any cat. What the two men are looking at is the incredibly rare and elusive Scottish wildcat, a species on the very brink of extinction. At that time people thought they knew how bad the situation was, but really, they would later discover it was far worse. None of this mattered on that cold day in 2016. Two men, exhausted by weeks of horrific conditions and disappointment, on the verge of tears, bounced about like excited schoolgirls. At the time I didn’t realise that, my friend Ewan and I, were looking at a species that only a few years later would be classified as functionally extinct in the wild.

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Functionally extinct but well and truly alive.

The Scottish wildcat is like no other species I’ve ever worked with. When I first came across them, they weren’t a household name. They were a rare species but not kind that made news headlines or caused bitter rivalries between conservation organisations, yet. I think it was partly down to the fact that people had no idea what they were dealing with. Secretive animals that prefer to stay away from humans don’t get all that much attention. Especially when the average person thinks they look just like a tabby cat. Those individuals clearly haven’t seen the real deal!

Scottish wildcats present so many problems for conservation that it’s hard to know where to even begin. The easiest one to start with is that fact that, thanks to habitat loss and persecution, they have, for the most part, been pushed to some of Scotland’s most remote places. To put the problem of persecution into perspective, an estate in Glengarry recorded 198 wildcats killed between 1837-1840. For a long time, anything with tooth or claw was considered to simply be a ‘pest’. As a society we’re still paying the price for that misguided logic.

The remoteness of the species is exactly what led me to Ardnamurchan, a peninsula on west coast of Scotland. It’s a beautifully harsh place to visit. I was young, full of drive, and in need of an adventure. The idea of visiting somewhere remote, with poor weather and limited internet or phone signal, in the depth of winter, was exactly what I needed. Thanks to storm Gertrude I wasn’t disappointed! The ferries were closed for days, the house I stayed in was freezing cold and the windows almost caved in with the force of the wind. I found myself under a duvet at night, in two layers of clothes, my teeth chattering, and my toes numb, but with a big smile on my face. It could have been the hypothermia creeping in, but it was all part of the experience. If I wanted to be comfortable, I definitely wouldn’t have chosen a career in conservation!

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Storm Gertrude coming in over the hills.

Ardnamurchan was Wildcat Haven turf, a group dedicated to saving the wildcat in the wild. They opposed the government plan to use captive breeding as a backup for conserving the species in the wild. After being passed up for an internship with the government group, Scottish Wildcat Action, I was all for working with the underdog group and fighting ‘the man’. Wildcat Haven was a sink for passionate, if slightly misguided graduates, so I fitted right in. The work involved running around the remote peninsula like headless chickens, speaking to everyone and anyone about cats.

“Have you seen a wildcat?”,
“Do you have an unneutered pet cat?”,
“Have you seen any feral cats?”.

I’m sure the locals loved our interrogations. We only had 4 short weeks, so every second counted. We planned our moves on a big map pinned to the wall, something that always looks cool, fact, and put fliers through every door and on every notice board. It wasn’t long before we had some neutering requests coming in.

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No internet means pinning a map to the wall for planning.

Wildcat conservation is all about neutering domestic cats and that’s why conservation groups often do it free of charge. It’s not glamorous work but it’s essential. That’s because, in a cruel twist of fate, the domestic cat can breed and produce fertile offspring with the Scottish wildcat. What you end up with is hybrids that are poorly adapted to survival in the Highlands, or at least are less suited than wildcats. There are more domestic cats than wildcats so over time the problem gets worse in a lovely phenomenon called an extinction vortex. Eventually, as is the case now, the population can be described as a hybrid swarm. The waters are so muddied that the population of ‘wild living’ cats in Scotland is really a spectrum from wildcat to domestic cat. As much as we all want to believe it, there’s probably no such thing as an 100% pure wildcat anymore. Wildcat Haven hoped, and still hope, to save the species by clearing areas like Ardnamurchan of anything less than pure wildcats and keeping the area protected from any unneutered pet, feral or hybrid cats. So, we set about catching cats.

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Wheel spinning my little clio along the shore, while racing the incoming tide, to pick up traps in the dark was all part of the adventure.

When you go on a cat neutering campaign you end up bumping into some interesting characters. The following people probably wouldn’t mind being named but I’m going to give them each an alias for the sake of this blog.

Let’s start with one of my favourite characters, Mr D. Mr D was a unique man and had a lot of cats. On our first visit to his house they literally came out of the walls, cupboards, under the furniture, basically anywhere you could squeeze a cat. They bred as they liked and shared some lovely diseases with each other. A standard nightmare colony in terms of their ability to threaten wildcat populations. Not that Mr D was worried about that. He told us extensively about the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl causing every animal in the area to die. The men in white coats did come and put chemicals in the water to counteract the nuclear damage but by that point the wildcats were gone. I’m not 100% sure any of that is true but equally I don’t have any counter evidence. It was likely that some poor, unsuspecting man from Scottish water was taking samples from a burn and became involved in Mr D’s Chernobyl theory.

Mr D also told us about his run in’s with the police when he was reported for dynamite fishing in a loch. Something he tried to deny while his soaking wet, fish gut covered, boiler suit dried on the washing line. Some of the team really didn’t want to visit Mr D but he was a firm favourite of mine. Luckily for me, the pack of dogs he used to own that would live in the ruins around his property, weren’t around anymore. The cats were nasty, but I hear the dogs would have likely taken one of my limbs off. Anyway, we managed to neuter a lot of his cats and solve a few of their health problems while we had them in the clinic. We couldn’t solve the Chernobyl problem, but you can only do so much with limited funding.

Next on the character list is Mrs B. The team met this lovely 80 something year old woman while she was lying on her back in her kitchen. No one knew how long she’d been there, but she was happy for the help. It made the idea of sending two young men over to trap her horde of feral cats slightly less daunting. Despite her initial worry about us, we eventually ended up making regular pitstops to have a cup of tea and watch the news with her. She clearly appreciated the company and we appreciated the chance to warm up. She also didn’t mind the smell of cat pee and fish that followed us around, so the relationship worked well. She embodied one of the most common problem cat owner stereotypes. While Mr D was a cat hoarder, Mrs B was a solid gold feeder. A poor cat with two kittens showed up years ago and she took pity. Within a few years it was hard to keep track of her regular customers. So hard in fact that she kept trying to get us to neuter her neighbour’s pets. If Mrs B said it was okay to neuter a cat, it was best to get a second opinion.

The third legendary character on the list is Mr B who just so happened to be Mrs B’s son. Turns out having far too many cats ran in the family. His sister also popped up at one point, but she had less cats thanks to her very own ‘control methods’. She wasn’t a very nice woman. Anyway, Mr B owned a farm and, on that farm, he had a big old cat colony. He also had a pack of border collies that chased my car and attacked the tyres every time you pulled up, just to make things interesting. Mr B was another type of cat owner entirely, the mouser. He was a man of few words and simply kept cats to keep the mice under control in his barns. Generally, colony cats are not pretty cats. Matted, dirty fur, parasites, diseases and various injuries. They also have a very specific smell, not a good one. However, Mr B had some of the most beautiful cats I’ve ever seen. They all had the same brown and white, t-shaped markings on their faces and little pink noses. Their father had the exact same markings and was an incredible tom. He was also the biggest, wildest, most aggressive cat I have ever dealt with. I first saw him looking at me from the rafters with fire in his eyes on our first visit to the farm. After that he disappeared. We caught something like 30 cats at the farm, but big daddy didn’t show himself for weeks. Until one of the last days of trapping that is. He had obviously been off wooing the ladies on neighbouring farms and reminding every tom for miles who was boss. After all the waiting and anticipation there he was, filling the trap and letting out a low, deep growl worthy of a cat ten times his size. Getting him back to the neutering clinic, that also happened to be a hotel room, was a white knuckle experience. He was the Moby Dick of the project and, If I’m being completely honest, I felt guilty neutering such an impressive beast. I’ve still to meet a more impressive tom cat.

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Mr B’s farm

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One of Mr B’s beautiful cats. Their father looked identical but twice the size and covered in battle scars.

The above stories should highlight that wildcat conservation boils down to two things, dealing with domestic cats and people. It can be mentally and physically difficult work but it’s the only way to save the species. As long as intact domestic cats dominate the Scottish countryside, the Scottish wildcat will cease to be more than a shadow, living in only the wildest corners of the map. Genetics research, captive breeding and reintroductions are no match against hybridization and disease spread. As a nation it should be common sense to treat cats more like dogs and have tighter regulations. Can you imagine if dogs were free to roam, breed as they liked and hunt at will around the country?

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The sun sets in Ardnamurchan

I loved my crazy west coast adventures so much that I went on to manage a following project in Caithness. Eventually though, I realised that I wanted to work for a project with more structure, scientific grounding and collaborations. The politics associated with wildcat conservation was starting to overshadow the work I did, no matter how worth while it was. So, I moved on to Scottish Wildcat Action. My work as a contractor has involved identifying individual cats from camera trap line-ups, far harder than it sounds. From this a ‘cat-alogue’ is made, a photo log of every cat caught on camera over the course of 5 years in wildcat priority areas. It’s the sort of job that drives you to madness when multiple named cats turn out to be the same cat or vice versa. This, along with other important data organising tasks and uploading images to citizen science websites, makes up my role in wildcat conservation now. It’s not as adrenaline pumping as driving around single-track roads in a little car full of angry cats, but it’s equally important. The information gathered is helping to inform the newest project in the war to save the wildcat.

The Saving Wildcats project is cutting edge and very exciting. After years of information gathering this project looks to be one with less talk and more action. A state-of-the-art captive breeding centre is being built, captive cats will learn how to survive in the wild and will eventually be released into areas free from the threat of hybridization and disease spread. To me this speaks of the countries commitment to saving the species. As a nation we have decided not to let this iconic cat fade into memory. Reintroduction is not simple and there are hard times ahead, but wildcat conservation has never been easy so why change things now. If we can fight to save the wildcat with even a flicker of the passion shown by the animal itself, then I whole heartedly believe that the Scottish wildcat isn’t a lost cause. It’s not over until it’s over.

“They will fight for their freedom with a passion we can only dream of.” – Mike Tomkies.

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Nature: A Remedy for Mind, Body, and Soul

By Laura Pratt.

I want you to imagine yourself walking next to a small river. This gently flowing stream is in the middle of an ancient woodland, full of towering oaks and bushy hazel. The wood completely envelops you and sounds of the world beyond can’t reach you here. A robin starts up a merry whistle and a blackbird then echoes its song in lower, mellower tones. Suddenly there is a burst of song, surprisingly loud, unmistakably a wren. As you walk on, you take a breath of the fresh, earthy smelling air; you feel the touch of a gentle breeze on your face; and see the leaves dancing around you, throwing a multitude of shadows onto the woodland floor. A gentle hum of foraging insects is all around and every so often a beautiful butterfly flutters by.

A path in my local woodland.

How does this scene make you feel? I don’t know about you, but for me, a wave of calm washes over me just imaging this scenario. When I am actually there, I am completely captivated by the sights, sounds, and smells of nature all around me, and any other worries and concerns seem to melt away.

For me, this has been especially important during the months of lockdown and uncertainty this year. I have always loved photography and, with more time on my hands than usual, I have really enjoyed getting out into my local patch with my camera to explore this area more than ever before. It is such a mindful activity; all I am focusing on is what I see around me, and it has led to me falling in love with British wildlife all over again. From frequently  stumbling across deer in the woodland and seeing clouds of butterflies decorating the summer days, to catching sight of fox cubs in the middle of their first hunt and chancing upon fledging wrens taking their first brave adventures away from the nest, it has been truly magical.

Roe deer in the crops.

Peacock butterfly.

I have also found investing time in the garden incredibly therapeutic. I have put up camera traps and captured the night-time wanderings of our resident hedgehogs, made a pond-in-a-pot which has flourished over the last few months, and spent many an hour watching the birds foraging amongst the trees. I have had a chance to look more closely at the comings and goings of the wildlife using our garden and it has been an utter delight.

My mini pond with a lily in flower.

A coal tit foraging in my back garden.

The benefits I have noticed are by no means unique to me, many other people experience them too. The reasons behind the benefits of nature are not fully understood currently because they are so complex, however, there is a lot we do know already.

Fledgling wren in my local woodland.

Chalk hill blue butterfly.

Hoverfly.

The benefits experienced by people range from improved physical fitness and reduced feelings of stress and anxiety, to enhanced creativity and connections with other people. Time spent in nature also helps you to be more ‘in the moment’ or ‘mindful’. Instead of worrying about things past and future, you focus on the here and now. There is so much to see and discover out in nature that will fully captivate you and will not fail to keep you in the present. This in turn has been shown to improve your wellbeing and lead to feelings of relaxation.

If this isn’t part of your daily routine currently, I would highly recommend it, especially if you are experiencing stress and anxiety at the moment (although, if you are worried about your mental health, please do seek medical advice in case you need further support). Even a short time out in nature has been shown to have amazing benefits. If you’re not sure, why not give it a go? You’ve got nothing to lose and a whole lot to gain.

Clouded yellow butterfly.

Muntjac deer.

Charities I would recommend and why

If you want more detailed information about how nature benefits mental health, or mental health information in general, do check out the charities Mind and the Mental Health Foundation, they have some great, free resources.

My favourite nature charities. Gosh! It is so hard to choose so I will cheat and mention all my favourites. I support The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB, Bat Conservation Trust, and Butterfly Conservation. Why do I support them? They all do incredible conservation work for starters, and on top of that they have some brilliant education resources on their websites to help you learn more about a whole range of habitats and species, including helping you to identify critters you are unsure about. I would recommend checking them out.

Follow Laura on Instagram: @lauramariewildlife.

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Quest for the European Otter

By Amy Jerome

I’ve been searching for five years and today is no exception. I’m walking through a nature reserve in Buckinghamshire following the advice of other otter spotters, that the same family have been seen in the same location, at the same time for the past week. Yet I’m convinced that today is not the day – after all, yesterday wasn’t the day – or the day before.

As I take each eager but pessimistic step towards the hide, I run through every superstition in which my ritual for spotting is broken, and why I’ll not see an otter today. It’s raining; it’s midday; it’s me! I seem to be cursed with some kind of otter repellent!

I approach the hide, pull up a seat and open the shutters in pin-drop silence. Binoculars in hand, I scan the horizon. After three minutes or so I put down my ‘bins’ to watch some great crested grebes courting in the near foreground. Before long I’m distracted by an ever-impressive heron soaring in to land on the bund (a sight that I will never grow tired of). There is a disturbance in the water to the left…

Camera trap image.

As a young student I decided that my life should be best spent near the water. I was obsessed with the biggest and most impressive of species and what is bigger than a whale? After a two-year course in animal management, my next step took me to study marine biology at the University of Stirling. Here our learning was largely focussed on aquaculture due to the nature of the university’s funding and research opportunities. But I had just spent half the year studying and interning in Monterey Bay, California and returning to Scotland to finish my degree in salmon was hardly the most exciting concept! After a field course in the Isle of Great Cumbrae where we learned how to identify prey remains in otter spraint (faeces), which I enjoyed immensely, I knew what I wanted to study for my dissertation topic – and here’s where the obsession began!

River otters.

Many tiring hours were spent that year traipsing through the Scottish countryside alone, following the rivers Teith and Forth in every form of weather. My main goal was to find evidence of otter activity and especially prey remains and spraint. Sometimes I would stumble across a “couch” – an area of flattened grass where an otter may have taken a break or scent marked. I also managed to find one otter holt at the base of a tree on the other side of the water to a chimpanzee island, of all places! At the time I was working part time at a safari park in Stirling, and this particular young male otter had taken a shine to the chimps, often swimming over to see if he could find any scraps or bird eggs to steal. Much to my dismay, he often visited the keepers at the indoor enclosure and would swim alongside boats of tourists who were usually more interested in him than their own exotic African cousins on the land. I never saw him.

I collected (and smelled) many spraint samples, mapped the movements of a number of otters, found pug marks (paw prints), fresh kills, and even managed to catch a few camera trap images, but I would not cross paths with an in-the-flesh otter despite my dedication to the cause.

Spraint items.

Many years have passed since then. I’ve dragged friends, family and my fiancé along river banks looking for signs of otters and demanding them to sit in silence until the sun sets. I’ve travelled to UK otter “hot spots” and spent long hours sitting on cold rocks and damp grass in everlasting hope. I have even continued my research on a voluntary basis for a charity in the South East of England. It was beginning to feel like I would never see a wild otter, despite my ever-growing CV and clear desperation.

This obsession with otters goes way beyond an affinity for the species itself. In fact, I’m not even that big a fan of otters in general. My favourites are the giant Amazon river otter, but the Europeans only excite me because they have evaded me for so many years.

By March 2020, adorned in otter memorabilia (key chains, pin badges and socks among others) I purchased a sculpture of two otters as a good luck charm – lovingly named Rosie & Jim. This would be my year! Now I was working for a land management charity in Buckinghamshire, and visitors to one of our nature reserves had been noting frequent sightings of an otter family of 3. Far hide, 12:30 – 14:00. I had to keep trying.

… I held my breath in total disbelief as a female otter carrying a small fish swam from the left of the hide, right under my nose, water lapping against the bank, across the lake and out of sight. I repeatedly muttered, “oh my God, oh my God” and felt a wave of gratitude for this beautiful creature who blessed me with this natural window into her life. I had no camera and so no evidence of the event, but I did record my reaction.

Now, you should know that I’m not really one for crying. In the past I have cried over experiences with a barn owl, humpback whales, orca and blue whales. I thought that I was hysterical enough then, but this took the cake! I sat and blubbed to myself for a good 15 minutes before I could compose and head back to work. Still to this day I well up when telling the story. I have never felt more blessed or lucky to have encountered a wild animal – the fruits of a labour of love.

The moral of the story? … Never give up on nature.

Amy the Otter Spotter!

My chosen charity: European otters, whilst found in every county in the UK, are a “near threatened” species due to generations of persecution, habitat destruction and pollution. The International Otter Survival Fund is one of the world’s leading otter charities – it is the only charity working solely to protect UK otters.

Their work spreads far and wide to every corner of the globe where otters are present. Working not only with the research and protection teams in the field, but to the communities who live alongside otters and the pet trade which continues to threaten populations today.

I have had the pleasure of fundraising for this charity in the past and would love to see their vital work continue long into the future.

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Living on a Razor(bill)’s Edge

By Barnaby Ashton.

Those with musical tastes which run a little heavier may have spotted that I’ve misappropriated the title of this entry from an Iron Maiden lyric. The lyric is from “The Evil that Men do”, and it seemed fitting on a few levels. Don’t worry though, despite that set-up this isn’t going to be quite as heavy-handed as the music I was listening to while writing it.

One thing I’ve been conscious of from an early age is that my mind often seems to work a little differently, so I’m going to assume that my casually linking Iron Maiden with razorbill ecology might need some explanation.

“Er guys, has that puffin’s wing gone all the way round this rock…?”

At the most basic level, there is simply the question of noise. Unrelenting, cacophonous, glorious noise. Sound, or the complete lack thereof, is a strong feature of my mornings. Finding, enjoying and working with wildlife can often involve very early starts. I’ve been known to set my alarm for 2:45am to reach a site before dawn, and the day’s noise gets off to an interesting start at that time. I can be quite imaginative, but even I’m surprised at the sheer creativity I can put into a string of expletives when the alarm goes off.

The soundtrack of the next stage of the morning has a regular beat: the click and hiss of the kettle; the soft hollow whistling as I blow the heat from the surface of my coffee; the always over-amplified sounds of trying to be quiet at that hour; the clunk of the van door and the thunder of the engine turning in the cold pre-dawn quiet; then rousing metal or punk on the stereo to finish waking me up, until the total silence that follows after I reach my destination. 

Early bird etc…

However rousing my wake-up music may be, even in the stillness before dawn it’s got nothing on the riotous sound that reverberates from the cliffs of a seabird colony. The low, croaking growl of the razorbill perhaps does not place them among the lead vocalists in this avian concert, but they are certainly in the backing group. 

Deep Purple are often cited as the loudest band ever, recorded at an ear-bothering 117 decibels during a 1972 gig. If they’d played Smoke on the Water on the surface of the water below a large seabird colony, they might have needed to turn it up. Maybe even to 11... Note that I do not, of course, condone loud noises near breeding birds. I’m just getting carried away with my analogy.

Rock concert

Getting more specific with the song in my title brings me to the remarkable breeding behaviour of razorbills. Razorbills really do live on the edge, both physically and metaphorically. The safest way to raise our young is one of the primal questions of the natural world, and it’s a question with some interesting and surprising answers.

Often, perhaps even more often than not, the answers that nature finds involve actively embracing some dangers to lessen others. Razorbills, like many seabirds, use just such an approach to their nesting habits. Nest predation is such a threat that a common strategy for seabirds is to breed and rear young in places which are so precipitously dangerous they are incredibly difficult for predators to reach.

Razorbills favour crevices for their breeding sites, on the sides of sheer cliff faces or sometimes amongst tumbledown boulders and scree, and generally prefer not to go to the trouble of building a nest. For those on cliffs, it’s rather like if your front door opened onto a few hundred of feet of thin air. Then imagine raising children in that environment. Yet they are able to make this strategy work. A single egg is laid per breeding season and only one parent is ever fishing at any given time, with the other keeping a close eye on that front door. Which seems sensible.

Rocky landing ahead

For fledglings leaving a cliffside home, it’s an experience to shame even the most extreme of human adrenaline junkies. It is, quite simply, a case of base-jumping without a parachute to the water below, accompanied by what presumably is a somewhat worried father. In place of a ‘chute are tiny, not yet developed wings pumping at the air in a blur to help slow the descent of a body which has evolved to be light enough for this most extreme of starts in life to work. That’s certainly living on a razor’s edge. 

For those razorbills making a home amongst tumbled boulders near the shore at the foot of cliffs, the experience is somewhat less fraught. I was fortunate enough to witness just such a moment, as a male razorbill made his stately way down the shore to lead his fledgling out into a life at sea. Razorbills come ashore only to breed, so this first foray into the water was a big moment. 

The photos, I think, tell the story of their little journey through the weeds and rocks into the wide world better than I ever could. So I’ll let them speak for themselves between the final paragraphs of this entry.

Instead, I’ll finish wrapping up my weird little analogy inspired by a thirty year old metal song. I mentioned the title was The Evil that Men do, and the title itself resonates with me for this piece as well as the lyrics. The obvious link would be to a worrying decline in seabird numbers over recent years, razorbills among them. That’s a little too obvious though, and too big a topic for the space I have left. I was actually thinking of something more specific to capturing the images which accompany this entry.

You may note that some of these images are quite pulled-back, despite the fact I was using 500mm of focal length (in non-photographer terms, simply lots of magnification to make far away things seem bigger. If you’ve ever watched Father Ted think of Dougal and the cows). It may even seem a little frustrating that the birds don’t fill more of the frame in the final few.

There’s a good reason for the pulled-back nature of these images though, and one beyond a simple artistic desire to show the context this journey happened in. Put simply, had I tried to fill more of my frame with razorbill, and got really up close and personal to capture every feather filament, these tender and heartwarming moments never would have happened.

When I first spotted the pair I was standing on very loose shingle, which made for difficult and noisy footing. The birds were a little far from me, but to move closer would undoubtedly have caused enough noise and commotion to disturb them. The journey they were starting was big enough and scary enough already without a huge great human (to them at least, I’m relatively small compared to most other humans…) lumbering loudly up to them. 

The fact I would be pointing a long dark piece of metal at them also really wouldn’t have helped if they’d seen it: birds with an inherent tolerance of humans pointing long tubes at them are not likely to have been winners at natural selection. Any wildlife photographer can attest that the minute a big lens is noticed, the subject tends to leave in a hurry. Usually just at the moment of shutter release. There is also the simple fact that in nature if something is paying you particular attention it most likely either wants to eat you or mate with you. Any one of those reasons is a good one to run away when someone points a big lens at you.

Which brings me to finishing the link to the song. In that moment when I spotted these two razorbills, I had a choice. I could clatter and slide my way across the shingle in the hopes of one really good, crisp close-up as my subjects scattered away from me and each other. Or I could very quietly crouch down where I was and watch what unfolded from that distance.

I have no doubt that I made the right choice. It’s so important when photographing wildlife that it is the wildlife which is valued, not the shot. It might be tempting in the heat of the moment to turn into some sort of bush paparazzo, and chase after the subject for that one money shot close-up. I’ve seen that done, and I’ve also seen the disdain which can be directed at people with big telephoto lenses as a result of this sort of behaviour. Sadly, it’s really not unusual for people to behave this way for a photo, so a lot of us are tarred with the same brush. Which is understandable.

Not only is it terrible behaviour towards the wildlife, I personally don’t think it even makes for better photos. If there’s a trade off between affecting subject behaviour and the distance my photos are taken from, I’ll take the distance every time. This is a choice we face whenever we interact with wildlife. I believe it’s important to make the least selfish choice and never disturb for personal gain. We mistreat the natural world in enough ways as it is.

As for our intrepid razorbills, I am very happy to confirm that they made it safely to the water. There was one big challenge for the fledgling however, when Dad demonstrated how to jump off a rock near the end of their journey to the water. At the risk of overly anthropomorphising, judging by the look on the little one’s face it may be for the best that this one wasn’t reared up the cliffs on a razorbill’s edge…

For more blog posts and wildlife photography, visit Barnaby’s website and follow him on Instagram.

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Autumn Approaches

By Jeni Bell

Source: Andy Holmes via Unsplash

It often feels as though Autumn appears overnight; one day the summer has full grip of the land and the next Autumn has stolen in with a sharp breeze and a new colour palette.

That’s not the case though.

Autumn approaches slowly, stealthily making changes that we don’t always notice until the season is in full swing. She creeps in quietly through the hedgerows and gently mellowing the sun’s strong rays leaves little signs for us; a suggestion of what is to come in the changing days ahead.

It’s in this space between seasons when the weather is still relatively settled (relatively being the key word – it is the UK after all) and the days, though growing shorter, are still warm it is worth going for a walk. A slow walk. A mindful walk. A gentle walk along country lanes, or through a local park or green space. One in which your phone is on silent and your eyes and ears are open to your surroundings because this is when you are most likely to witness Autumns approach.

The best place to look for signs of the season are the hedgerows.

It’s here that the birds, hushed by the heat of summer and hordes of hungry mouths, begin to sing again. From the glossy blackbird to the skulking dunnock, the tiny wren to the proud robin red breast, they all provide the soundtrack to the season.

Of course, there is a reason they flock to the hedgerows, another of Autumn’s calling cards, in fact, it’s probably her best known one.  An encroaching Autumn adorns the trees, scrub, brambles and bushes with fruit. Hanging jewels that provide sustenance to not just birds but us as well – it’s rare to walk in the autumn and not come back with fingertips stained purple from the plump blackberries that hang ripe for the picking.

Dark coloured elderberries hang delicately next to the bright red of rose hips and haws that hang next to the still green leaves of hawthorn trees. Sloes dangle like tiny, inky storm clouds from the sharp blackthorn. Overhead squirrels launch themselves through branches to get at the cobnuts the hazel has to offer, desperate to snatch them up for themselves before the mice do.

Source: Piotr Łaskawski via Unsplash

Beyond the hedgerow in the old oak’s jays squawk and scuffle over acorn prizes, keen to cache them away for the colder end of the year. In fact, most animals are busy making the most of nature’s well stocked larder. Some will also be beginning to think about preparing themselves for nestling down for the winter, hedgehogs will search for hibernation spots, badgers will clean their setts and later in the season bats will seek out roosts – these usually come much later in the season. It won’t be long now before skeins of geese start to paint arrows across the sky as they escape the clutches of colder climes.

Although autumnal signs can be found in more than just the bountiful fruits and the business of animals, other more subtler changes occur as the seasons shift.

On morning walks, laced with a freshness that makes you reach for an extra layer, you may see spiderwebs adorned by dew drops sparkling in the sun. Those summer scents of cut grass, sea-salt and strawberries are swapped out for richer aromas; earthy moss and the smell of woodsmoke that lingers in the distance.

If you walk in the evenings, as the nights darken earlier you may well hear the tell-tale calls of tawny owls as they defend their territories from newcomers.

A walk in the last of the summer days will soon show you that there is nothing sudden about Autumn. She is a subtle season that long starts her shift long before the leaves change colour and the nights really draw in.

This is the time to get out and notice this contrast between seasons, to walk mindfully and watch for Autumn’s approach.

Source: David Kovalenko via Unsplash

Jeni’s favourite charity:

One of my favourite wildlife charities is The Badger Trust. They do such an amazing job at raising awareness of the many issues our badgers face and acting as a strong voice for them. By encouraging vaccinations instead of culling and helping to train police officers in the signs of wildlife crimes they work so hard to protect our UK badgers.

Find more from Jeni on her website, Seeking Wild Sights.

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The Life of a Squirrel Tracker – 7 Years in the Making, 2013 – 2020

By Jamie Sneddon.

It's impossible not to smile when you see a red squirrel, fact. This theory was really put to the test when I walked home with a very large squirrel tattoo on my leg. I’ll be honest, my girlfriend’s facial expression read more as shock and confusion than happiness. Seven years on from that questionable decision, my leg is now a whole piece, full of Scottish species, but squirrels still hold a top spot. The question is, how exactly did I go from a squirrel enthusiast to a professional squirrel tracker?

Well it all started in university when I volunteered with the Scottish Wildlife Trust on their Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels project in 2013. I didn’t know a whole lot about squirrels and honestly just needed to get experience of any fieldwork I could. Escaping windowless lecture theatres was becoming more and more essential. So, I checked squirrel feeders, lined with sticky tabs to collect hair samples, and set up camera traps. Aberdeen was, and still is, the front line for the war on grey squirrels. My job was to find out who was where. It was your bog-standard free labour situation, but I was delighted just to be in with a chance of seeing red squirrels. How naïve. Years on and I now know that working with squirrels doesn’t equate to seeing squirrels, but more on that later. Anyway, I spent my time driving around in the squirrel-mobile, an unreliable red Ford that regularly lost power on roundabouts and creeped through the woods in the hopes that I would see, even the slightest hint of, a bushy tail. I didn’t. Not once. But the camera traps had better luck than I did.

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A red and a grey squirrel visit the same feeder in Aberdeen

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The unreliable squirrel-mobile

Saving Scotland’s Red Squirrels was a fantastic project to be a part of and really set off my obsession. I love the challenge of seeing animals that excel at not being found. My work history generally supports this theory; if it’s too easy to see I’m not as interested. Once I left Aberdeen, it was a while before I got back into the world of red squirrel conservation. The million and one red squirrel mugs, glasses, cakes etc that I was given as gifts for any event kept me happy in the meantime.

The next step on my squirrely journey started in 2017 when I volunteered as a research assistant with the University of the Highlands and Islands. This post made my previous work look like child’s play. The project aimed to quantify the impact of forestry works, woodland thinning and tree felling, on red squirrel movements, drey (squirrel nest) use and breeding success. I was put into the middle of the woods, given a telemetry receiver and instructed to find radio collared squirrels. It can’t be that hard to find radio collared animals, right? I had already experienced radio telemetry work when flying birds of prey, so this shouldn’t be any harder, right? Wrong! Whoever first decided to strap an expensive radio tag to a small, tree dwelling, prey species was clearly insane. The usual rules of radio tracking involve seeking out open or high ground to get the clearest signal. The one thing you don’t want to do is go into thick vegetation because it causes the signal to bounce, be weakened or completely disappear. Squirrels live in the close-knit branches at the tops of trees. In thick commercial forestry plantations tracking becomes even harder. Again, the person who decided this was a good idea was clearly insane. This is where I learned that, even if I could track a squirrel to a specific tree, I wasn’t likely to see it. Despite the challenges associated with the work it was incredible experience! If you can track red squirrels, you can track anything.  After 6 months and having developed a few more grey hairs, my time tracking squirrels as a volunteer came to an end. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the break.

Tracking squirrels is an all-weather job

Jump forward to 2019. It had been a couple of years since I ran around after squirrels, learning their habits, home ranges and daily dramas. I was lucky enough to be offered a place back on the project as a paid member of staff, a big step for anyone trying to make it into the conservation sector! This meant that I was now involved with one of the trickiest parts of the project, collaring squirrels. So how do you get radio collars on squirrels in the first place? With nuts of course!

First off you find a woodland with some squirrels in it. Luckily squirrels are messy eaters so you can usually find a suitable site without too much effort. Then comes the hard part, convincing them to go into a trap. To start with, you strap a lot of traps to trees at regular intervals, cable tie them open and fill them with bait for 2-3 weeks. Then comes the moment of truth. If you want to catch squirrels you need to get up early. Traps are usually open and baited before 6/7am so that means stumbling around the woods, in the dark by the light of a headtorch. I’ve done this in a blizzard and the strobe effect adds a whole new dimension to the work! Once your traps are set all you need to do is wait for 3 hours in your car, reading material and plenty of food is essential, before checking your traps.

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Messy eaters are easy to find

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The early fieldworker catches the squirrel

The first trap checking round of the day is always the most exciting. At most we’ve had 20 squirrels to process so it’s not a slow start to the day. The process from here is simple – Move the squirrel from the trap into a hessian sack and then into a handling cone. Easier said than done. Also, if you’re wondering, yes squirrels bite. I’ve not been bitten yet but from what my colleagues tell me, it’s not all that fun. The handling cone doesn’t look very nice, but it means things can move quickly and the stress is reduced for everyone. Squirrels are far hardier than they look, and some come back up to 10 times so it can’t be too bad.

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A juvenile squirrel in the handling cone

Once a squirrel is in the handling cone, we collect some key information. Sex, weight, age and then give them a tail mark and ear tag for identification. This double approach means that if their tail gets damaged, the hair grows back quickly or the ear tag is lost, we have a secondary way to identify individuals. Next up they’re given their very own radio collar, not an easy thing to apply, before being released. Usually we get a mouthful of insults and some bark thrown at us before the squirrel goes off in a huff.

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The wonderful world of squirrel tails. The good, the bad and the bushy.

After collaring it’s all about tracking, it’s what now takes up most of my time. This means working in all weather, at all times of the day while being led through thick forest, 6-foot-high gorse bushes and every other difficult woodland obstacle you can imagine. You develop favourite squirrels and an irrational hate for specific individuals that ‘intentionally’ make your life difficult. Favourites are usually females, that don’t move very much, and dispersing juvenile males that disappear one day and turn up 4 miles away, tend to be the least likeable. Every squirrel is unique, they all have a story and you become pretty attached to your study group. Predation and accidents on the road happen but, despite being small animals in a big world, squirrels are hardy survivors at heart. It’s what makes them so endearing.

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My favourite little squirrel, F05

So, that’s my story. From squirrel enthusiast to squirrel tracker in 7 years. It’s not an easy job and it’s not for everyone but it’s a privilege to be able to follow the lives of these animals so intimately. We live in a time defined by an extreme disconnect from the natural world around us. My work enables me to work in some beautiful locations and gives me the opportunity to make a difference. As conservationists, making a difference is the cornerstone of why we do what we do. Riches, comfort and stability are all set aside for a feeling of satisfaction, knowing you’re part of the solution rather than the problem. Sometimes that means having to check yourself for ticks and pull thorns out of your legs at the end of a long day but that’s just fine by me.

Happiest amongst the pines

Find more from Jamie on LinkedIn.

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Reflecting on Life in Lockdown: My time with the local Starlings

By Holly Maynard

What’s up Starling? I’ve been keeping my eye on your movement. I can’t see no room for improvement. Why you all over there with the Jackdaws.

Ok, Dizzee Rascal joke aside, I have been intently watching my local population of starlings this year, and they have given me more joy than I could have ever imagined. I have been reflecting on my time during lockdown recently, and whilst we are not over the hurdle yet, it feels like we are gaining some sort of normality back into our lives. Amongst the midst of all the uncertainty that this year has bought, there have been moments of positivity and happiness, and I think we have a lot to learn.

During the first stages of lockdown, I found myself overwhelmed with emotions, which I am sure many of you can relate to: anxiety, stress, worry, uncertainty, boredom. However, as I started to ease into home life, I realised there were many positives surrounding my day. I had more time to exercise, to enjoy the garden, to watch the sunset and to walk in my local park. I started to really notice the small things. Those minor ‘insignificant’ things. On a normal work morning, I would be running around like a headless chicken, trying to get everything organised for the day, making sure I took something out of the freezer for dinner, hanging up last night’s washing, oh and if I was really lucky, grabbing myself a slice of toast for the journey into the office. But now I had time to enjoy my morning coffee before my working day. To sit outside in the garden and enjoy waking up with the birds. And that is how it began.

I started to put all my focus into the garden. If that was going to be the view from my new home office, then I wanted to enjoy it to its full potential! I planted wildflowers and vegetables, I put up a bug hotel and I became obsessed with hanging bird feeders all over the place. At first, I had no feathery visitors to the garden, and I felt quite disheartened by my efforts, however once the suet nuggets came into play, that was it. I think I had four Starlings arrive on the feeder within an hour.

Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) are fantastic little birds: full of personality, charisma, and chat. Trust me, you will hear them before you see them.

Image from Pixabay

They are resident to the UK and although their distribution is fairly widespread, they are most abundant in Southern England. Starlings enjoy a range of habitats, from gardens and urban parks, to reedbeds located along our Southern coastlines. During the winter, their numbers will almost double, due to the influx of migrant Starlings arriving from Europe. They will gather together in large flocks, often in the thousands and undertake one of nature’s greatest spectacle’s: Murmuration. The entire flock will take to the evening sky and perform aerobatic displays, before returning back to their roost sites for the night. It has been well documented that grouping together can cause confusion to predators, making it more difficult to target one individual bird – safety in numbers, as they say. In addition, it is thought that this natural phenomena provides them with warmth and allows the flock to share valuable information such as important feeding sites. Clever right? I would urge you all to try and get out to witness this over the winter, it is honestly breath-taking.

Image by Elstef from Pixabay

The Big Garden Birdwatch, as run annually by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), concluded in this year’s report that Starlings are one of our most common garden visitors. However, despite them reaching the second most recorded species in the UK, their numbers are still down by a devastating 80% since 1979. We must do better.

Not only are they magnificent aerial acrobats, but they are strikingly beautiful. From a distance they can appear quite uniform, but once you take a closer look, you can really appreciate their true beauty. In the summer, their plumage becomes a shimmering tone of purples and greens, and in the winter, they sport a white speckled plumage.

Image from Pixabay

If I haven’t yet convinced you about these birds, let me tell you about June. Nearly two months into lockdown now and I was thoroughly enjoying my daily bird watching. Each morning, I would grab my large cafetiere of coffee and record which species were visiting the feeders, before logging on for another day at work.

June for me was a month of appreciation and understanding. Like many of you, I took part in 30 Days Wild, which is an annual challenge set up by the Wildlife Trusts to help connect people to nature. As part of this challenge, you have to carry out a ‘Random Act of Wildness’ each day. This can be as simple as planting wildflowers, watching the birds, feeling the grass between your toes, or going plastic-free for the day. The key thing to take away from the challenge is to just allow yourself to immerse in a little bit of nature every day. We all know being outdoors feels great, it is good for our wellbeing and our mental state. Not only was I excited to come up with new daily challenges, but I wanted to delve deeper into how each task made me feel. So, every day I wrote down my thoughts and feelings surrounding each Random Act of Wildness, in the aim to reflect on this at a later date.

1st of June 2020: I filled up our bird feeders with more suet nuggets.

Thoughts & Feelings: Here there are again. The Starlings. They know when those nuggets have been filled up. I swear they are watching me as much as I am watching them. They are boisterous and quite frankly greedy, but I love them all the more. During this strange time we find ourselves in, the garden, and more importantly the birds visiting the garden, have become my little escape, my daily dose of nature, my moment of tranquillity and a blatant reminder to me to appreciate quite literally what’s on my doorstep. Since March, I have been watching a group of adult Starlings visit the feeder every day. They gather together on the fence line and take it in turns to have a nibble at the feeder, although they often get a bit eager and squabble over who’s next in line. Some are clearly at the top of the pecking order, whereas others will simply peck away at the fallen nuggets on the ground.

They are truly beautiful birds, and I find myself getting distracted. The sunlight shines bright and accentuates their iridescent plumage and the speckles on their breast. They have been nesting within a circular dome at the top of a building adjacent to the house. Today was different though. I was getting dressed upstairs and I could hear the usual racket of the Starlings down in the garden. It bought a smile to my face. I looked out of the window to check up on them, but it wasn’t the usual gang. What were these noisy birds? Sure, they sound like Starlings but all I could see were a group of greyish-brown birds chatting along the fence line. When I went downstairs to take a closer look, I realised to my absolute delight that five Juvenile Starlings had turned up in the garden, and whilst they hadn’t yet developed their striking adult plumage, they still had all the charisma and chat that we associate starlings with, even if they don’t quite understand how social etiquette works when it comes to the feeder! I am pretty sure that these were the offspring of our neighbouring family nesting within the dome.

It is these small moments that can help bring us closer to nature. The more we observe, the more we see. The more we see, the more we will understand. And ultimately the more we understand, the more we care. For the mere amount of money that I have spent on bird feed this year, I have gained a whole deal more. I have gained months’ worth of pleasure watching a whole family of Starlings raise their young, and now I have the next generation in the garden going about their daily business on the feeder. I feel like a proud mum. I feel content. I feel connected. If anything, lockdown has taught me to open my eyes, and appreciate these moments, for they are far from insignificant.

Thank you, my little starlings, for keeping me sane whilst I have been stuck indoors.

My favourite charity:

Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust is a charity very close to my heart. It is an international charity with a clear mission of “saving species from extinction”. The Zoo was founded in 1963 by Gerald Durrell, who was a brilliant naturalist, and it was one of the first zoos set up with conservation in mind.

Why is it my favourite?

I grew up in Jersey, Channel Islands, which is where the Zoo is based. I visited the park with my gran at the age of 5 years old and I always remember saying to her “One day I am going to work with animals”. Durrell inspired me to a pursue a career in conservation and I have always been a big supporter ever since. The charity undertakes conservation projects all over the world and is part of successful captive breeding programmes for many threatened species. I would highly recommend a visit!

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The Importance of Bat Education – engaging young learners in the time of COVID-19

by Vera Vida

“Bats are scary.” “Bats get tangled in your hair.” “Bats suck your blood.” – these are just some of many negative things children hear and say about bats all the time. As they grow and don’t get properly educated on them, will they fear bats? Probably. Will they check the facts? Why would they?

It’s obvious that bats and their conservation are extremely important, especially during the challenging time of COVID-19. But because of all the myths and misinformation, many people – including children (the next generation, no pressure) will blame and despise bats. We must change that.

I’m a primary school teacher in Hungary and I teach 5-6-year-old children from all over the world. That’s great because bats are everywhere, right? They all know them, see them, have thoughts about them. The problem is those are often negative thoughts. But what happens if we do what it takes and educate them about bats the right way?

I was eager to find out.

I’ve always loved bats. I honestly think they are amazing and adorable creatures. When the pandemic hit the world, it was heartbreaking to see all the bad press and to hear our students express their fear, not understanding what was going on. That’s when I decided to take action.

By the time we were about to start our ‘animals’ topic with the kids, we’d already been doing our home learning. I contacted evolutionary biologist and bat expert Dr. Dan Riskin, who was kind enough to agree to join the first online session of the topic to tell us all about bats and answer some of the children’s great questions. Dan has always inspired me – not only because what he has done and achieved is incredible, but also because of the way he uses his passion for science (and bats) to do what he does best. I also think that the most important thing in education is passion. I believe we have to show our students what it is and how they can use it, not to mention that our enthusiasm is also a great tool to make the kids engaged and curious.

Did it work? Absolutely. We did a little bit of a build-up beforehand, so they were already really excited for the session, and it was brilliant. It went so smoothly, from Dan’s slide show and exciting story through the children’s great questions to the last thought about the diversity of bats (and kids). All teachers, parents, and students enjoyed it and were so ready to get into our bat project. I still feel thankful for this experience as it has really left an impact on everyone.

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During the week, the children chose their favourite bat species and created their own bat posters. (Vampire and bumblebee bats were pretty popular, but some chose bats like the Egyptian fruit bat as well). We shared interesting facts, videos, and drawings. Since we live in Hungary, we also learned about the 28 protected bat species that live here. To top it all, some of them got new bat books and soft toys which they proudly showed during the class meetings. They enjoyed the learning process and let go of the unnecessary fears – and it was so satisfying and heart-warming to see.

After all this, the most important thing was to keep it going in the background for the rest of the school year. Of course, we had to focus on other topics, too, but in order for them to learn more, I gathered some amazing resources suitable for their age and put them in our class folder, so they were always available for everyone. I used the amazing resources of Bat Conservation Trust, Bat Conservation International and more; and got some help from the lovely bat community on Twitter to find even more. From activity books to art and crafts, we now have a wide range of bat activities to have fun and learn with.

Weeks passed and they still shared their work and how they used the resources. They love bats now. Some more than others, but most importantly, they know and have grown fond of them.

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As I expected, it became clear that if we are enthusiastic enough, do our best to make learning fun, share the facts and keep this all up, our young learners will be open minded, more creative and engaged - despite all the fear and misconceptions regarding bats. Moreover, by creating one-of-a-kind learning opportunities for our students, and involve people that inspire them, we can also make sure that it sticks with them for a long time.

We must start educating this new generation about bat conservation and the importance of these wonderful animals, so they grow up understanding and respecting them.

Twitter: @vveraaa

Instagram: missvvera

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HS2 and the UK’s Post-Lockdown Challenges

By Kate on Conservation

This morning I woke to the gentle, repetitive sound of thud, thud, thudding. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I sat up as the noise accelerated to an aggressive pounding – no surprise then, when I padded across the room and peeled back the curtains to find a fierce shower of raindrops beating against the glass.

They say ‘After every storm, comes a rainbow’; or at least that’s the motto that has become firmly attached to the UK’s experience of lockdown. As I looked out across the rain soaked lawn I could see our daughter’s own coloured pencil rainbow blowing backwards and forwards on the railings that it remains tied to, in front of our house.

I can’t recall a time in my life where I’ve really experienced feeling so utterly on the cusp of something, only to feel as though I’m watching it disappear entirely from view – if this rain has come to wash away our rainbow; it may just be doing a perfect job.

A Green New Deal?

After weeks of social media feeds filled with our nationwide quarantine remedy of ‘Vitamin Nature’ [#VitaminN]—concluding with a bright and natureful month of ‘30 Days Wild’ this June – it would seem that many of us had gained a newfound love of the natural world and green spaces during our toughest days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

So when the month ended; taking with it a large portion of our remaining lockdown regulations, it felt as though maybe that rainbow was in sight as many people geared up (quite literally) for July 4’s ‘Super Saturday’.

For many in the nature sector; however, on the 30th June the clouds came rolling in. To the mantra of ‘Build, Build, Build!’, the Government pledged that billions of pounds would be used to rebuild the economy in a New Deal putting ‘jobs and infrastructure’ at the centre of the Government’s economic growth strategy.

Read as: building new roads, houses, rail tracks; everything and anything that can be built fast.

Commenting on the Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s speech, Craig Bennett, chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts called for nature to be at the heart of economic recovery – not simply an ‘add-on’.

“Nature has provided people with much solace during this crisis – and we know that we need nature not just for health and wellbeing, but also because restored natural habitats can capture carbon,” he explained. “The Government has announced billions [of pounds] for road building projects and just £40 million for nature.”

In his speech on that final day of June, the Prime Minister made specific reference to building fast and removing wildlife that presents an obstacle – a move that wildlife organisations and conservationists are concerned would jeopardise species such as dolphins and newts.

To clarify, Mr Johnson singled out that “Newt-counting delays are a massive drag on the prosperity of this country”.

A Green Economy

Little over a week later, on the 8th July, the Prime Minister gave a further announcement, of £3 billion in green schemes to help the UK “Build Back Greener”.

Essentially, ‘building back greener’ would incorporate energy efficiency, to boost jobs across the UK, cut consumer bills and reduce carbon emissions as part of the coronavirus recovery plan.

But for many campaigners, Wednesday’s economic update was welcome as simply “down payment”, but does not measure up to what is needed for the UK to meet its 2050 net-zero carbon target and restore nature.

If the Government is serious about keeping its manifesto pledge to develop [quote] “the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on earth”, it must step up its ambition and lead the world in delivering a green economic recovery,” The Wildlife Trusts’s Craig Bennett explains.

Without being supported by long-term funding for nature’s recovery and restoration projects on land and sea across the UK, it would seem this initial investment will do little to help the natural spaces we leaned on so readily in recent times.

A Green Recovery

The UN Convention on Biological Diversity calls for at least 30% of land and seas to be covered by wildlife-rich habitat to tackle the climate and ecological emergency – and while the eyes of the world will be on the UK next year as it takes the presidency of the G7 and hosts the COP26 climate conference – it’s important to remember that caring for nature and wild spaces is AS VITAL a part of ‘Building Back Better’ as green energy is.

That’s pretty much where we, so-called ‘Team Nature’, come in. Putting nature at the heart of our economic recovery is falling at the wayside as the Government pushes to meet its legally binding target to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.

Of course, this target is incredibly important in the fight against climate change, but to reach it at the expense of wildlife and natural spaces, such as ancient woodlands, simply feels like a case of giving with the left hand and taking back with the right. This certainly feels like the case when £106 billion is to be spent on the controversial HS2 rail.

As The Wildlife Trusts’s Craig Bennett, explains, “Serious investment in nature could provide a green recovery which addresses the twin crises of our age – climate change and loss of the natural world…Instead, the Government have chosen to spend billions of pounds on roads which will take us in precisely the wrong direction and mean that we keep lurching from one crisis to another.”  

Call to action for nature

A number of influential conservationists have called for action among other environmentalists, nature enthusiasts and members of the public to petition and write to the Government to demand more for wildlife.

I chatted to BBC Springwatch digital presenter, Hannah Stitfall, about her reaction to the announcements of the last couple of weeks.

Hannah Stitfall, credit: instagram.com/hannahstitfall/

“It is not new news that we are currently in an ecological emergency. An emergency that we created, and one only we can solve,” she explained

“The Government’s new deal of ‘Build, Build, Build’ looks solely towards the continued destruction of our precious habitats, which will in turn lead to the displacement and then certain death of our already suffering wildlife. This is not how we move forward.” 

Her reaction was to immediately set to work by rallying several well-known campaigners to make the following video:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Hannah Stitfall (@hannahstitfall) on Jul 5, 2020 at 12:06pm PDT

Hannah explained to me; “Our Government has in no fewer words proposed that our wildlife and environmental protection [i.e. ‘newt surveys’] pose some sort of threat to economic growth. This is fundamentally wrong.”

“Thoughts, actions and attitudes like this are the driving force behind this ecological crisis in the first place. Have we learnt nothing? Conserving our environment and the processes that the natural world provide us should be top of our priorities, but tragically they are not.”

“We must change our relationship with the natural world before it is too late, not only for our wildlife, but also for ourselves,” she added.

As multiple threads tie together into one inseparable knot, this week we also saw a timely presence from activists concerned about the environmental scar that High Speed rail construction threatens to leave on the UK’s irreplaceable meadows, designated ancient woodlands and internationally important wetlands.

To rewind slightly, I’m referring to HS2; the new high speed railway linking up London, the Midlands and the North; that’s construction aims to shave mere minutes off of journey time and presents great risks to wildlife such as barn owls, badgers, and precious plants like the endangered lizard orchid.

‘Team Nature’ rallies against HS2 rail

On the same day that Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his mediocre spending plans for a ‘Green New Deal’ that not only dismisses wildlife, but directly implicates wildlife surveys as economic obstacles; naturalist Chris Packham CBE took his fight against the controversial HS2 rail scheme to the Court of Appeal.

Chris Packham and Kate on Conservation

Chris heeded the call to try to stop the irreversible destruction and biodiversity loss to 50 ancient woodland sites, 10 sites of special scientific interest, and 130 wildlife sites that the HS2 construction plan threatens to leave in its wake.

On 4th February, after months of a “Stop and Rethink” campaign, a letter from The Wildlife Trusts was delivered to 10 Downing Street containing over 66,000 signatures from people asking the Prime Minister to stop and re-think HS2 plans. It highlighted the huge environmental risks that HS2 poses, and asked that the impact on nature be properly assessed as a matter of urgency. 

My dear friend Duke Ingram and Peter Egan join HS2 protestors in summer 2019

In spite of this; and a further 42,000 comments handed over by The Woodland Trust — including 7,000 handwritten responses condemning the potential loss of ancient woodlands and thousands of trees which will be impacted or felled to make way for the line – the Government gave the green light to the High Speed 2 rail project just a week later, on February 11th.

The move prompted instant calls for a redesign of the plan, referencing a report published by The Wildlife Trusts (and including data from the Woodland Trust) titled; ‘What’s the damage? Why HS2 will cost nature too much’), which presented the most comprehensive assessment of potential environmental damage to date.

[A full timeline of HS2 can be seen here.]

Nikki Williams, The Wildlife Trusts’ director of campaigns and policy, expressed her concern at the time that the HS2 works were given the go-ahead without acknowledging the devastating impact on the hundreds of precious wild places and the wildlife that depends on them – that lie in the path of the route.

“Nature is paying too high a price for HS2… Green and sustainable transport is vital, but the climate emergency will not be solved by making the nature crisis worse,” she said.

HS2 issues and legal battles

Early March – in a move described by the Woodland Trust as “smacking of a cowboy operation, not a Government infrastructure project” – HS2 Ltd (the company behind the construction) was caught using pest controllers to scare birds away from nesting.

It seems as though we barely had a chance to react before the Covid-19 lockdown took hold, to find out why HS2 had employed a pest control contractor to fly hawks over the Warwickshire’s Broadwells Wood to deter birds from nesting when A) it is illegal for anyone to intentionally damage or destroy a nest whilst it is being built or in use, and B) work was not due to take place on the site before late autumn, when the wood becomes dormant.

Lockdown brought with it its own set of controversies – while most of the nation’s workforce stepped down and stayed home to protect the NHS, many expressed shock that HS2’s construction was categorised alongside the duties of keyworkers by also being deemed ‘essential’.

It’s no exaggeration to suggest that that shock became heart-break to nature lovers witnessing the destruction of 400-year-old woodlands full of nature – including nesting birds, active badger setts and swathes of bluebells – at a time when they should have been protected.

Another blow would come in those early days of UK quarantine, this time when Chris Packham issued proceedings to challenge the decision by the Secretary of State for Transport and the Prime Minister to go ahead with Phase 1 of HS2. 

HS2 Hearing

The TV presenter went to the High Court in April seeking an emergency injunction to stop works he claimed would cause destruction or “irreversible and irreparable loss” to ancient woodland sites.

View fullsize

A response to my own letter to my local MP. Click to expand.

The court sat as a two-judge Divisional Court with the hearing conducted via Skype.

Evidence was submitted to the High Court in support of the case from the RSPB and the Woodland Trust explaining that all active nests and eggs are fully protected by law from intentional damage or destruction, and that some of the trees due to be felled would contain nesting birds of conservation concern, such as the lesser spotted woodpecker.

Lesser spotted woodpecker. Photo credit: Kurt Bouda

The Woodland Trust also noted that HS2 Ltd’s plans to translocate ancient woodland soils to other sites presented a flawed attempt to mitigate the loss of vital habitat when there is very little evidence that actually it works – especially during such an ecologically active time as spring.

Chris said ahead of the hearing: “Unbelievably in the midst of a human tragedy we are still orchestrating an environmental one. It beggars belief why construction work is continuing on the HS2 project, putting the safety of contractors, the police and protesters at risk. The contractors and protesters would be better off at home and the police focusing on their demanding duties at this very difficult time.”

“Post Covid-19 we will want to get back to normal – a new normal where we seriously address our biodiversity loss and climate change. Projects like HS2 must be left behind, we need new ideas that will be healthy for everyone and everything,” he added.

HS2 contractors stop for lunch during the early days of UK Lockdown

Although, just a day before the hearing, conservationists were delighted to learn that HS2 Ltd suspended all bat mitigation works at the ancient woodlands in response a letter from Natural England; the optimism was short-lived when the two senior judges refused Packham permission to bring a claim against the Government’s decision and did not grant the injunction to halt ongoing and proposed clearance works relating to HS2, for the duration of the legal proceedings.

Announcing the court’s decision, Lord Justice Coulson said: “This application has no realistic prospect of success, so we do not grant permission to bring judicial review proceedings”. He added that, even if the court had thought the application had a realistic chance of success, they “would not have favoured granting the injunction”.

Moving forward

Following this week’s case (8th July) at the Court of Appeal, many of us are now waiting with baited breath, and (sadly) low optimism, at what the result may be.

Nonetheless, to see someone of Chris Packham’s position putting ‘their money where their mouth is’ so to speak – is one good reason to believe in Team Nature.

Carol Day, solicitor at Leigh Day representing Mr Packham, said: “Emergency injunction applications of this nature are very rare because the claimant can be required to make a financial undertaking to the Court, but our client felt he had no option but to try given the scale and significance of the loss and damage to irreplaceable wildlife habitats arising from HS2.”

HS2 - AN UPDATE Massive thanks to the brilliant team at @LeighDay_Law for collating the case for a Judicial Review so superbly presented by David Wolfe QC from @matrixchambers at the RCJ today . Articulate , eloquent , considered & convincing . He did everyone proud - thank you pic.twitter.com/acbYrWPiJd

— Chris Packham (@ChrisGPackham) July 8, 2020

It seems a far cry from Boris Johnson’s declaration back in February, at the afore-mentioned COP26 launch [a climate conference that the UK will host next year], where the Prime Minister encouragingly stated: “It’s only by repairing the damage to the natural world and restoring the balance between humanity and nature – which is now so grotesquely out of kilter – that we can address the problem of climate change.”

A Recovery Network is needed

It’s hard not to reflect back bitterly on the betrayal that followed just a week on from that statement, when the Prime Minister approved HS2.

His giving permission to destroy almost 700 wildlife sites to emit excess carbon emissions for over 120 years, when we have just 30 years to achieve Net Zero, would appear to be utter madness in the face of the Climate and Ecological Emergencies that our Parliament declared just a year ago.

Considering also the massive airport expansion that HS2 is designed to enable; it would certainly seem as though the UK Government will look like hypocrites in front of world leaders at this next global climate summit which they are co-chairing.  

Whether or not Chris Packham’s latest legal battle to bring HS2 to a halt is successful, Team Nature must continue to mobilise its efforts in a multitude of ongoing small and large challenges; from Non-Governmental organisations (NGOs) affected by Covid-19 closures and funding issues, to continually evolving data around biodiversity loss and new rewilding projects and land-purchase organisations springing up almost weekly. There is much to be done, and the time is now.

On the same day as both Boris Johnson’s disappointing Green Economy funding announcement and Chris Packham’s day in court, it would have been easy to miss The Wildlife Trusts’ call for a Recovery Network for insects.

Following a new report, Reversing the Decline of Insects, written by Professor Dave Goulson. The Trusts are calling on the Government to introduce an ambitious pesticide reduction target that’s as good as, if not better than, the EU’s target to reduce chemical pesticides by 50% by 2030.

The report is a response to ongoing evidence that insect populations are declining due to habitat loss and pesticide use – at a time when trade deals threaten to increase the use of insect-harming chemicals.

The Wildlife Trust explains that to properly look after insects and other wildlife there needs to be more places where they can thrive – i.e. rich habitats that are free of pesticides and, crucially, linked up so that insect populations are not cut off and can move as the climate changes. Thus proving once more, why dividing the countryside for a rail line is so utterly out of touch with nature.

Conservation organisations cannot buy and manage the necessary tracts of land, so a recovery network for nature that encompasses our homes, highways, villages, cities and the wider countryside, will make a vital contribution towards reversing insect declines The Wildlife Trusts explain.

Sophie Pavelle, credit: instagram.com/sophiepavs/

Zoologist, Wildlife Trusts ambassador and renowned voice for the Beaver Trust, Sophie Pavelle, managed to sum up so perfectly the situation of current times in our recent chat:

“We are in a time when our relationship with the natural world is under intense scrutiny. Huge crises like the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, biodiversity loss and proposition of colossal infrastructure projects like HS2, seem to be a succession of red flags that should be waking us up to the fact that our attitude towards nature and the environment is not right.”

“The last few months have made us realise how valuable nature, wildlife and time spent outdoors can make us feel healthier and happier – and this is supported by a wealth of scientific research. This is our ‘natural capital’. Saving nature, wildlife and improving our relationship with it, will future-proof us economically as the world encounters more challenges.”

 We cannot succeed in economic recovery without prioritising a ‘green recovery’. It’s for our survival as much as nature’s – we need to accept this before it is too late.”

UPDATE: On 31st July, the Court of Appeal rejected Chris Packham's request for Judicial Review. Despite this, many conservationists have since declared; "we're not giving up". Join the fight against HS2 at http://standforthetrees.org.

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Wild Adventures for Little Ones

By Emily Hibbs

Adventures don’t have to be big or far-flung to be exciting – there’s plenty for you and your little ones to discover in your own back garden or in a local nature reserve. Here are five mini-adventures to try together this summer.

1. Search for singers at sunrise

Picture credit: pixabay

The loudest dawn choruses happen in April and May, when returning migratory birds join our residents in early-morning song as they search for mates. Still, throughout the summer, the early hours ring with the chatter of beaks hidden among the branches. At the crack of dawn, pack some breakfast, wrap up warm and set out together in search of these secret singers. You could even suggest that your little one take a pen and notebook to jot down all the different voices they hear and see if they can work out who’s who. The RSPB has a brilliant birdsong guide for beginners to get you started.

Did you know? Robins and blackbirds are among the earliest birds to begin singing, normally just before sunrise. Sometimes robins will perch beneath streetlights and sing all night long.

2. Go on a garden minibeast safari

Picture credit: The Ladybirds’ Adventures

Forget finding the “Big Five”, searching for creepy crawlies in your own back garden or local park can reveal heaps of incredible creatures. A minibeast safari is a great way to encourage your child to use their detective skills, first to discover the bugs and then to work out what they are. You could try sifting through soil to spot wriggling earthworms, gently shaking a branch to find ants, beetles and aphids, and peering under stones or rotten wood to unearth woodlice and millipedes. It’s also a good activity to try on a damp day, as slugs and snails often slip out after rain.  

The Woodland Trust have a great guide to the kinds of garden visitors you might discover together.

Watch out! If your little one is picking up bugs, make sure they are gentle and put them back where they found them. Don’t let them touch hairy caterpillars, as some species irritate the skin, and watch out for bees and wasps – fun to spot, but less fun to be stung by.  

Did you know? Because worms are so good at concentrating nutrients in their bodies, the waste they push out is ten times more nutrient-rich than the vegetation they put in, helping to keep our soils healthy.

3. Create a hidden wildlife den 

Picture credit: The Woodland Trust

However grown up you are, there’s something magical about spending time in a den. You could pitch up a beach tent and cover it with dark-coloured tarpaulin or use sticks and old bedsheets to make a simple shelter. Choose somewhere tucked away, but with a good view of the surrounding area, such as behind a tree trunk. Encourage your child to look out for the little things, like beetles and butterflies, as well as watching for bigger creatures. For the best chance of spotting rarer wildlife, you could try setting up your den at dusk downwind of a badger sett or among the trees at the edge of a wood.

Did you know? Badgers regularly clean out their setts, airing the dry grass, bracken, moss and leaves they use for bedding in the sun, before bringing it back inside as the sun sets.

4. Discover the secret life of ponds

Picture credit: Backwoods Mama

Ponds are teeming with weird and wonderful life. For this mini-adventure, throw on some old clothes and wellies, grab a light-coloured plastic box (like an old ice cream or butter tub) and set out to a nearby pool. Encourage your child to sweep the tub through the water to fill it, then take a good look inside. Can they spot anything swimming or scuttling? Try dipping the tub in different areas of the pond (though it’s probably a good idea for you to take over for the deep bits, to avoid any splashtastic accidents). You might even be lucky enough to sweep up a tadpole or newt! Use a pond dipper’s guide, like this one to help with identification.

Watch out! Make sure your child washes their hands with soap and warm water after touching stagnant water. Never leave young children on their own near a pond.

Did you know? Dragonfly nymphs can live in ponds for several years, moulting multiple times before emerging for the water for their final moult to become winged adults.

5. Set out on a star-spotting adventure

Picture credit: ©vchalup

Staring at the starry skies on a clear summer night can feel like one of the wildest adventures out there. With a blanket and a torch, set out for somewhere with minimal light pollution and see what you and your little one can spot. Don’t worry if you don’t know Pisces from Polaris, there’s no need to be put off just because you’re not an expert. There are plenty of websites and apps that provide handy real-time guides to what you’re seeing in the sky. Check out SkyView for a child-friendly augmented reality panorama of the heavens. There’s plenty of nocturnal wildlife to keep an eye out for too: listen for the squeaks of bats as they echolocate and the flutter of moths as they visit night-blooming flowers.

Did you know? A pipistrelle bat, the UK’s most common bat species, can eat up to 3,000 insects in a night!

And finally, here are a couple of amazing organisations supporting wild adventures for young people:

Black2Nature:

Set up in 2016 by birder Mya-Rose Craig (also known as Birdgirl), runs nature camps for inner-city children and teenagers from diverse backgrounds and campaigns for equal access to nature for all. Find out more: https://www.birdgirluk.com

The Wilderness Foundation:

Supports vulnerable young people and adults and connects people to the natural world through trail experiences, one-on-one wilderness therapy and other outdoor adventures. Find out more: https://wildernessfoundation.org.uk

About the Author

Emily Hibbs is a children’s book author living in Bristol. Her book Tales from the Forest, a collection of twenty bedtime stories from nature, is out in October 2020 from Stripes Publishing. She tweets as @emily_hibbs.

Use Our Notebooks to Plan Your Wild Adventure!

The Imitation Game

By Steph Dolben

Merodon equestris - Greater bulb fly.

The sun made a brief appearance yesterday and so did the bees.

I spent a few minutes watching them buzz about happily on the scabious when I spotted what I thought was a red-tailed bumblebee…..but something wasn’t quite right.

This imposter was in fact, Merodon equestris – a Greater Bulb Fly, a species of hoverfly which mimics bumblebees. Just as bees do the adult flies feed on nectar and pollen.

Mimicry in nature has always fascinated me. In this case, the harmless hoverfly has evolved to imitate a more dangerous species of insect as a defence mechanism against predators.

After all, you’re less likely to get eaten if you look like a bad ass stinging bee.

This type of mimicry is known as Batesian mimicry, after it was discovered in the 19th century by English naturalist Henry Walter Bates. Batesian mimicry has been observed in a range of insects, as well as plants, fish, reptiles and even birds. For example…

The cinereous mourner, a plain grey coloured tropical bird found in the Peruvian Amazon, has evolved a clever anti-predator strategy to help keep nestlings safe from hungry snakes and monkeys. Their chicks have bright orange feathers tipped with white barbs, resembling poisonous hairy caterpillars.

Nature is flippin’ amazing! Have you ever seen a mimic?

©Penny Frith

My favourite charity:

I volunteer at Wirral Animal Sanctuary who rescue, rehabilitate and release sick and injured wildlife [as well as some domestic animals], particularly hedgehogs. 

Why is it my favourite? 

They specialise in the rescue and rehabilitation of hedgehogs, one of my favourite animals. The team at the centre work incredibly hard and are so dedicated and passionate about the welfare of the animals in their care. It’s a great team to work with.

 

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Spotlight Species: British Mustelids

By Steph Robertson

What is a Mustelid?

The family Mustelidae comprises 56 – 60 species across 8 subfamilies and 22 genera worldwide. Not only is Mustelidae one of the most species-rich families in the order Carnivora, it is also one of the oldest. Mustelid-like animals first appeared around 40 million years ago, coinciding with the rise of rodents; the modern mustelids’ direct ancestors first appeared around 15 million years ago. The United Kingdom is home to 7 mustelid species, within the subfamilies Melinae, Mustelinae, Guloninae and Lutrinae. Mustelids are known to resemble each other in behaviour, colouring, or build; with all species exhibiting elongated bodies, short legs and scent glands. Many mustelids are opportunistic feeders, whilst others are primarily carnivorous or specialist; they hunt in a variety of terrestrial, arboreal and aquatic habitats.

European Badger (Meles meles)

European Badger. Image Credit: © Mark Baldwin

Head – Body Size: 50 – 90cm

Tail Size: 11 – 20cm

Weight: 11 – 12kg (autumn), 8 – 9kg (spring)

Activity: Mostly crepuscular and nocturnal

With its black-and-white facemask, the European badger is the most recognisable and most common of the United Kingdom’s mustelids, with an estimated population of 562,000.  They only moult once a year, beginning in spring and finishing by autumn; there is no seasonal variation in hair density or colouration. Badgers are commonly found in woodlands and fields, living in large groups averaging six adults. Territory boundaries are marked with well-worn paths and shared latrines (toilet areas), with males more likely to mark the territory than females.

Breeding Behaviour

Mating can occur year-round, but typically falls between February and May. Badgers and many other mustelids exhibit delayed implantation, where the fertilised embryo can take up to 10 months to implant in the uterus. Once implanted, badgers have a gestation period of 7 weeks, with 1 – 5 cubs being born mid-January to mid-March.

Feeding Behaviour

Badgers are omnivorous and opportunistic foragers, with earthworms comprising 80% of their diet. They can consume several hundred worms in one night; they grip earthworms using their incisors and will also dig them out of the ground. Badger weights vary throughout the year, dropping to only 8kg in spring; at this point badgers will feed copiously during the spring and summer months. Due to their omnivorous diet, they are also known to take large insects, cereals, fruit and even small mammals such as hedgehogs and rodents.

Badger Droppings. Image Credit: © www.discoverwildlife.com

Dropping Identification

Badger droppings are typically large and firm, but can also be sloppy and wet if they have consumed large amounts of worms! They are dog-like in shape, but distinguishable by their insect remains, sweet musty smell and by their location in shallow pits – also known as latrines.

Badger Footprint and Track. Image Credit: © Wiltshire Mammal Group

Track Identification

The most distinguishing feature of a badger footprint is the wide, kidney bean-shaped pad. When walking badgers tend to amble, meaning their footprints should be evenly spaced. They are roughly 3.5 – 4.5cm wide

Badger Fur. Image Credit: www.mammal.org.uk

Fur Identification

Black/white/grey in colour. Rough and triangular to the touch, will not roll smoothly across the palm of the hand.

European Otter (Lutra lutra)

European Otter. Image Credit: www.wildlifetrusts.org

Head – Body Size: 60 – 90cm for males, 59 – 70cm for females

Tail Size: 36 – 47cm

Weight: 6 – 17kg for males, 5 – 12kg for females.

Activity: Nocturnal & diurnal (along coasts)

Otters can be found all year round playing and hunting along riverbanks. Their territories expand over approximately 10 miles of river, where males and females may overlap with individuals protecting their territories against same-sex otters. Other habitats include lakes, ponds, canals and streams; in Scotland, otters are also found inhabiting the coast.

Breeding Behaviour

After a 9-week gestation period, 1 – 5 cubs are born in the spring, with the most common litter size being 2 – 3 cubs. Cubs are born blind and helpless, but fully furred; they open their eyes around 4 to 5 weeks old. Females with cubs may also reduce sprainting to avoid being detected by other individuals.

Feeding Behaviour

Otters are perfectly adapted to a semi-aquatic lifestyle, feeding primarily on fish and frogs. In clear waters, an otter’s vision is just as excellent as it is above water; when water visibility is poor, otters rely on their whiskers to detect prey. Otters are also known to prey on waterfowl, such as moorhens and ducks. Once waters warm up in spring, fish become fast and therefore harder to catch; otters will usually switch to eating frogs, crustaceans and young waterfowl at this time.

Swimming Otter. Image Credit: © www.mammalnextdoor.co.uk

Swimming Behaviour

Otters are commonly misidentified as American mink. An easy way to identify a swimming otter is that they swim with the majority of their body submerged, only displaying a head and create a U-shaped wave on the water’s surface.

Otter Spraint. Image Credit: © www.discoverwildlife.com

Dropping Identification

Known as spraints and roughly 2 – 10cm in length, otter droppings are usually left in prominent places to mark out their territories, usually along riverbanks, on rocks or under bridges. They are usually dark green in colour, slimy and are full of fish bones. As they dry out, they turn pale and crumbly. Fresh otter droppings also smell like jasmine tea.

Otter Track and Footprint. Image Credit: © Wiltshire Mammal Group

Track Identification

Otter footprints have an elongated foot pad, with a noticeable uneven bulge at the forefront, similar in appearance to a mirror-imaged shape of Africa. Claw marks may also be absent from the footprint, depending on the substrate the print has been formed in. Despite being five-toed, often only four toes appear in an otter print. These large, round prints are 5 – 7cm wide and 6 – 9cm long.

American Mink (Neovison vison)

American Mink. Image Credit: © www.wildlifetrusts.org

Head – Body Size: 32 – 47cm for males, 32 – 37cm for females

Tail Size: 13 – 23cm

Weight: 0.8 – 1.8kg for males, 0.45 – 1kg for females.

Activity: Nocturnal & crepuscular

An invasive and non-native species, it is unsure whether American mink individuals escaped or were intentionally freed from UK fur farms in the 1950’s & 1960’s, but they are now well established in the UK. Its carnivorous nature is a threat to the country’s native water vole and seabird populations. Mink can be found along rivers, marshland and coastal areas. Both male and female mink are strictly territorial, females have smaller territories than males’, which can reach up to 6km in length. Mink moult twice a year, once in April and again in September. In spring, whilst the mink’s coat is shedding, it is not waterproof enough, so they dry their coat with the dust of rotten wood. Fur is shorter, less dense and paler than the winter coat.

Breeding Behaviour

During the breeding season in spring, male mink will travel up to 20 miles a day to pursue as many females as possible; despite being incredibly territorial, females tolerate males during this time. Mating occurs in March and April. After mating, females seek out old rabbit warrens or water vole burrows to give birth in during late spring and summer after a 7-week gestation period. Usually, 3 – 6 kits are born in a litter.

Feeding Behaviour

American mink are known to primarily feed on small mammals and birds, but their diet changes in response to otter presence. Mink vision is better in a terrestrial environment, so they commonly hunt on the ground rather than in the water like otters. They rely on their keen sense of smell, which is used to prey on fish, water birds, invertebrates, small mammals and rabbits.

Swimming Mink. Image Credit: © www.mammalnextdoor.co.uk

Swimming Behaviour

Commonly misidentified as otters when in the water, American mink are faster swimmers than otters. Another way to distinguish if the animal is an American mink is if you can see the whole length of its back, as mink swim higher in the water than otters. The wave created by their nose is narrow and V-shaped.

Mink Dropping. Image Credit: G. Bradley (www.uksafari.com)

Dropping Identification

Known as scats, mink droppings are smaller than an otter spraint (around 8cm long) and are usually black in colour, containing fur, feathers and bones. Mink droppings have a rather unpleasant odour, worse than that of fox droppings.

American Mink Footprint on Hard Ground. Image Credit: © Wiltshire Mammal Group

Track Identification

American mink footprints are remarkably similar to those of a polecat in terms of size and shape. They are around 3 – 3.5cm wide and 2.5 – 4cm long. On harder substrate, mink footprints may splay out, with the pad (plantar) sitting further back. Due to its almost indistinguishable similarity to a polecat print on soft ground, the below image is that of a hard ground print.

Pine Marten (Martes martes)

Pine Marten. Image Credit: © www.discoverwildlife.com

Head – Body Size: 45 – 58cm for males, 36 – 45cm for females

Tail Size: 16 – 28cm

Weight: 0.6 – 2.2kg for males, 0.5 – 1.2kg for females.

Activity: Mostly Nocturnal & Diurnal

Pine martens are extremely elusive mustelids; they are solitary, secretive animals that are native and common in parts of Scotland but are exceedingly rare in England and Wales. They are known for their incredible arboreal agility. Between April and June, pine martens swap their pale, fluffy winter coat for a darker summer coat which begins to grow out at the nose and finishes at the tail. During spring, scenting glands on adult makes become exposed and waxy

Breeding Behaviour

Every two years, female pine martens give birth to between 1 – 5 kits in March/April. Mothers lactate from March to July; kits will start to leave the nest in July.

Feeding Behaviour

Known to take down squirrels in trees, pine martens usually hunt on the ground where they prey on voles and mice, but also rabbits, small birds, bird eggs, berries and invertebrates. Females with cubs will increase their foraging in spring, especially in well-covered forests where they will prey on passerines and their eggs.

Pine Marten Scat. Image Credit: © www.discoverwildlife.com

Dropping Identification

Around 4 – 12cm in length, pine marten droppings are long, thin, coiled and tapered in shape; often full of fur, bone, feathers and pieces of leaves/grass. In summer scat can gain a blue tinge, as bilberries comprise 30% of a pine marten’s diet during this season. Pine marten droppings also have a distinctive scent; it is musky, sweet and fruity sometimes being compared to damp hay or Parma violets. This is one of the key features for distinguishing scat from fox droppings. These scats are usually left in prominent places

Track Identification

Tracks can be easily confused with polecat and mink as they are also five-toed and of similar size. They are typically 4cm wide by 4.5cm long in females and 5.5cm wide by 6.5cm long in males. Pine martens have a stride length of 50 – 80cm.

Pine Marten Track. Image Credit: © www.mammal.org.uk

Pine Marten Track. Image Credit: © www.vwt.org.uk

European Polecat (Mustela putorius)

European Polecat. Image Credit: © www.vwt.org.uk

Head – Body Size: 30 – 46cm for males, 28 – 38cm for females

Tail Size: 7 – 15cm

Weight: 0.5 – 1.5kg for males, 0.4 – 0.8kg for females.

Activity: Nocturnal

Native and common locally throughout the UK, the European polecat inhabits woodlands, grasslands, farmland and river valleys. Polecats are less territorial than other mustelids, mostly due to a lifestyle of constantly foraging for available food. Territories are therefore very dependent on seasonal food availability, but will overlap between sexes in spring. Twice a year polecats moult. In spring they shed their fluffy, paler winter coat to make way for shorter, darker hair. European polecats are closely related to the domesticated ferret and can hybridise, creating polecat-ferret offspring.

Breeding Behaviour

Polecats have a 40 – 43-day gestation period, after which 5 – 10 kits are born, usually in late May to early July. Kits are born blind and hairless.

Feeding Behaviour

European polecats feed on rabbits, small mammals and frogs; they will also take bird eggs and invertebrates. In winter, a decreased availability of frogs and rabbits leads to polecats consuming greater numbers of rats to sustain them.

European Polecat Droppings. Image Credit: © www.mammal.org.uk

Dropping Identification

Polecat droppings display the twisted appearance found in most mustelid droppings. They are similar in shape to American mink droppings, but do not contain fish remains. They are black in colour, around 6 – 8cm long by 1cm thick and have a rather foul smell, similar to foetid meat.

European Polecat Track and Footprint. Image Credit: ©Wiltshire Mammal Group

Track Identification

Compared to other small mustelids, the footprint of a polecat has an elongated shape, with the heel/plantar occupying a more central position, rather than sitting further back. They are roughly 3 – 3.5cm wide and 2.5 – 4cm long.

Stoat (Mustela erminea)

Stoat. Image Credit: © www.wildlifetrusts.org

Head – Body Size: 27.5 – 31.2cm for males, 24.2 – 29.2cm for females

Tail Size: 9.5 – 14cm

Weight: 0.2 – 0.45kg for males, 0.14 – 0.28kg for females.

Activity: Nocturnal & Diurnal

A common and widespread species throughout the UK, stoats can be found in a variety of landscapes such as grasslands, woodlands and farmlands. Throughout the year, both males and females mark their territory using scent glands. Stoats typically travel along ditches, hedges and covered areas in order to avoid predation. Stoats moult twice a year, once in autumn and again in spring. Their winter pelage is entirely white, except for the black tip of their tail (this coat change is more common in individuals found in Scotland and northern parts of England). The white fur acts as camouflage to avoid predation, bit the tip remains black. Moult progress is controlled by day length. Males leave their territories in spring in search of females.

Breeding Behaviour

Stoats breed once a year, mating during the summer and, after experience delayed implantation, will have 5 – 12 kits, born deaf, blind and furless in the following April – May. They will be fed for up to 12 weeks by the female.

Stoat Droppings. Image Credit: © www.derbyshiremammalgroup.org.uk

Feeding Behaviour

As spring approaches, stoats become more active during the day than they are in autumn. They tend to feed on higher numbers of lagomorphs (rabbits) in the spring. Prey typically consists of rabbits and small mammals, but bird, bird eggs, fish and insects also comprise their diet.

Dropping Identification

Stoat droppings are longer and thicker than weasel droppings, about 4 – 8cm long by 0.5cm thick. They often contain hair and bone debris and are a black/brown colour; they give off a musky smell, but one that is not too unpleasant.

View fullsize

Stoat Footprints. Image Credit: ©Richard Andrews & www.mammal.org.uk

Track Identification

Stoat tracks are similar to those of a weasel, but are usually larger in size, 2cm wide by 2.2cm long. Footprints are usually found in mud or snow.

Weasel (Mustela nivalis)

Weasel. Image Credit: © www.surreywildlifetrust.org

Head – Body Size: 19.4 – 21.7cm for males, 13.7 – 18.3cm for females

Tail Size: 3.4 – 5.2cm

Weight: 0.1 – 0.13kg for males, 0.05 – 0.07kg for females.

Activity: Mostly Diurnal

Like the stoat, weasels are common and widespread across the UK. Weasels are found in grasslands, woodlands and farmlands. They are the smallest carnivores in the world (the largest, the polar bear, weighs over 5,000x more). Weasels are often mistaken for stoats, but a key feature to look out for is the weasel sports a far shorter tail and there is no black tip at the end, unlike the stoat. Their fur becomes slightly darker in the spring. Both male and female weasels are territorial, but males will extend their range during the spring in search of a mate.

Breeding Behaviour

Weasels breed from April to August. Mothers will use old mouse or vole burrows as a den, lining the nest with hay. Weasels typically have 4-6 kits once a year; if field voles are abundant it can be twice a year. Young are weaned after 3-4 weeks and can efficiently kill at 8 weeks of age.

Feeding Behaviour

A weasel’s diet primarily consists of mice and voles, their bodies enabling them to search through tunnels and runways of mice and voles. Access to these tunnels means weasels can hunt at any time of the day or year. They can even hunt under deep snow. Additionally, weasels will predate small rabbits, small birds and their eggs, particularly if rodents are scarce. They have been known to travel up to 2.5km on hunting expeditions; in spring they take advantage of the abundance of amphibians and bird eggs.

Weasel Droppings. Image Credit: © www.mammal.org.uk

Dropping Identification

Weasel droppings are brown/black in colour and often contain bits of bone and hair. They are shorter and thinner than stoat droppings, measuring 3-6cm long by 0.2cm thick.

Track Identification

Weasels have the smallest footprints of any carnivore, a distinguishing feature, measuring 1cm wide by 1.3cm long. The heel/plantar should be a simple shape but can have a possible further depression after the heel.

Weasel Track and Footprints. Image Credit: © www.mammal.org.uk

Weasel Track and Footprints. Image Credit: ©Wiltshire Mammal Group

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Badger Products

10% of the purchase price of badger products is donated to The Mammal Society.

Badger Card

£2.00

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£15.00

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Sale Price: £6.00 Original Price: £16.00

Otter Products

10% of the purchase price of otter products is donated to the International Otter Survival Fund.

Otter Card

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Otter Print

£15.00

Otter Birthday Card

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A Lockdown Exploration into Moths and Bats

By Katie Goldsbrough

Hi there!

Firstly, I would like to say a huge thank you to Creature Candy for having me as a guest blogger! (virtual hugs!)

We are living in the strangest times seen in our generation. The year so far has been a huge messy blur and I know the road ahead seems tough… but one thing that has united people and brought lockdown joy to many has been our wonderful wildlife. Nature continues to nurture us even though our world has flipped topsy-turvy, and I am writing today to give a huge shout out to my saving graces during this challenging period- the 2 sides of the coin- the evolutionary rivals- moths & bats!

Privet hawk-moth.

When lockdown was first announced I made a quick decision to order a moth trap from NHBS, and I’m super glad I did! Previously I had always used moth traps at work, and when we closed due to COVID-19 I didn’t think in all the rushing around to grab one to take home with me. I had never trapped at home before and OMG it has been amazing! I have managed to trap over 25 different species including my favourite of all time- the privet hawk-moth! One of the days (that all seemed to blur into one) I spent hours just sitting looking at this beautiful privet hawk-moth, studying all his features and just appreciating the amazingness of this creature. It has been so interesting chatting to people online that had previously thought of moths just as being boring, brown and determined to eat all your clothes. Then they saw some of my photographs and were surprised at how diverse and incredibly cute they can actually be! Even the brown ones!

Pale tussock moth.

The first time I caught a pale tussock moth, I melted with just how cute and floofy he was. It has been amazing how just a few photographs can change peoples perceptions on a whole group of species, right?! I have a friend on social media who is now no longer afraid of moths, because they saw the photograph of the pale tussock moth and how much he looked like Yoda.. now they love them! What a result for moths! As you have most likely noticed I am obsessed with moths faces, hence why most of my moth photographs on social media are so close-up. I think they are so fascinating! It’s a whole micro world we are not a part of and I appreciate the small insights I manage to be graced with when trapping (although I do imagine them doing a photo shoot with vogue playing in the background when I’m taking photos up close haha). For awesome ID guides and moth info check out Butterfly Conservation.

Next up, the arch nemesis of the moth… the bat! So, as those who know me know, I am batty for bats! I love them so much the thought of a bat makes me smile so hard my face feels like its gonna fall off. Lockdown happened just as survey season was going to start kicking off, so I created my own ‘bat time’ by completing BCT courses online, reading and dreaming of sky puppies. LUCKILY when June came around socially distanced safe surveys were able to begin again and the dusk surveys started to roll in. I think I could sit forever with bats whizzing by, clicking and giving the best aerobatic displays. It is so special just sitting quietly, listening and watching bats zooming around, in their world of flight and echolocation, something we could never imagine being a part of. It is wonderful. If you haven’t tried it, I 1000% recommend bat watching! Especially this time of year, June and July is the months for baby bats, otherwise known as pups! (SO CUTE!)

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many misconceptions and fears of bats transmitting the virus. This is untrue and there are no zoonotic coronaviruses in any of our UK bat species, so there is no need to worry!  Our bats are just a beautiful group of species that play an important role in our ecosystems and need our help to protect them. The Bat Conservation Trust website is amazing for all bat information you will ever need! Check it out here.  

Brown long-eared bats.

I hope that some positivity has come to you during this time in the form of nature. I feel like the situation has highlighted how much we need the outdoors in our lives. The biggest lesson I have learned is to let your passions drive you and they will help you find happiness even in the darkest of situations. If you love wildlife shout it from the rooftops! If you see a bee and it makes you happy- do a little dance! Spread your passion for wildlife everywhere like sprinkles on ice cream! By doing this you will inspire others and be a beacon for helping nature for generations to come.

Sending huge happy hugs to everyone! Stay Wild!

Love Ranger Katie x 

Find Ranger Katie on:

Instagram - @rangerkatie_

Facebook - @rangerkatie2020

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5 Simple Steps to Reduce Your Plastic Waste!

By Coral Chell

"We are at a unique stage in our history. Never before have we had such an awareness of what we are doing to the planet." Sir David Attenborough

Photo Credit: BBC

A couple of years ago the BBC Natural History unit, along with Sir David Attenborough, brought the serious issue of plastic waste and the impact it’s having on our environments to our screens through BBC's Blue Planet II  (a series I highly recommend watching if you haven't already). For some people this was not a new issue, but for others the iconic scenes of the mother pilot whale carrying her dead calf were very distressing and brought the issue of plastic waste to the forefront of their minds, making them feel that they must do something to help, now!

Photo Credit: BBC

After watching the series and researching more into the issue of plastic pollution, I knew I wanted to do as much as I could to reduce my plastic waste and do my bit for the environment, a thought I know I share with many others, from all walks of life. However being a student at the time, snowed under with work and often living on a budget, I knew how difficult it could be and how many others would also feel this way.

But alas, there are many small easy steps that everyone can take to reduce their plastic impact. Steps which not only help us in our quest to do our bit for the environment but also in some cases can save us some money! So, here are my top 5 simple steps to reducing your plastic waste and help your pocket.

5 Simple Steps

1) Bring Your Own Coffee Cup

An estimated half a trillion disposable cups are manufactured annually around the world, each containing 5% polyurethane plastic, making them non-recyclable. As these coffee cups are single-use and can't be recycled they often end up in the bin and in our environment.

A simple, effective and money saving solution to this is to buy and use a reusable coffee cup. With so many sizes, styles and designs available you are bound to find one that you love and can't wait to show off.  Like I mentioned this could also help you save a few pennies, with most high street and independent cafes and shops offering discounts for customers who bring their own cups.

A simple step which reduces the number of recyclable cups used, while saving you money on your daily coffee/tea fix.

2) Reusable Straw

Plastic single-use straws on a personal level are my biggest pet peeve! Estimated to take around 200 years to decompose, plastic straws are the 11th most found item of litter in our oceans today, posing serious threats for its inhabiting wildlife.

A simple solution to this issue is to stop using plastic straws, period. However, sometimes circumstances mean that this isn't always an option, but there is another answer. With many options available including metal, glass, paper and even bamboo, reusable or recyclable straws are simple solution to a growing issue. Each type of straw does have its advantages and disadvantages. For example, paper straws in pubs and bars are a fantastic idea, but a common complaint is that they often fall apart half way through drinking your drink. Personally, I have a glass straw and a set of metal ones which came with a handy cleaning brush. Buying a set was a great idea; it meant I could always have a spare straw in my bag for when I go to the pub or at a friend’s house. There are lots of different places to purchase these, just have a shop around.

3) Shampoo Bars

Shampoo bars- what can I say about shampoo bars other than the fact I love them! They are such an amazing and simple idea. With no waste, no packaging and no plastic, shampoo bars, like a bar of soap, keep your hair just as shiny and clean as shampoo from a bottle.

There are so many different shampoo bars to choose from for all different hair types, so you'll always be able to find the one that's right for you. Also another added bonus to shampoo bars is how they last so much longer than a regular bottle of shampoo, making them super economical, helping your pocket as well as the environment.

I personally use Lush's range of shampoo bars, with Seanik being my favourite. They may seem a little pricey at first but once you realise how long they actually last and how convenient they are they are totally worth it. I took one with me on my recent trip to Madagascar and 6 weeks later, washing my hair on average every 3 days, the bar looked hardly used!

4) Bags For Life

Whether it’s a bag for life from your local supermarket or a tote bag with your favourite designs on (there really are some amazing designs out there, so keep an eye out!). Bringing your own bags with you when you go for your weekly shop is a simple way to reduce the amount of plastic bags you buy and use, which ultimately just end up at the back of your cupboard or in the bin!

As I’m sure you're all aware, as of October 2015 a 5p charge for carrier bags in supermarkets came into force, with some stronger ones costing 10p. This means bringing your own bags when you go shopping not only helps the environment by reducing the amount of single-use bags in circulation, but also saves you a few pennies along the way.

5) Shop Local

Shopping at your local market and shops is such an easy and convenient way to benefit you, the environment and the local community/economy. Buying your weekly fruit, vegetables and meat from local shops and markets reduces food miles, eliminates plastic packaging that large supermarkets use, boosts the local economy by aiding local businesses and ultimately saves you money.

So, check out when you're local market is on, get down there with your bag for life and coffee on-the-go and grab yourself some locally produced fruit and veg!

These are just a few ways you can change your lifestyle to not only benefit you and your pocket, but also to help protect your surrounding environment. But don't feel these are the only ways you can help. Other steps include investing in a bamboo toothbrush and washable reusable cotton pads which can be used instead of cotton wool. The possibilities are endless!

Charities Fighting Plastic Pollution

Before I finish I just want to mention and acknowledge some of the amazing UK-based organisations and charities that are working to help protect our marine environments and tackle plastic pollution and waste:

Marine Conservation Society:

Leading UK marine conservation charity with an overall aim of creating a sustainable future for our seas and marine environments. They run loads of different types of events and campaigns across the UK, so take a look at their website to see how you can get involved and do your bit for our marine environments.

#2minutebeachclean:

A growing non-profit movement of beach lovers from across the UK, who aim to rid UK beaches of marine litter and plastic pollution, two minutes at a time. They are also the creator of the beach clean boards (photo above), so keep your eye out for one at your local beach! I've done several of my own 2 minute beach cleans and it’s amazing how much you can actually pick up in only 2 minutes!

Surfers against sewage:

A inspirational environmental charity with a number one priority of tackling plastic pollution on our UK coastlines. Take a look at their events to see if their are any in your local area!

Thank you again for reading good luck on your own little journey to a reduced plastic lifestyle!

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How is Ash Dieback Devastating our Landscapes?

By Ian Turner

Healthy mature ash tree.

What is the difference between the ash dieback and Dutch elm disease?

It’s one of the most common questions posed by those who remember the loss of English elm. Indeed anyone who knows the English landscape will be familiar with the young elms that grow up in our hedgerows. They appear to survive to early maturity only to be snatched away from us in a season. But they also seem to linger, both as skeletal remains for up to 5 years and longer, then regenerating young shoots to continue the perpetual cycle of life and death, never quite achieving maturity, but never dying completely.

This comes about because of the anatomy of the disease and how it is spread. The trees are infected when they reach a certain stage of maturity because they start becoming attractive to the bark beetle that carries the fungal spores of the Dutch elm disease causal agent Ophiostoma novo-ulmi. However, the English elm is very resilient and has many roots that can grow new shoots to form a new generation of stems. A tree of the hedge and field boundaries and extensively planted because of its regenerative suckering, survival strategy.

Dead ash tree.

Dead elm tree.

How is this different to ash?

The fundamental difference between ash and elm, English elm is a hedgerow tree whereas ash is a woodland tree that can also be found in hedgerows. Ash has traditionally been planted as a woodland and hedge tree. Although, I say “planted” advisedly, as gardeners know, ash normally arises of its own accord being a prolific self-seeder. It can be more cress like in its regeneration in woodlands with a patch of light.

The fungus that causes ash dieback disease Hymenocyphus fraxinea infects the leaves, fruiting on the leaves stalk or rachis. The fungi attacks the leaves that are the food producers of the tree, eliminating the production of sugars needed for growth and survival. The method of infection is the air, which in many confined valleys can become awash with spores. This spore load can cause even partially resistant trees to succumb. The infected leaves produce viridiol, a toxic chemical that spreads downwards in the tree’s branches killing the bark and buds. You will be able to see this as sunken areas (lesions) of bark on branches, which can be orange or dark grey.

Whereas the elm has many seasons growth before being infected, the ash saplings are killed at all ages, but particularly the youngest trees. The mature trees survive longer by virtue of the energy stored over many years but succumb once their resources are depleted.

The future

There are signs that we will not completely lose the ash tree. Individual trees in fields and hedges, may be isolated enough not to receive a large enough load of spores to weather the pandemic. Much like the elms of Brighton, which were shielded from the bark-boring beetle by the south downs, therefore were not infected by the Dutch elm disease and survived unaffected for decades. The most at risk trees are those in single species woodland with more tightly packed and large numbers of trees, this is especially true of our limestone uplands, where ash thrives.

This makes the effect of ash dieback more devastating, up to six times more destructive than Dutch elm disease in terms of the number of trees lost which was 30,000,000 elms. The affect will be as shocking as it sounds, and it has only just started in many areas with possibly over 2,000,000,000 ash trees infected.

My own area in the Mendip hills has only just started to come to terms with the cost of managing the risk, removal and recovery from the loss. The worst effects may be obvious in the wholesale removal of ash trees on our highways. This will unfortunately be necessary as the risk of ash tree structural failure, once infected by ash die back, rises significantly once the tree has lost half of its leaves.

The leftovers from ash tree removals.

What can we expect?

We must be ready for the shock of many more dead and dying trees in our landscape. More than ever we must be ready to have the difficult discussions and to remain open minded over the look and shape of our future landscapes. The costs of dealing with this problem across the nature reserves will be enormous at a time when we are already facing funding uncertainties.

Now is the time to support our nature conservation charities, to empower them to respond to this ecological crisis. In an already uncertain time this is putting additional financial pressure on these organisations. The Wildlife Trusts have continued their work during Covid-19 but can only do so with the public’s continued financial support through membership and donations. Further information is available here on the work being undertaken.

Atlantic Puffins

The Atlantic puffin Fratercula arctica, is one of the most easily recognisable birds with their dazzling, almost comical appearance. They are black along their back and wings, with a white chest and orange webbed feet. Their cheeks and face are also white, with a large triangular-shaped beak, bright orange and red in colouration. The distinct appearance of these pint-sized seabirds has earned them the nickname ‘sea parrots’ in northern Scotland. 

Breeding and Nesting Behaviour

Puffins reach breeding age at 5-6 years old, and live for 20 years. They prefer to create a nesting burrow in the soil of grassy cliff tops for their young, even utilising old rabbit burrows. If it isn’t possible to create a burrow, they will find cracks or cavities in cliffs or space under boulders to nest. 

In late April/early May, the puffins will return to their breeding colonies to lay a single egg that is incubated by both parents for 36-45 days. They will also share feeding duties during the fledgling period, which varies depending on location and the year, usually ranging from 34 to 60 days. 

Shortly before the chicks are ready to leave the nest, the adults will leave the breeding colony around mid-August. When the young birds leave the nest burrow, they make their journey to see under the cover of night to avoid predators. Sometimes they can get confused by bright lights in places like Iceland, and fly towards city streets. 

Threats 

They have an extensive range across the northern hemisphere, with around 90% of the global population found in Europe. 60% of that population form their breeding colonies in Iceland, and only 10% are found in the UK (estimated at around 450,000 individuals). 

Despite what appears to be a decent population size, there is a rapid and on-going decrease in the UK’s puffins, causing concerns over extinction within the next 100 years. 

Puffins have a small number of breeding sites and a very low reproductive rate, only laying one egg per year. If there is an event that has a negative impact on a colony (e.g. a large amount are hunted and killed by humans or animals), it will take a long time for the species to recover. 

By creating their nests in burrows, this does help to protect the chicks from aerial predators. However this doesn’t stop other mammals getting to them, such as foxes and weasels. They are also vulnerable to pollution, including oil spills. 

The inside of a puffin’s beak has adapted to include backward-facing spines, helping to keep the small fish from falling out. As useful as this adaptation is, it doesn’t deal with the problem of another seabird called the Arctic skua from stealing their food. 

The main fish in a puffins diet rely on plankton as their food. With increased sea temperatures, there’s a decrease in the plankton population and therefore a shortage in puffin food. This in turn forces puffins to travel further away in environments they are not used to in search of food, which is more dangerous for them. 

When & Where To See Them 

Puffins spend their winters out at sea, so they are best observed in the spring and summer when you can visit a breeding colony. Below is a list from Discover Wildlife of the 9 best places to find them:

1. Hermaness and Sumburgh Head, Shetland, Scotland.

2. Fowlesheugh RSPB, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

3. Isle of May and Craigleith Island, Fife, Scotland.

4. Farne Islands, Northumberland, England. 

5. Bempton Cliffs RSPB, Yorkshire, England. 

6. South Stack Cliffs RSPB, Anglesey, Wales. 

7. Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire, Wales. 

8. Rathlin Island, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. 

9. Westray and Papa Westray, Orkney, Scotland. 

We Need Your Help!

As a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Scottish Seabird Centre is facing financial difficulties. They need to raise £200,000 by the end of July or they will have to close their doors forever. Here at Creature Candy, we wanted to do all we can to save such a wonderful organisation. Therefore, we have created limited edition puffin prints to raise awareness and funds for the SSC. Prints cost £15, with £5 from each sale donated to the SSC.

The SSC is an education and conservation charity that endeavours to inspire people to learn and care for the natural marine environment. For the past 20 years they have supported marine conservation projects and have put all their efforts into helping species that are struggling, such as puffins. 

With the visitor centre closed throughout the lockdown, the charities future is now under threat. By donating to our Crowdfunder, you’ll be helping the centre to stay open and support the community for more years to come. After those 20 years of hard work, it will be a shame for it to disappear. 

Help us hit our target of £10,000 by visiting and donating to our Crowdfunder: 

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/puffin-prints-to-help-save-scottish-seabird-centre

Where Have All The Wildflowers Gone?

By Della Lewandowski

Wildflower meadows are recognised as being havens for wildlife and biodiversity. They’re often home to over 150 different species of flowers and grasses, that in turn support a countless amount of other species. But finding flower-rich meadows and grasslands is not as easy as it used to be.

Since the 1930’s 97% of wildflower meadows have been lost, a shocking loss of 7.5 million hectares! These grasslands now cover only 1% of the UK’s land area, predominantly in scattered fragments that are at risk of being destroyed. This means that the once abundant wildflowers are now threatened, and their decline is having a knock-on effect on the species that depend on them. 

Destruction of the Meadows

Wildflower meadows were created as part of traditional farming practices. Each farm would have an area to grow some crops and a permanent pasture for grazing animals, as well as a meadow to produce hay as feed over the winter months. This created an annual management cycle that kept everything in order. Big changes came to this method during World War II, when 6 million acres of grassland was ploughed in order to grow more cereals. This was the start of the decline.

Numerous Knock-On Effects

The most obvious effect of meadow destruction is causing certain species of wildflowers to become threatened. Snake’s-head fritillaries were once abundant along rivers and in wet meadows, but have now become a rare sight and are classified as ‘Vulnerable’ on the Vascular Plant Red Data List for Great Britain.

However the effects reach much further than a decline in the number of plants. As the wildflowers disappear so do the insects that rely on them for survival, as well as animals that feed on insects such as bats, hedgehogs and birds. In the UK there are over 250 bee species that all play a vital role in pollinating our crops. Wildflower meadows are ideal habitats for bees, and since their decline bees have begun to evolve to only eat a limited number of pollens. These restrictions cause a rise in food competition, which in turn causes a decline in bee populations.

What Can Be Done?

Charities such as Plantlife have developed projects aimed at improving the current situation for wildflower meadows and grasslands. National Meadows Day is now celebrated on 4th July, with events and workshops being held all over the country to help educate people about the importance of them. 

Plantlife are using their expertise and donations to properly restore meadows so that they can thrive and support a wide range of other species. They want to naturally regenerate these habitats using the plants from that local area instead of commercial wildflower mixes, as this will help safeguard the distinctiveness of the local flora.

We are helping to support the fantastic work done by Plantlife by donating 10% of the sale price of our wildflower products to them. This includes our botanical prints and coasters.

FREE KIDS WILDLIFE QUIZ!

Stuck for something to do with the little ones? Have a go at this wildlife quiz. This can be used as a quick educational activity, or as part of a competition! Once completed, share your pictures of your scores with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (#creaturecandy). Have fun!

Download your FREE wildlife quiz by clicking on the image below:

10 Craft Activities To Do At Home With The Kids

As many of us prepare to be housebound for a while with the kids getting under our feet, thoughts (or panic) turn to “how are we going to entertain the kids?”. I am likely to be in exactly the same boat as I’m expecting my three year old son to be sent home from nursery any day now.

So to help you out (and me also), I’ve pulled together some really fun craft activities to do with your kids at home. Plus, if you take part and tag us in your photos on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, you could win £25 worth of Creature Candy goodies! One lucky winner will be chosen on Friday 17th April 2020. Please use the hashtag #creaturecandy

I will also be publishing a blog later on wildlife activities to do outside with your kids, and also wildlife quizzes and a poetry competition! But for now, here are a few ideas to keep the little ones entertained:

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Make A Hedgehog Mask

What you need:

A hedgehog mask template– print and cut out, including the eyes (get template here) Use card or thick paper.

An old bag to collect leaves etc.

Scissors

Sellotape

An ice lolly stick

PVA glue and glue spreader

Some old newspaper

What to do:

Go outside and collect lots of natural materials to decorate your hedgehog mask, in your collecting bag. These could be leaves, twigs, grass, little stones etc. – so nothing man-made. Do not pick mushrooms or berries as these may be poisonous! And be carefully of spiky plants and nettles!

Back indoors, carefully cut out your hedgehog mask and tape an old lolly stick to the bottom end of the mask to be the handle.

On some old newspaper empty your bag of natural materials and sort out what you will use to decorate the mask, then get gluing! Cover your whole mask with materials and once satisfied leave to dry.

Now wash your hands! Once the glue is dry you will be ready to become a hedgehog!

For more information visit the People’s Trust For Endangered Species.

Don’ forget to tag us in your photos on social media - @creaturecandy9

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Make A Pine Cone Bird Feeder

Image: RSPB

What you need:

Pine or fir cones (dried out so they don't open)

Bird seed

Raisins

Peanuts

Grated cheese

Suet or lard

A mixing bowl

Scissors

String

What to do:

Make your bird mix. Allow the lard to warm up to room temperature, but don't melt it. Then cut it up into small pieces and put it in the mixing bowl.

Add the other ingredients to the bowl. Mix them together with your fingertips until the fat holds the squidgy mess together.

Now group your cones together and loop the string around the top of them. Then pack the sticky bird mix around the cones with your hands, creating a ball shape.

Put your cones in the fridge to set for an hour or so. After that, they'll be ready to hang up and are bound to bring the birds flocking.

TIP - make sure you hang the feeders near to some vegetation so birds have somewhere to quickly hide away.

For more information visit the RSPB website.

Don’t forget to tag us in your photos on social media - @creaturecandy9

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Paper Roll Animals

What you need:

Scissors

Paint

Googly eyes

Glue

Paper

Pipe cleaners (for the monkey)

What to do:

For the elephant, cut out a small piece of the roll to create a gap between the elephants legs.

Use extra card or paper to cut out some ears and a trunk, allowing an extra tab to be folded over and stuck to the tube.

Paint the tube, ears and trunk grey and leave to dry.

Once dry, stick the ears and the truck onto the tube.

Stick on two googly eyes.

To finish, paint on some toes with white paint.

Leave to dry.

For other designs visit Frugal Fun For Boys & Girls website.

Don’t forget to tag us in your photos on social media - @creaturecandy9

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Bat Finger Puppet

Image: Bat Conservation Trust

What you need:

Finger puppet template

Scissors

Pencil

Tape

Colouring pencils

Natural materials such as leaves and dried grass

Glue

What to do:

Download and print the finger puppet template

Cut out the bat, or use this as a template to drawn and cut one out of thick card.

Either colour in the bat or cover using natural material found in the garden, such as leaves using glue.

Leave to dry.

Affix a strip of paper about 6cm long onto the underside of your bat, leaving a loop big enough to slip one or two fingers through.

Make creases in the wings for the bat’s fingers, and bend its head and ears up slightly too.

For more information, visit the Bat Conservation Trust website.

Don’t forget to tag us in your photos on social media - @creaturecandy9

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Clay Leaf Prints & Pendants

Image: artfulparent.com

What you need:

Small leaves and ferns

Air dry clay

Wax paper, parchment paper, or a plastic placemat/tray

Drinking straws

String or elastic thread

Watercolor paint (optional)

Beads (optional)

What to do:

Lay a small leaf on the wax paper, vein side up.

Pinch off a small piece of air dry clay (maybe a tablespoon or two) and roll into a ball between your hands.

Set the clay ball on the leaf, then press down with the palm of your hand to flatten it.

Carefully lift the clay disk, turn it over, and peel away the leaf.

(Optional) If you’d like to hang your leaf print, poke a hole at the top of your disk with a drinking straw.

Repeat process with additional leaves and clay balls.

Let dry thoroughly. This may take two to three days.

If desired, paint the clay leaf print with watercolors. You can also decorate them with coloured pencils.

Thread string through the hole and tie to form a loop for ornaments or a pendant. Add beads if desired. You can also string several clay disks together into a garland.

For more information visit The Artful Parent website.

Don’t forget to tag us in your photos on social media - @creaturecandy9

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Make A Journey Stick

Image: growingfamily.co.uk

What is a journey stick?

A journey stick (also known as a story stick or nature stick) is essentially a memento of a nature walk, featuring items collected whilst on the walk. These might be things like leaves, twigs, flowers, feathers or anything else natural that you find along the way.

What you need:

Either a piece of cardboard with double sided tape attached to secure the items to the card,

or….

A large stick, attaching items to it using string or wool.

What to do:

Go for a walk somewhere (this could be out in your garden) and look for little pieces of nature to add to your stick. Here are some ideas of what to look for:

Feathers

Pine cone

Grass

Flowers

Shells

Leaves

Twigs

Stones

Buds

For more information, take a look at the Growing Family website.

Don’t forget to tag us in your photos on social media - @creaturecandy9

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Mallard Duck Handprint

Image: craftymorning.com

What you need:

Brown paint

Paintbrush

Green/yellow feathers

Glue

Scissors

A googly eye

Green/yellow paper or card

What to do:

Start by painting your child’s hand with brown washable paint and pressing it onto a white sheet of paper.

Cut out a green duck head and beak. Glue them together and add a googly eye.

Glue on two feathers for the wings.

Add some duck legs to finish off.

IDEA - why not try creating other birds such as blackbirds and robins?

For more information visit the Crafty Morning website.

Don’t forget to tag us in your photos on social media - @creaturecandy9

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Egg Carton Bunnies

Image: thebestideasforkids.com

What you need:

Egg Carton

Acrylic Paint – pink, yellow and baby blue

Scissors

Googly Eyes

Pink Pom Poms

White Foam or Card

Masking Tape

Glue

Black Marker

Mini eggs

What to do:

Begin by cutting 2 egg compartments and trimming off any excess to create a flat top to the cartons.

Place the trimmed egg cartons on top of each other with the flat tops touching. Take a piece of masking tape and put a small piece on the back of the cartons.

Then open up the egg carton and place another piece of masking tape on the inside.

Paint the egg cartons a spring colour.

Cut 2 bunny ear shapes out of the foam / card.

Once the paint has dried, add the eyes and pink pom pom for the nose with glue. Glue on the ears as well.

Take a thick black marker and add whiskers and eyelashes if desired.

Now fill with mini eggs and enjoy!

IDEA - These would be great to use for your Easter Egg hunt or as decoration on a table for your Easter dinner!

For more information visit The Best Ideas for Kids website.

Don’t forget to tag us in your photos on social media - @creaturecandy9

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Bee & Ladybird Plantpots

Image: thecountrychiccottage.net

What you need:

Clay pots

Clay saucers

Acrylic paint in yellow, red, white and black

Round sponge brushes

Paintbrushes

What to do:

Paint one pot and one saucer yellow, and paint the other pot and saucer red.

Allow to dry.

For the red ladybird pot, use a white round sponge brush to add the white portion of the eyes. Then use a paintbrush to start adding the black accent down the middle as well as all the way around the bottom. Be sure to paint all the way around the bottom with the black line to give your pot a finished appearance. Then use a smaller round sponge brush to add the dots on the ladybug. Again be sure to go all the way around the pot. Once the white portion of the eyes is dry, you can add the black portion with a small round sponge brush. Then allow your entire clay pot to dry before using.

For the yellow bee pot, start with the white portion of the eye. This time use a paintbrush to paint on stripes around the body of the pot. The first line should be right under the lip of the pot. The second should be around the bottom. Then go back and split the difference between the two with a third line. Make the lines the width of your paintbrush. Finally, once the white of the eyes is dry, add a second black dot with a smaller sponge brush.

IDEA - why not try painting other animals such as tigers and pandas?

For more information visit The Country Chic Cottage website.

Don’t forget to tag us in your photos on social media - @creaturecandy9

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Mini Bug Hotels

What you need:

Large plastic bottle or other waterproof container

Scissors

Natural materials to go inside

String

What you do:

Firstly, go outside and collect lots of different natural materials to fill your bug house. Some examples include: Leaves, Pinecones, Bark & Twigs, Stones, Flowers, Moss, Wood Chips, Nut Shells, Bamboo, Sticks, Grass, Shells, Twine.

Cut one side off your plastic bottle, allowing a lip at the bottom and at the top to stop materials sliding out.

Start to build up your Bug Hotel with all the items you have collected. Be inventive! Use the photo above for ideas.

Take the lid off the bottle and made a small hole in the top large enough to thread your string through to make a loop. Place the lid back on the bottle.

Hang your bug hotel somewhere outside where it will be sheltered and near to vegetation.

Remember to go and check up on it after a few weeks and see who has moved in.

For more information visit the Super Simple website.

Don’t forget to tag us in your photos on social media - @creaturecandy9

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Rock Pets

Image: loveyourlittles.com

What you need:

Rocks

Paint

Paintbrushes

Googly Eyes

Glue

Clear, Protectant Spray (optional)

What to do:

Google images of the animals that you want to paint to get an idea of how to paint it. Keep it simple!

TIP - Paint the rocks white first. This will make it so the colour is more vibrant with less coats of paint.

If you make a mistake, you can typically use a wipe, and wipe it off quickly without much mess or destruction.

Once your design is finished leave to dry.

Spray a layer of protectant spray and leave to dry again (optional).

Add the googly eyes last with glue.

IDEA - why not paint several different animals, hide them in the garden and have an animal hunt with your kids?

For more information visit the Love Your Littles website.

Don’t forget to tag us in your photos on social media - @creaturecandy9

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Share Your Photos On Social Media To Win!

We’d love to see your creations so social media, so please do post some photos and copy us in, and we will repost them for you. We will also choose one lucky artist to win £25 worth of Creature Candy goodies! You can choose your favourite designs and products.

Instagram - @creaturecandy9

Facebook - @creaturecandy

Twitter - @creaturecandy9

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About Creature Candy

Creature Candy is a small business, with the primary aims of raising awareness of Britain’s declining wildlife and raising funds for British wildlife charities. We currently support 12 different charities including Bat Conservation Trust, British Trust for Ornithology and People’s Trust for Endangered Species.

Educating children about wildlife issues and encouraging play outside is incredibly important to us. If you have any feedback or suggestions on how we can do this, we’d love to hear your views.

Please email Lizzie - lovenature@creaturecandy.co.uk

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Thank You & Take Care

And finally…….

We wish you all good heath, love and happiness in these crazy times.

xxx