For those of us living where there are four distinct seasons, summer is the period of long, warmer days where the skies, fields, lakes and mountains are alive with the busy activities of plants and animals at the peak of their growing year. Most of the animals that have hatched or been born earlier this year will be beginning to fend for themselves, while many plant species will be coming to the end of their flowering period and preparing to produce seed in an effort to ensure their survival and proliferation.
The combination of warmer weather and longer daylight hours makes this the perfect time to get out and about and experience the beauty and complexity of the natural world.
This is the second in our seasonal phenology series where you can explore a carefully chosen collection of ID blogs, books, equipment and events, all designed to help you make the most of a summer outside. Check out our spring blog and don’t forget to look out for our autumn blog in September.
Identification guides:
What you might see:
• Hedgerows and verges are still home to lots of flowering plants, although the frothy drifts of cow parsley are now coming to an end. Honeysuckle can be seen blooming from June, providing a night-time food source for moths such as the Elephant Hawkmoth (Deilephila elpenor).
• Bee orchids (Ophrys apifera) will flower briefly in June and July on dry, chalk and limestone grasslands, while sea cliffs will be adorned with the delicate blush of sea thrift (Armeria maritima) from April to October.
• Auks, such as Razorbills (Alca torda), Guillemot (Uria aalge), Puffins (Fratercula arctica) and Fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis), come to their cliff nests in spring to lay their eggs. They can still be seen (and heard!) throughout the summer as they make frequent trips out to sea to catch food for their young. Further inland, summer visitors such as Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus), Wood Warblers (Phylloscopus sibilatrix) and Pied Flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca) are wonderful to catch a glimpse of.
• June to August is an important time for ladybirds. During this period, mated females will lay their eggs which then hatch into larvae and form pupae through a series of four stages, or ‘instars’. Adult ladybirds emerge from the pupae in August.
• Wasps, bumblebees, honeybees and butterflies are all active in the summer and will feed as much as possible while the weather is fine. Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) and Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) butterflies can both be frequently seen around nettles where they like to lay their eggs.
• Frogs and toads spend their days keeping cool in damp and shady areas and are often found in overgrown areas of the garden during the summer. This year’s froglets and toadlets will remain in the water until late summer.
• The summer months are a great time to spot bats hunting for insects during the dusk and dawn hours. Female bats give birth to their young in June and within three weeks these juveniles will be learning to fly themselves. By August the youngsters will no longer need their mother’s milk and will be hunting for their own food.
Field Guide to the Moths of Great Britain and Ireland
This beautifully illustrated and comprehensive field guide shows moths in their natural resting postures. It also includes paintings of different forms, underwings and other details to help with identification.
Britain’s Reptiles and Amphibians: A Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of Great Britain, Ireland and the Channel Islands
This detailed guide to the reptiles and amphibians of Britain, Ireland and the Channel Isles is designed to help anyone identify a lizard, snake, turtle, tortoise, terrapin, frog, toad or newt with confidence.
The Wild Flower Key: How to Identify Wild Flowers, Trees and Shrubs in Britain and Ireland
This essential wild flower guide is packed with identification tips and high-quality illustrations, as well as innovative features designed to assist beginners. The text aims to be as useful as possible for those working in conservation and includes a compilation of the latest research on ancient woodland indicator plants.
NHBS Moth Trap
A lightweight and highly portable trap, tested and approved by Butterfly Conservation. This mains-powered trap runs a single 20W blacklight bulb (included) and comes supplied with a 4.5m power lead with UK plug.
Kite Ursus Binoculars
These affordable binoculars have been designed for everyday use and have a robust housing, great field of view and produce a bright, colour-balanced image.
Magenta Bat 5 Bat Detector
A handheld super-heterodyne bat detector with an illuminated easy-to-read LCD frequency display. This fantastic entry-level detector converts ultrasonic bat calls into a sound that is audible to humans, allowing you to listen to and identify the bats flying around you.
Abundance: Nature in Recovery is a collection of essays by award-winning author, Karen Lloyd. Examining abundance and losses in the natural world, Lloyd laments the lack of sight humanity has for the holes we have created. Looking first at artists such as Mary Newcomb, Carry Akroyd, and Daniel Beltrá, the book begins with the struggles of those trying to draw attention to the damaging impacts of human encroachment on the natural world. While many are beginning to understand the harm we are causing, the momentum of our modern society hasn’t allowed us to stop. By recounting a moment when a willow warbler flies into her house, Lloyd compares the fight of individual people against the systems we operate under with the panicked movements of the bird battering against the glass. We, like the bird, have no perception of how to remove ourselves from ‘the world of window frames and glass’ that we inhabit.
Abundance aims to give a voice to the species and habitats that are often disregarded in the political sphere. Travelling to places such as the Veluwe Forest in Switzerland, the Strathspey woodland in Scotland and the Hungarian Steppe, Lloyd tells the stories of people on the front line of conservation fighting to halt biodiversity loss. The volume of negative environmental news can often be overwhelming, and the author shares her own experience of this feeling in the opening essay. This book is a welcome break, reminding us that conservation success is possible and is taking place right now across Europe.
Through the exploration of local attitudes to conservation efforts, Lloyd touches on current themes such as rewilding and the return of wolves to the UK. Shifting baselines, where the current generation believes what they are seeing in nature around them is the norm and are unaware of the decline over previous generations, are impacting people’s perspective on the return of previously extinct species. Despite some extinctions being relatively recent, such as the beaver, the general public is unused to living with them. Therefore, they fear the impact these species may have on their daily lives. Worries of damage to livelihood and homes have been exacerbated by misconceptions and scapegoating. Lloyd recounts the concerns people have for the threatened wild salmon should beavers be allowed to remain, despite beavers being obligate herbivores, as well as the attempt to blame beavers for a flash flooding event in Alyth, Scotland. But if we are to allow the natural world to recover from the damage we have inflicted upon it, Lloyd believes that nature needs to be placed centre-stage in everything we do.
Wild salmon by Bureau of Land Management via Flickr
Abundance is an engaging and accessible book, presenting personal accounts of seeing firsthand the impacts of anthropomorphic destruction, riveting natural history stories and shocking data. From the conflict between the need for clean energy sources and the impacts of wind farms on birds to the impact of flood protection on beavers and kingfishers, Lloyd discusses our struggle to find effective solutions to tackle our biodiversity crisis. The engaging and entertaining nature of this book only increases as you read. Comparable to a travel book, each essay is a new adventure in wildlife-rich places. From eighty fragments on the pelican to tales from viewing platforms in the Lake District and the adventure of the 2020 lockdowns, the variety will hold your attention until the very end.
This guide includes an introduction covering how to attract insects to your garden, advice on photographing insects, a description of insect anatomy, the characteristics of the insect orders included in the guide, and the insect lover’s year, describing the best places to look for different species throughout the different months and seasons of the year.
From there, each species is presented, grouped by order, with keenly observed descriptions to help you identify even the smallest creature, as well as one or two photographs labelled with distinguishing features. In each of these sections, there are details of its life cycle from egg to adult, a calendar showing the time of year when the adult can be seen, and star facts that give further proof of insects’ fascinating lives.
Using the guide
Throughout March, April and May, we tested the identification guide by exploring a garden for a few hours during the day and during the night. The garden is small, with a patch of lawn, bare dirt, a hedgerow of mainly ivy (Hedera helix) and holly (Ilex aquifolium), stone gravel, Japanese camellia (Camellia japonica) and rhododendron (Rhododendron sp.) bushes, a field maple tree (Acer campestre), clumps of daffodils (Narcissus pseudonarcissus) and three-cornered garlic (Allium triquetrum), as well as various other flowering and non-flowering plants. This garden also contains a small insect house which was placed in September of last year. Weedkiller was used once in September but no other chemicals have been used since, nor has the lawn been mowed. Therefore, the garden should be able to support a number of insect species. We attempted to search by eye and by using a tapping tray and stick. Compared to just searching by eye, we found that we had little success with tapping as the vast majority of what we found were spiders and we were unable to identify the few insect species we found using this guide.
What we found
Marmalade hoverfly by H. Ketley
Following the guide, we were able to ID this species as a marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus), a small, delicate hoverfly with a unique pattern of twin dark bands separated by lighter bands. As this individual doesn’t have ‘holoptic’ eyes – eyes that meet at the top of the head – we believe this is a female.
Speckled wood by H. Ketley
This guide has a large section on butterflies and moths, covering a number of common species you’ll likely see in your garden and local green spaces. This species is a speckled wood (Parage aegeria), identifiable through its dark colouration and the spots on its hindwing, which have a yellow outer ring, a black inner ring and a white central spot. According to the guide, it is a distinctive species, and there are no similar species listed. However, for those unfamiliar with these species, their underwing pattern could potentially be confused with other butterflies such as walls (Lasiommata megera) or graylings (Hipparchia semele).
Dock bug by H. Ketley
This is a dock bug (Coreus marginatus), a small insect from the family Coreidae. According to the guide, they’re common and widespread in Europe, but in Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia, they’re restricted to the southern parts. They’re identifiable through their shape (upturned, pointed pronotum and broad abdomen with a noticeable scutellum), their red-orange antennae with a black final segment, and their pale-brown colouration. There is variation in the wing membrane colour between individuals, and an important diagnostic feature that can distinguish it from other similar species is the forward-pointing spines between its antenna. This feature can be most easily identified using a hand lens, handheld magnifier or magnifying pot.
Green shieldbug by H. Ketley
This similar-looking species is a (common) green shieldbug (Palomena prasina). Despite its name, this species can range from bright green to bronze, particularly becoming darker prior to winter hibernation. Its brown wing membranes set it apart from similar, non-native species, such as the southern green shieldbug (Nezara viridula), as noted in the guide. If you are able to look closely at one, you’ll be able to see it is covered in tiny black dots, with red eyes, feet and antennae (primarily the last two segments). It can also have a red edge all the way around its thorax and abdomen.
Common malachite beetle by H. Ketley
We also managed to spot this colourful species, which we were able to ID using the guide as a common malachite beetle (Malachius bipustulatus). The red ‘shoulders’ and red spots on the end of the abdomen, helpfully annotated in the guide’s photo, made this species easy to identify.
Using this guide, we were also able to identify a scorpionfly, bluebottle, greenbottle, dark-edged bee-fly, thick-legged flower beetle, two-spot ladybird and a buff-tailed bumblebee.
Our opinion
As noted in the introduction to this guide, there are around 24,000 insect species in Britain, and almost three times that in mainland Europe. And so there will always be species you find in your garden that are not in this field guide, which covers only 150 species. The breadth of the species covered within the guide perhaps could’ve been expanded, but as it does cover many of the most common species, you are still likely to see a number of these species within your garden and local green spaces. In addition, the paired-down number of species can be useful, as it can be quicker and easier for readers to accurately identify species they’ve found. Therefore, this is still an incredibly useful guide, particularly for naturalists, beginners and those who want a more concise and affordable insect field guide.
Birds, Beasts and Bedlam: Turning My Farm into an Ark for Lost Species is an eclectic mix of stories from Derek Gow’s past and from the varied people he’s met and worked with. Opening with an account of his expedition to see bison in Poland, Gow laments the loss of ‘great beasts’ from Britain. We’ve lost much of our megafauna, including steppe bison; aurochs; brown, polar and cave bears; Eurasian and Irish elk; lynx; and wolves. Some of these losses, along with the current rate of habitat destruction, have drastically changed how our ecosystems function.
Derek Gow is a reintroduction expert, farmer and author, best known for his work with beavers, white storks, water voles and wildcats. His first natural history book, Bringing Back the Beaver, was a highly acclaimed success, detailing his firsthand account of the reestablishment of beavers in waterways across England and Scotland. Following Gow’s rewilding and farming adventures, from his first attempt at keeping livestock as a child to his time working at zoos and captive breeding programmes, Gow’s new memoir describes his battles with creating a viable farm and how he is repairing the damage this caused to the land and wildlife.
In 2006, Gow bought a farm next to his property in South Devon. In chapter three ‘Not a Lark or a Lizard Lived There’, Gow details the quiet decline of wildlife on his farm and his slow realisation of the damage he caused by following conventional farming practices. He tells of his final straw moment, when a small mammal trapping course run on his land only turned up two woodmice. The lack of voles indicated a much wider absence of wildlife within the farm, such as the loss of barn owls and kestrels.
Male kestrel offering a vole to a female. Image by Francesco Veronesi via Flickr
After realising the damage that was occurring, Gow started to deconstruct his farm, selling off his livestock and began to try to rejuvenate the land. Through excavations, fencing and accidental escapees, a complex series of watercourses and wetlands were created. Birds, otters, amphibians and insects started to return. But this wasn’t enough. Gow introduced Heck cattle, Iron Age pigs (a hybrid of wild boar and Tamworths), mouflon sheep, Exmoor ponies and even water buffalo to replicate the ecosystem roles of Britain’s lost megafauna. These helped shape not only the species composition and trophic structure of the ecosystem, but also the physical structure of the habitats, conserving and promoting biodiversity. Gow describes how the cattle gouged banks and dug pits in pastures, how pigs created wallows that supported tadpoles and dragonfly larvae, and how the presence of grazing ponies has resulted in an irregular, wilder edge where pastures and woods meet.
Throughout the later chapters, Gow shares the conservation history and reintroduction attempts of two ailing UK species, the water vole (Arvicola amphibius)and the pool frog (Pelophylax lessonae). Water vole populations have significantly declined in recent decades due to predation by the invasive American mink (Neovison vision), habitat degradation, historical persecution and pollution. The reduction in waterways and habitat corridors, the removal of bankside vegetation and the urbanisation of floodplains are among the many ways water vole habitats are being destroyed. Gow recounts the process of creating a successful captive breeding program for water voles, sharing the many mistakes that were made before they found the right cage design. Thousands of water voles have been bred for release projects, helping to boost declining populations.
Human encroachment into watercourses is also thought to have been one of the causes of the extinction of pool frogs in the UK. Reintroductions from populations in Sweden have been underway since 2005. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gow links both the reintroduction of this species and the efforts for water voles to the reintroduction of beavers. As anyone who has read Bringing Back the Beaverwill know, beavers are ecosystem engineers and shape the habitats they live in. Their actions provide a far more sustainable and natural practice for creating more suitable habitats to facilitate rewilding and the reintroduction of other species.
Beaver pond in Yellowstone National Park. Image by NPS / Neal Herbert via Flickr
Birds, Beasts and Bedlum is a fun, engaging memoir, filled with excentric tales and artful insights into the world of farming, conservation and rewilding. Ending on a lament at the often slow, overcomplicated process of reintroductions and rewilding, this book highlights the need for a better-developed system and large-scale reshaping of the landscape, with a final call for the return of the wolf.
We have recently received the sad news of the passing of Robert Gillmor, a leading ornithologist and author, and one of Britain’s most popular and loved wildlife artists.
Born in 1936, Gillmor’s illustrations were first published in the monthly magazine British Birds when he was just 16. Since then, he illustrated more than 100 books, as well as producing several of his own collections, including Cutting Away in 2006, Birds, Blocks And Stamps in 2011, and Pressing On: A Decade of New Linocuts in 2018. Notably, he was the artist behind the original Avocet drawings used for the RSPB logo and the Sacred Ibis in the British Ornithologists Union (BOU) logo. His artwork has also appeared in journals, calendars, greetings cards and posters. In 2015, Gillmor received an MBE for his services to wildlife art.
Gillmor also designed over seventy of the covers for the New Naturalist series, bringing to life a variety of titles including Farming and Birds; Beetles;Garden Birds; British Warblers, his first cover; and his 72nd, Ecology and Natural History. In 2011, Royal Mail commissioned Gillmor to illustrate a set of Post & Go Birds of Britain stamps. He created 46 designs over three years and the profits from the sale of the original linocuts were donated to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust.
Robert Gillmor was one of the founding members of the Society of Wildlife Artists, an organisation founded in 1964 seeking to encourage appreciation of the natural world through fine art inspired by wildlife. SWLA strives to promote awareness of the importance of conservation through exhibitions and publications, while also supporting young artists that are eager to develop their knowledge and skills in wildlife art.
Gillmor was a keen ornithologist, serving on the council of three national organisations: RSPB, BOU and the British Trust for Ornithology. Due to his contributions to ornithology and bird conservation, he received the highest awards from all three societies. He also had a leading role in the promotion of the British Birdwatching Fair (Birdfair), an annual event whose organisers donated all of their profits to Birdlife International, and designed many of the event’s iconic posters.
Sharks are some of the most fascinating, most ecologically important, most threatened, and most misunderstood animals on Earth. In Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator, marine conservation biologist Dr David Shiffman explains why it’s crucial that we overcome our misconceptions and rise above cinematic jump scares to embrace sharks as the critically important species that they are.
Exploring the core tenets of shark conservation science and policy, Shiffman synthesises decades of scientific research and policymaking, weaving it into a narrative full of humour and adventure. Approachable and informative, Why Sharks Matter is perfect for shark enthusiasts, explaining why sharks are in trouble, why we should care and how we can save them.
Dr David Shiffman recently discussed his new book with us, explaining how he became fascinated with sharks, what is being done to change public opinion and why social science research is so important to shark conservation.
Courtesy of Dr. David Shiffman
Firstly, could you tell us how you became fascinated with sharks and the inspiration behind this book?
I’ve loved sharks for as long as my family can remember, there are pictures of me when I was barely old enough to walk with shark t-shirts and shark toys. I think most kids go through a shark thing or a dinosaur thing, and I never grew out of mine. When I give public talks, inevitably someone will come up to me afterwards and say “I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was a kid”- and I always reply “Me too!”.
In my experience speaking to the public, I’ve realized that lots of people want to help sharks, but don’t necessarily know the most effective ways to do that. And while there are lots of shark books out there, there was nothing that comprehensively lays out the case for having healthy shark populations off our coasts, systematically reviews the different threats to shark species, and thoroughly reviews the different ways that scientists, environmentalists, and the public can help sharks. In short, I wrote the book that I always wished existed, because I know there’s a need for it.
Courtesy of Dr. David Shiffman
The book does an impressive job of debunking the public image of sharks as dangerous and violent predators. Outside of your own work, what is, if anything, being done to change public opinion about sharks?
As a marine conservation biologist who studies sharks and how to protect them, I know that we need the public to not only no longer fear sharks, but to value the role they play in the ecosystem and to want them around. And I also know that it matters what people do to help, and that there are lots of things that people do while trying to help that are not really helping. I use this book as a chance to bust some myths not only about sharks as mindless killing machines, but also myths about threats to sharks and solutions to these conservation challenges. The subtitle doesn’t call them “the world’s most misunderstood predator” for nothing! In the book, I introduce readers to some of my favourite environmental non-profits who are working to educate the public and persuade policymakers that we need new and stronger laws. If you’re looking for good groups to support, I am happy to recommend them to you.
What do you think is the biggest threat to sharks and what can the average person do to help?
The science is clear on this point: the biggest threat to sharks is unsustainable overfishing, including but not limited to the shark fin trade (which many well-intentioned shark-o-philes wrongly believe is that only threat to sharks). The single most effective thing that an individual consumer can do to help not only sharks but the whole ocean is to not eat unsustainable seafood. Notice that I did not say “give up all seafood and become vegan,” because while that’s a perfectly valid personal choice, the people claiming that we all need to do this or the oceans are doomed are not telling the truth. If you, like me, love seafood, just choose to buy sustainable seafood.
A steady supply of seawater is pumped through the shark’s mouth to help sustain it while measurements and samples are taken before it is released. Courtesy of Dr. David Shiffman
You share a range of scientific tools used to monitor sharks, from eDNA to telemetry tracking, but you also highlight the importance of social science research. Why do you think this approach is important to shark conservation?
A major goal of the conservation movement is passing new laws or regulations to protect endangered species, but notably these laws do not limit what the animals can do, they only control humans. Therefore, we need to understand what humans want, what humans do, and what humans know–and these are questions that the social sciences are designed to answer.
Courtesy of Dr. David Shiffman
What is your vision for the future of shark conservation? Are you hopeful or pessimistic?
I am cautiously optimistic about the future of the ocean. More people care and want to help than ever before, and if we can channel that energy into something productive, we can move mountains!
And lastly, do you have any current projects or plans for the future that you would like to tell us about?
I’m always on the move, always up to some new project. If anyone would like to follow my adventures, or to ask me anything you want to know about sharks, I invite you to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @WhySharksMatter.
Practical and portable, this is the ultimate field guide to the world’s cetaceans. This is the most comprehensive, authoritative and up-to-date guide to whales, dolphins and porpoises. Containing more than 500 accurate illustrations – complete with detailed annotations pointing out the most significant field marks – this new field guide covers all 93 species and every subspecies in the world.
The informative text, produced in collaboration with many of the world’s most respected whale biologists, is accompanied by distribution maps, size demonstrations, dive sequences and additional information such as comparisons of silhouettes and illustrations of barnacles, lice and callosities.
Cetacean expert Mark Carwardine kindly took the time to discuss this new field guide with us, discussing how the outlook for cetaceans has changed since he first began to study them, why he chose to use illustrations over photographs and what he is working on now.
What inspired you to write this new field guide and how does it differ from your previous handbook?
The Handbook of Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises was the culmination of a life’s work, really, and took six years to research and write. It was designed as a comprehensive reference book to be used at home or in the office – and, consequently, weighs almost as much as a small porpoise. The pocket-sized Field Guide to Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises is an abbreviated (and fully updated) version, focusing more on identification, and it has been designed specifically to take into the field. Since our knowledge of cetaceans has improved so much, with new behaviour and many new species described in recent years, previous field guides (my own included) are drastically out of date. I think a new guide was desperately needed.
Your book includes a number of threatened species, including the functionally extinct Yangtze river dolphin and the vaquita, many of which we may lose entirely over the next decade. How has the outlook for whales, dolphins and porpoises changed since you first started to study cetaceans?
There’s no doubt that for many cetacean species, if not most, the outlook is worse than it was when I started working in this field. Some – the humpback whale is a good example – are doing surprisingly well, against all odds. But many others are not. The vaquita, we believe, is down to the last 10 individuals and is almost certainly the next (after the Yangtze river dolphin) doomed to extinction. Sadly, though, it’s not alone. The North Atlantic right whale comes to mind – there are fewer than 350 survivors and, with numbers continuing to decline, we fear for its future. Countless others are on the verge of extinction or have all but disappeared from many of their former haunts. Sometimes, I am surprised that any survive at all, given the shocking number of threats they face, such as commercial whaling and other forms of hunting, myriad conflicts with fisheries, pollution, habitat degradation and disturbance, underwater noise, entanglement in or ingestion of marine debris, ship strikes and climate change.
This field guide is full of beautiful and detailed illustrations. Why did you choose to include these rather than photographs?
I prefer the use of illustrations in field guides, because I think they demonstrate the key identification features more effectively. Also, there is a huge amount of variation within each species of cetacean – geographical variations, races and sub-species etc – and good photographs do not exist of many of the most critical ones!
Relatively little is known about the population estimates or trends of many of the species listed in this book. Why do you think this is the case, and is there ongoing research taking place to fill these knowledge gaps?
It’s true to say that our knowledge of cetaceans has grown from virtually nothing to just a little bit – despite decades of wild whale research. They are incredibly difficult animals to study, because they spend most of their lives underwater, often live far out to sea and regularly travel vast distances. They are even more difficult to count. I take people to see the friendly grey whales in San Ignacio Lagoon, Mexico, every year and we have fun trying to estimate the number of whales within the relatively small lagoon. Everyone comes up with wildly different numbers. Just imagine trying to estimate the number of minke whales, for example, in the North Atlantic. In some cases, a species is so rare that we know every individual and have an accurate population size. But in many cases it’s an informed guesstimate. The key thing is to be able to compare these guesstimates from time to time and place to place to get relative population trends. And, with some exceptions, I do think we have a pretty good idea about which species are declining and which are doing relatively well.
Minke whale with a satellite tag, image by Oregon State University via Flickr
Is there anything that you are currently working on or do you have any plans for future projects that you would like to tell us about?
Well, I’ll never stop spending as much time with whales, dolphins and porpoises as possible! And I’ll be keeping the field guide up-to-date, of course, for future editions. But I’ve also been working on a book closer to home, called RSPB How to Photograph Garden Birds, which will be out early next year (to tie in with the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch). It started as an excuse during lockdown to photograph my own garden birds but, as I developed and discovered more tricks and techniques, it gradually turned into a book. One thing I’ve learned is that you don’t have to travel to far-flung corners of the world to take great pictures of wildlife. Indeed, some of the most memorable and eye-catching images I’ve ever seen – especially while judging umpteen wildlife photography competitions over the years – have been of common and familiar species taken close to home. Yet these more ‘ordinary’ subjects tend to be ignored by many photographers. They are considered too obvious or insufficiently compelling (although I’ve never understood why because, by any standard, many of our garden birds are strikingly beautiful). While there are countless awe-inspiring images of polar bears and humpback whales, when was the last time you saw a truly inspirational image of a house sparrow or a robin, for example? Exactly. Hopefully, that’s where this book will help and inspire.
Ever Green: Saving Big Forests to Save the Planet is a deft introduction to the very complex topic of forest degeneration. Megaforests, forest ecosystems that are continental in scale and contain large undisturbed areas, are under threat. Only five megaforests exist today, New Guinea, the Congo, the Amazon, the North American boreal zone and the Taiga. These megaforests provide a vital service by preserving biodiversity, providing a stable climate and supporting thousands of cultures.
John W. Ried and Thomas E. Lovejoy explore how destructive human activities are impacting these remaining megaforests and their diminishing undisturbed zones. Blending evocative and accessible nature writing with fact-filled science, the authors explain why these untouched forests are so important for the survival of our global biodiversity and ourselves. Not only are these megaforests home to millions of species, but they also help to stabilise our climates by storing large amounts of carbon, to maintain watersheds, and provide much of the world’s drinkable water by releasing so much moisture-filled air that ‘flying rivers’ form.
The buff-breasted paradise-kingfisher (Tanysiptera silvia) is native to both Australia and New Guinea. Image by Graham Winterflood via Flickr
In the prologue, ‘Anastasia’s Woods’, we are introduced to a young member of the Momo clan who have lived in the forests of western New Guinea for many generations. Through vivid descriptions of the habitats, flora and fauna of these great megaforests, Ried and Lovejoy advocate for the rights of Indigenous people as stewards of their forests. Combining this with enchanting photographs, new perspectives and rich accounts of people who are fighting to conserve these landscapes, the authors create a persuasive appeal for the protection of these lands, through methods such as improving indigenous rights, smarter road network planning and the expansion of protected areas.
In chapters 2 and 3, ‘The North Woods’ and ‘The Jungles’, Ever Green explores each megaforest separately, discussing the unique make-up of their ecosystems, and their historical and current relationships with humans. The authors discuss how human activities are tipping the balance against species within these ecosystems. For example, we have known for a while that fire is an integral part of forest life in certain areas, promoting biodiversity and plant reproduction. The forest comes alive with specially evolved species, such as pyrophilous insects like the black fire beetle, consuming the fire-damaged wood; animals such as the blackpoll warbler that prey on these insects; and herbivores like the snowshoe hare consume the tender shoots and leaves that grow just after these fire events. The increased rate of fires is disrupting this natural regenerative process, however, impacting species that rely on different stages of regeneration. Other anthropogenic activities such as mining and road-building are opening up previously ‘safe areas’ for prey to predators and hunters. All these new threats are endangering the stability of species populations beyond the point that forest ecosystems may be able to cope.
Snowshoe hare, a North American species that play a critical role in forest ecosystems. Image by Tim Rains, NPS Climate Change Response via Flickr
Chapter 7, ‘Forests and the Real Economy’, discusses the need for an economy that values the integrity of the natural systems of forests, which strives to support nature rather than disassembling it. Untouched forest areas, particularly megaforests, are continuously undervalued, as there is so much value in sellable products such as minerals, timber and game, as well as land for agriculture. With the perceived abundance of these products within large forests, it is often seen as reasonable to “chip these little pieces off the edges”, as the authors quote Meredith Trainor, head of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, without seeing the damage all these little pieces cause in the bigger picture. This destruction, the ‘inadvertent by-product of economic activity’, is unsustainable and has been wearing away the very foundations of much of our product-based economic systems.
To combat the current product-oriented view we have of forests, the authors discuss the idea of ‘forest-oriented metrics’, where environmental information such as climate costs and benefits are reported alongside existing indicators such as GDP and the employment rate.Ever Green argues that cost-benefit analysis cannot accurately price the whole value of forests, however, including their aesthetic and spiritual value, therefore these landscapes will always be undervalued while using this method. But the authors do believe that economics has a role in environmental policy, as it helps to inform on how to most effectively act to accomplish a goal that has been ‘fashioned from various streams of knowledge and ethics.’
Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Image by Alexander Gerst via Flickr
While many of the solutions Ever Green puts forward are the work of major businesses and governments, the book ends with an invitation for everyone to visit these megaforests and to consider their own personal choices. Although it is easy to believe that our own good actions may be overshone by the negative actions of larger organisations, there are still a number of ways individuals can help save big forests. If you’re looking for an accessible and engaging introduction to deforestation, conservation-orientated solutions and nature-based economies, Ever Green: Saving Big Forests to Save the Planet is an ideal addition to your reading list.
In 2019, the most comprehensive survey ever of adders was published. According to ‘Make the Adder Count’ the species will disappear from most of Britain in the next 15-20 years unless we take action now. But despite being a priority conservation species under the Biodiversity Action Plan, not a single nature reserve in Britain has been specifically designated to protect adders. The Secret Life of the Adder contains a 10-point action plan which, if implemented, could help to restore the adder to its former range across Britain. With a foreword by BBC’s Iolo Williams, this book is a story of our time, one which typifies the age of extinction through which we are all living and are all responsible.
Author Nicholas Milton recently took the time to discuss his new book with us, explaining the inspiration behind it, his opinion on current ecological guidelines and his advice to naturalists that might want to get involved in reptile monitoring.
Could you tell us a bit about your background and what inspired you to write The Secret Life of the Adder: The Vanishing Viper?
I graduated with a degree in Environmental Science in 1989, and then worked in the environmental movement. My first job was with the RSPB and afterwards I worked for the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (now sadly defunct), The Wildlife Trusts and Greenpeace. I’ve been fascinated by adders since childhood and at the RSPB I was lucky enough to spend time with the late Ian Prestt. As well as being the Director of the RSPB, Ian was also a leading authority on adders (his M.Sc. was on vipers as he liked to call them). Every week we would go looking for adders and he taught me a lot about them. Sadly, Ian passed away in 1995 and since then the adder population has crashed. This was confirmed in 2019 when the most comprehensive survey ever of adders was published. ‘Make the Adder Count’ showed that the species will disappear from most of Britain in the next 15-20 years, so I decided that in Ian’s memory I had to do something about it. The book is my attempt to conserve the species using a 10-point adder action plan, and wake up the government, its nature conservation agencies, the media and the public to its plight before it is too late.
Credit: Nicholas Milton
As well as authoring this book, you work as a freelance journalist for a variety of publications. Among your work are articles promoting the conservation and public image of the adder. How have you found the reception of such pieces?
It’s not easy to make the case for a venomous snake in Britain because we live in a small and crowded island with increasingly little space for wildlife. Every year there are a plethora of completely irresponsible adder ‘horror’ stories in the media which reinforce the mistaken impression that the adder is a dangerous species. No one has died from an adder bite in over 40 years and these stories rarely, if ever, mention that the species is on the verge of extinction. In reality the adder is a shy and sensitive snake which will always avoid interaction with people unless it is molested. The good news is attitudes towards adders are slowly changing, spearheaded by organisations like the Amphibian and Reptile Groups of the UK and the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust who do fantastic work telling people about how wonderful adders are and conserving their remaining colonies.
There are many beautiful photographs in The Secret Lives of Adders, a notable majority of which have been taken in-situ. This is in contrast to images in many other herpetological titles. What were the reasons behind this decision?
I can’t claim credit for most of the images in the book which were taken by the photographer Roger McPhail. He very kindly donated them for free as he wanted to help conserve the species. By being taken in-situ the pictures really help to bring home how amazing adders really are.
Credit: Roger McPhail
In the first chapter, you give an overview of how our tumultuous relationship with reptiles and amphibians in the UK has changed over the last hundred years (and beyond). Do you feel that our native herpetofauna is sufficiently catered for in ecological guidelines today?
The history of the adder in Britain is sadly one of relentless persecution, from Biblical times to the point we have arrived at today where the species could be extinct across most of Britain in the next 15-20 years. There are a lot of good guides to our herpetofauna but not many address the difficult conservation issues facing our reptiles and amphibians, from climate change and persecution to the release of millions of non-native pheasants and uncontrolled dogs on nature reserves. I expect the book will prove quite controversial as it advocates a 10-point adder action plan which includes protecting in law all remaining adder sites, reporting sensational and negative news stories to the press regulator, banning dogs from sites where adders occur and making it illegal to release game birds within a mile of adder colonies.
Credit: Nicholas Milton
Over the course of your career you have written several books, including natural history titles and a historical biography. How does writing in two such different fields compare?
I love writing about history and wildlife – my first two books were ‘Neville Chamberlain’s Legacy’ which included his love of wildlife (his way of coping with Hitler was to go birdwatching in St. James’s Park) and the Role of Birds In World War Two (How Ornithology Helped To Win The War) which has just been published by Pen and Sword. History books require painstaking research and you are often working with a limited amount of material. In contrast with natural history books, you can access new research, talk to experts in the field and build in your own observations, allowing you to really write from the heart. What all the books have in common though is how important wildlife is to all of us in terms of our mental health and the solace it brings even in the most challenging times.
Chapter three – The Ecology of the Adder – gives a fascinating view into the lives of these enigmatic reptiles. What advice would you offer to naturalists who would like to proactively contribute to monitoring and/or conservation efforts, or just to observe them in the field?
Adders are truly amazing. They are our only venomous snake which means they hold a very special place in our wildlife – it would be a tragedy if they went extinct across most of Britain in our lifetime. While we know a lot about the secret life of adders from research, there is still much we need to learn about how our dwindling populations are reacting to new threats like climate change and the millions of pheasants we release into the countryside every year. So amateur naturalists can really help us by monitoring sites where they occur. Anyone who is interested in doing this should join the Amphibian and Reptile Groups of the UK, the Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust or the British Herpetological Society and submit any sightings to Make the Adder Count.
Credit: Nicholas Milton
In chapter five – Conserving Adders – you mention the importance of rewilding to the recovery of adders. We hear plenty about reintroductions of beavers and birds of prey, but the movement’s potential benefits to our more overlooked wildlife can often be forgotten. How can rewilding projects help our reptiles?
Rewilding targeted to the right places could help adders a lot. Rewilding tends to be associated with high profile species but it is also a way of helping all our wildlife. In the case of adders, Make the Adder Count showed that 90% of the sites where adders now occur in Britain have 10 or less adult snakes. This makes them very vulnerable to any catastrophic event, such as the destruction of their hibernaculum and also genetic defects due to inbreeding. As sites are often isolated from other colonies, joining together the small and scattered populations must now be a conservation priority, particularly in those areas where the species is on the verge of local extinction.
Otherlands is the exquisite portrayal of the last 500 million years of life on Earth. Palaeobiologist Thomas Halliday takes readers on an exhilarating journey into deep time, interweaving science and creative writing to bring to life the unimaginably distant worlds of Earth’s past. Each chapter is an immersive voyage into a series of ancient landscapes, throwing up mysterious creatures and the unusual landscapes they inhabit.
Thomas Halliday has kindly taken the time to answer a few questions for us below.
Could you begin by explaining what you mean by ‘otherlands’? How did your fascination with these ‘otherlands’ begin and what drew you to write about this?
The word ‘otherlands’ came about in trying to come up with a title that reflected some level of familiarity and strangeness. It falls somewhere between the idea of something being ‘otherworldly’, but also recalls ‘motherland’ – a safe, familiar home. I think all palaeobiologists, whatever subdiscipline they are part of, have the shared goal of understanding how life used to be. Biomechanists might concentrate on the engineering of a skeleton to understand the behaviours it would have been capable of, and phylogeneticists are interested in how living things are related and changed over time, but all of it adds up into a picture of past life. I’ve always been more interested in big picture, ecological questions rather than the minutiae of anatomy – as important as anatomical knowledge is – and so writing through an ecological lens made most sense to me. In essence, it’s just putting down on paper what we as a community have discovered about life at different points, which is a useful exercise in bringing together science from groups who don’t necessarily read one anothers’ papers. I can’t visit these places except through some creative process – whether that’s a painting, an animation, or text. And I can’t paint or animate.
It is a great feat of work to bring Earth’s deep past to life and to render the unseeable things seeable through prose. How did you approach such an immense task from not only a literary perspective, but a philosophical and scientific perspective too?
Every site in the book has some kind of layout in my mind. It may be known to a fairly high degree of accuracy scientifically – the extent of the playa lake in Moradi, just over 250 million years ago in what is now Niger – is sketched out in papers on that site, so we can get an estimate of how big it was, and which way the water was flowing from. In others, our knowledge is a bit more generic but I have a mental map of where the different beats take place. The line of the story in each place moves through that space, which means that I can be consistent in timing, sights and so on. I think this internal consistency of a place is essential to making it seem immersive. Most of the actual visual descriptions of the animals and plants I use, though in my own words, are no more detailed or evocative than those of other writers, so if I have managed to create a better sense of things being ‘seeable’, as you suggest, then I think that it is everything else around it that make the scene believable. If the scene has been describing the smell of a limestone cave, that colours the subsequent description of the next animal, because mentally you begin to frame it as seen while emerging into the light. We experience an environment through all our senses, and so appealing to those other aspects of reality brings out the realness of an organism.
Credit: Penguin Random House
One of the things I most appreciated about Otherlands was how you focus on landscapes, the settings that are necessary for life to evolve, versus our society’s sensationalised image of the prehistoric world that typically conjures up images of monstrous creatures. What is it that draws us to the dinosaurs compared to the often forgotten plants, fungi, invertebrates and other species?
I blame Gideon Mantell. Well, not really, but the early pioneers of popular geology at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century drew crowds because of the enormous creatures they could put on display. The first fossil animals to be displayed in sensationalist shows were mastodons – relatives of elephants – and giant ground sloths. You have to remember that this is a pre-Darwinian time, when extinction has only recently been recognised, and when the timescale of the age of the Earth is still very much debated. They drew in the crowds with claims of antediluvian monsters from some barbaric era, and I think a lot of the popular depictions of the past have remained since then. If you think of the most influential European and American artistic works featuring palaeontology over the last – Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, Disney’s Fantasia, all the way through the Ray Harryhausen B-movies to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, there’s a common thread of violence and peril, which is undoubtedly a crowd-pleasing approach but doesn’t really reflect what biology is typically like.
That doesn’t quite explain why many fossil mammals or crocodilians, for instance, are poorly known by the public. Dinosaurs do have the advantage of being typically very large compared with the biggest land animals of today – and indeed the recent past – so if you’re going into a museum it’s a lot harder to miss the big Diplodocus than the display of fossil horsetails. There is something awe-inspiring in size, but I hope that people can take the time here to recognise the wonder in the very small things that are going around. I do of course have dinosaurs in the book, but because they have been covered so extensively, I didn’t want to deal with many of the clichés. There’s a dinosaur hunting for food, sure, but it ends in failure. The big tyrannosaur has a drink and scratches off some dandruff against a tree. There’s more to dinosaurs than violence.
I was struck by the level of detail that is revealed from the fossil record, to the point that we can know the presence of different types of insects based on the distinct ways in which they damage leaves. As you collated such an array of research for the book, were there any particular findings that captivated your imagination the most?
One piece of information that I really enjoyed learning about, just because of the implications throughout, was one that I picked up at a conference talk (and which has since been peer reviewed and published). Oviraptorosaurs are a group of dinosaurs that have been associated with nests for a long time. The name means ‘egg thief reptiles’ because it was initially assumed that they were eating the eggs, but more and more finds have accrued, including of parents sitting on the nests at the time of burial, that show that these are their own nests that they are caring for. We can reconstruct how the nests were built based on the arrangement of eggs and the nest mound – a ring of eggs was laid, and then buried, and another ring later added. But what is wholly remarkable is that we can chemically analyse the eggshells even now, and identify different isotopic ratios of calcium in each layer. The isotopic pattern is a sort of chemical signature that is tied to the individual mother that provided the raw material for the eggshell. What this means is that each nest contains the eggs of more than one mother. There are a couple of possible explanations for this, but the best modern example of communal nesting like this is in ostriches, where a single male builds and guards each nest, and several females lay eggs in the same nest. In ostriches, the males then rear the chicks once hatched – I don’t go so far as to claim this for oviraptorosaurs, as this could only be speculation, but I think the best examples of fossil record detail are those where a preserved detail of chemistry opens up a whole trove of behavioural implication.
Thomas Halliday. Credit: Desiree Adams, Penguin Random House
Scientist Robert H. Cowie writes: “Humans are the only species capable of manipulating the biosphere on a large scale. We are not just another species evolving in the face of external influences. In contrast, we are the only species that has conscious choice regarding our future and that of Earth’s biodiversity.” Speaking to this, how can our current epoch defined by destructive human influence be compared to these past worlds, and what lessons might be learned?
Our epoch is known as the Holocene, and makes up the last 11,700 years of geological time. Human environmental influence extends past the beginning of the Holocene, but recently it has been both accelerating and fundamentally changing in type. With deep ocean dredging and drilling, we are disturbing ecosystems that had until now never encountered us, plastic is pervading every part of the biosphere, we are altering the atmosphere globally, and our consumption of resources has boomed. When we look to the past, we find a few occasions when some similar traits can be observed. New chemicals in an environment – from oxygen in the single-celled earth of the Proterozoic to wood in the Carboniferous – have disturbed the balance of the world, but ultimately incorporated in fundamental processes. The Great Oxygenation Event is widely suggested to have caused a turnover in microbial communities as those oxygen-intolerant species retreated to environments this new toxic gas could not reach. The delay between the origin of wood and the development of lignin-digesting bacteria has been suggested as a reason for the preponderance of peat forming swamps in the Carboniferous, although this is disputed. Whatever the reason, the laying down of peat – and then coal – changed the atmosphere radically, which led to greater aridity worldwide, ultimately destroying the suitable environment for the very trees that had caused that change. But the biggest effect we are having is that of disturbance, and for that we have to look to mass extinction events for parallels. Earth has existed in all kinds of climatic states over its history, but mass extinctions have occurred during times of sudden transition. From the end-Ordovician, when glaciers rapidly advanced and retreated from the poles, to the end-Permian, when unfathomably large volcanic eruptions deoxygenated the oceans and threw greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, to the end-Cretaceous, when the aftermath of a meteorite impact darkened the skies for years, rapid change is typically bad. Although life eventually returns, it can take millions of years, and the species that thrive afterwards are rarely those that had thrived before.
Our effects are often extreme and rapid, and part of the problem is that they are done with a short-term mindset. Some human modifications – such as the pre-Columbian cultivation of the Amazon rainforest, the development of clam gardens, or well-managed meadowlands – have increased diversity locally, and are sustainable in the long term. We mustn’t fall into the trap of thinking that humans can only be destructive, or that we are separate from the ecosystems we live in. But, looking to the past, it is clear what the consequence of destructive behaviours is. This is the Earth we live in, and we are part of this world, but worlds can change in a moment.
This book is a timely reminder of the impermanence of life on Earth, evocatively revealing the fragility of our existence. As a researcher of the past, what do you see for our future?
People often assume that I might answer this question in terms of biology of life after humanity, or of the evolutionary direction humans are heading in. Although speculation can be fun, I don’t think that’s a useful way of thinking, because as Earth history shows us, the broad strokes of biology will remain the same. There will always be the same patterns of energy flow through ecosystems, and amazing adaptations to environments so complex that to form any predictions of the truly long term is futile. But we must think ahead to our immediate future. Nobody is suggesting that humankind will become extinct any time soon – we are too generalist, too adaptable to any environment to suffer that kind of loss. But that doesn’t mean that people, societies, cultures will not suffer under the environmental change that is already underway. And of course, portraying climate change as something that is future is itself untrue; we have been feeling the effects of climate change for decades already, especially those of us in low-lying island nations, those prone to storms, or dependent on seasonal ice. The effects will continue to accrue and to spread, but I remain optimistic that we will do what needs to be done – cease extraction of fossil fuels, move to a less all-consuming society, and support less wealthy countries in improving quality of life through renewable energy rather than repeat the errors we have repeatedly made. I am optimistic, and hopeful, but it is not something that will just happen. I see hard work, and that it will be entirely worth it.
• Bee orchids (Ophrys apifera) will flower briefly in June and July on dry, chalk and limestone grasslands, while sea cliffs will be adorned with the delicate blush of sea thrift (Armeria maritima) from April to October.
• June to August is an important time for ladybirds. During this period, mated females will lay their eggs which then hatch into larvae and form pupae through a series of four stages, or ‘instars’. Adult ladybirds emerge from the pupae in August.
• The summer months are a great time to spot bats hunting for insects during the dusk and dawn hours. Female bats give birth to their young in June and within three weeks these juveniles will be learning to fly themselves. By August the youngsters will no longer need their mother’s milk and will be hunting for their own food.
Britain’s Reptiles and Amphibians: A Guide to the Reptiles and Amphibians of Great Britain, Ireland and the Channel Islands
The Wild Flower Key: How to Identify Wild Flowers, Trees and Shrubs in Britain and Ireland
NHBS Moth Trap
Kite Ursus Binoculars
Magenta Bat 5 Bat Detector
