Steve Deeley

I care more about elephants than I do about pigeons. As a naturalist that feels wrong, but it’s a fact. It’s a natural tendency to be more interested in the things that are exotic than those which we see every day. Elephants bring images of far-off lands. They are unusual, something outside the run of the everyday.

But not every rare or exotic animal lives far away. For several years now I’ve been tracking down an animal which lives only on one small, isolated island. Not Madagascar, but Skomer, a small island off the West coast of Wales. It’s managed by the wildlife trusts, and most people go there for the utterly adorable puffins. At Skomer, you can get closer to puffins than pretty much anywhere else on Earth. Lie down and they will stand on you.

But Skomer is also home to the Skomer vole. This close relative of the bank vole lives on Skomer,  and nowhere else in the world. Think about that for a minute. This vole lives there, and only there. It’s a unique species, larger than a bank vole and a deep russet colour. It’s not endangered, but is unique. The only place you can see it is Skomer, and that involves a boat trip.

For five years I’ve been trying to get a good photo of the Skomer vole. I’ve heard squeaks. I’ve seen rustles in the undergrowth and occasionally the tip of a tail or the top of an ear. But there are a lot of other species and places int e world so I made my mind up that this was going to be my last attempt. I had four days on the island and I devoted them to trying to find it. I succeeded, but never in front of my camera. At one point, I had a pair of voles fighting in front of me – but never where my camera was pointing.  Skomer voles move fast. It’s an article of faith amongst those who have studied the vole that it freezes when faced with danger. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? And when I explored that myth – and it is a myth – it seems to be based on the fact that when captured for research purposes, voles stay in the hand and don’t run off. But a vole on the ground, free to move? They run faster than any other vole I’ve ever seen.

The thing about Skomer is that there are no land predators. No snakes, no foxes, no stoats, rats or weasels. Skomer voles have grown up in a world dominated by brutally efficient aerial predators. Great black-backed gulls, short-eared owls, kites and others are all quite happy to eat them. I had thought that this would make the voles happy to ignore me- as a land-based threat – as long as they were under cover and protected from aerial assault. But it doesn’t. The voles are well aware that only deep, thick cover – deep inside brambles or under a thick layer of vegetation – will do. And so they scurry at speed from one safe place to another, and after days of slowly peering through gaps in the bracken that covers much of the island, I slowly realised that if I could see them, so could a predator.

And so, after five years, I gave up. It was the last day of what I had decided would be my last visit. The boat was arriving shortly. But I wandered into a location near the residence where overnight guests stay. And there, for a few minutes, the vole appeared. It scurried madly, but at least it reappeared in the same place a few times, and I finally managed the shot below. But the really telling thing was that as soon as the dawn chorus started, and the gulls started calling, the vole vanished and did not re-emerge.

And so, reader, I give you the Skomer vole. From this angle it looks exactly like any other vole. But this, I’m afraid, is the only picture you’re going to get.

Probably.

Skomer Vole – at last

Today I went to Greenham Common, the former Cold War airbase that was the subject of much controversy in the 1990s when US forces stored nuclear-tipped cruise missiles there. The weapons have long since gone, and after the US withdrew, the base was returned to nature. Where once giant bombers thundered down concrete runways, rare gorse heathland now flourishes, Linnets and Dartford Warblers sing, Adders and Common Lizards bask, and one particular butterfly, the Grayling (no relation to the fish) makes its home.

The Grayling is normally a coastal butterfly these days, and inland populations are rare. It is also one of my personal last 7 UK native butterflies to see. Since I live in North Wiltshire, which is about as far as from the sea as you can get in the UK, finding a population that doesn’t involve a 2-hour drive was most welcome.

I found the Grayling, and it immediately replaced the Adder as winner of my personal best camouflage in a land animal award. It is superbly camouflaged, and as such is relatively happy for you to get close as long as it feels it is well-matched to its background. I found the butterfly at Greenham not by looking for it, but by looking for the colour grey. At one point the runways have given way to patches of heather, and the dried stalks of old heather plants litter the ground. These are a mixture of greys, and it is against these that the Greyling likes to hide. Take a look at the photo below and you’ll see what I mean.

Spot the Grayling!

There is actually a Grayling butterfly in this shot. Its towards the top right. You can only see it at all because its wing is damaged and the brown upper side is showing through. The Graylign is a butterfly which almost never shows its upperwing, which is a light brown colour. It has come to rely so strongly on its camouflage that it only ever settles with its wings shut, showing a broken grey pattern.

Greyling nectaring on heather

The Greyling is the only other creature which, like the Adder, I’ve looked at, looked away for a second, and then not been able to see when I looked back again. Several times I thought the butterfly I was watching has flown off, only to realise it was still exactly where I had left it. I was often staring right at it, but could only see it when it moved.

Greenham Common was once home to highly camouflaged bunkers and aircraft. In a sense, the Grayling is carrying that tradition on – albeit on a much, much smaller scale.

It was a rainy day, and God’s kids were bored.  God had a lot of work to see to, so he rooted around the house to see what he could find, and came up with a packet of cocktail sticks, a tube of glue  and a watercolour paint set he had left over from working on the rainbow. He told his kids to entertain themselves and see what they could come up with he was working. And that, I am absolutely sure, is the only possible explanation for how damselflies came into being. Because no process as brutally selective as evolution could possibly have come up with them. The damselfly comes in red. Oh – and yellow and pink and green, and orange and purple and blue. And to ruin the song lyric, white and metallic green shades as well. Their eyes can be brown or blue or red or yellow or green, independent (seemingly) of their body colour. And to really drive anyone trying to identify them insane, they change colour as well. Newly-hatched damselflies (known as “tenerals”) frequently start off one colour and change to another. Females will sometimes start in one colour, then change colour to match the male.

Take the blue-tailed damselfly. It’s a fairly common species where I live in Wiltshire, and the male is easy to identify because it has a bright blue ring around its “tail” (actually, it’s a long abdomen – like someone had stretched you on the rack to an improbable degree). But the female blue-tailed comes in five different colour forms – blue is the normal, but it is also available in green, purple, orange and pink. The pictures below are both female blue-tailed damselflies.

female blue-tailed damselfly

As if that wasn’t enough, some completely different species of damselflies are so strikingly similar that you need a magnifying glass to tell them apart. Take the males of the “Emerald Damselfly”, and the “Scarce Emerald Damselfly” respectively, for example.  Because both species change both eye colour and body colour on the way to adulthood, the only reliable indicator is that the Scarce Emerald has a tiny incurving bend to the tips of its inner anal appendages.

Yes, I really said that. And the inner anal appendages of a damselfly are perhaps a millimetre long. If, like me, you drove for several hours to get to a site where the Scarce Emerald is known to hang around, but where it occurs alongside the regular Emerald Damselfly, then all you can do is photograph every metallic green damselfly you see, and then zoom in on your camera screen and try and work out which it is by closely inspecting its naughty bits. It’s almost like watching pornography, but nowhere near as much fun.

But personally, I won’t hear a word against Damselflies. Because one thing these multicoloured marvels do, is eat midges. And anyone who has read my book (“Encounters – a journey to find and photograph some of Britain’s best-loved wildlife”) will know that I really, really hate midges, following an evening spent in the most midge-prone part of the UK. So here’s to damselflies, whatever their colour. And here’s to the poor male damselfly, who somehow has to recognise that the female of his species can come in a bewildering variety of colours. It seems that damselflies, at least, can’t afford to be prejudiced.

I recently did a three-hour round trip in order to photograph a specific damselfly – the Southern Damselfly. It’s nothing special to look at (below), and at a first glance you could mistake it for one of several other species.  But it is a distinct species, and to me that lent it a value that it might not otherwise have. I was lucky to find it so close to my home – the next nearest known location is an eight-hour round trip away.

Female Southern Damselfly

Today I was researching a trip to see another rare species, the Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly. Apart from some very subtle markings, it’s almost identical to another quite common damselfly, the (wait for it) blue-tailed damselfly. It’s just a bit more scarce. The closest reliable location to me, Latchmore Bottom in the New forest, is a four hour round trip. But as I read up on the site, I discovered that there had been attempts to restore the original flow of the watercourse that feeds the site where the damselfly lives. There were very good reasons why that work should be done – to help restore lost habitat and help protect downstream resident from the effects of flooding. Yet such actions would have probably destroyed the location of this rare insect.

Now I can imagine the frustration of those whose homes may still face flood risk because some nutter wants to protect a rare damselfly. I mean, it’s virtually identical to one you can find practically everywhere. But that ignores the lure of such things. When I did go to see the scarce blue-tailed, on a Thursday morning in school term time, there were at least four other groups of people looking for it. And one of those, a very nice couple and seemingly sane couple, had driven from Cambridge – more than an eight-hour round trip. And if they are anything like me, they all bought snacks and drinks and petrol en route.

We always seem to associate the economic benefit of wildlife tourism with the large scale. But these little insects have probably generated several hundred pounds a year for the local economy, all from a tiny insect that you could easily overlook. And that benefit will keep on coming, year after year, for as long as those insects survive. So whether you see  biodiversity as important or not, you might want to consider what is in your area that others might want to see.

Evolution is often seen as a meaningful process. As Simon Barnes noted in his book “Ten Million Aliens”, Mankind is often regarded as being the pinnacle of evolution of the ape family, as if evolution has been constantly working hard to achieve this level of perfection. It’s nonsense of course – you only have to look at certain politicians to see that Mankind has some way to go in evolutionary terms. But it’s also a mistake to think that evolution is progressive at all. Take, for example, the Mandarin duck.

The theory of evolution states that the species which survives is that which is most adaptable to change (note: Darwin did not say “survival of the fittest”, as if species had to meet some kind of predetermined health criteria). The idea is that random genetic mutation in a species leads to some new characteristics (for example, the ability to run faster) which allows that creature to survive better than its peers. As that creature breeds, it passes that advantage on to its offspring, and gradually the species improves. But there are some big assumptions inside this theory.

The first assumption is that the creature with the new characteristic is actually able to breed. Which is where our duck comes in. The Mandarin duck (below), is, to put it mildly, flamboyant. This beautiful colouration is there solely to attract the female and allow the male to breed. It represents a huge amount of energy directed to something which is not a matter of survival for the duck – indeed, making yourself a brightly-coloured target can only help predators home in on you, so arguably it works against the long-term survival of the species. Other ducks are dull, wearing what amount of camouflage patterns (including, ironically, the female Mandarin duck).

Mandarin drake

The second assumption inside Darwin’s theory  is that the genetic variation that produces the evolutionary advantage is a single event. But what if the random genetic change that makes our new, unique creature able to run faster is also accompanied by another that gave it a large, warty growth on its nose? Our new, faster creature gets to pass on most of its genes, useful or not. Evolution is a truly random process, and not every change brings a benefit.
Which is where fashion comes in. We like to feel that evolution isn’t something that applies to people – we’re back to that “Evolution has achieved perfection so it can stop now” idea. But of course evolution continues, and it applies to us. But Humankind is one of those species, like the Mandarin Duck, where the ability to breed is not simply linked to physical strength and health, the ability to find food and produce offspring. In the Elizabethan era, most people worked in the fields all day and so were deeply tanned. A pallid complexion which had never seen the sun was therefore a sign of wealth, and the paler you were, the wealthier you were presumed to be. So of course, in a “keeping up with the Kardashians” way, people started using cosmetics to make their skin look pale – even (ironically) Queen Elizabeth herself, arguably the wealthiest woman in the country by far. Unfortunately, the skin-whitening cosmetic of choice was white lead, a substance so toxic that its use is banned completely today. So the net effect of that fashion was to ensure that many women were unable to produce offspring –  on account of being seriously ill or dead. For what was thankfully just a short time, fashion directly impacted human evolution. And that principle continues today. Maybe there will come a time in the future when women won’t look at a man who doesn’t wear a bright pink headband. Or have sexily bandy legs. With fashion, things get unpredictable – and only very rarely does any of it have anything to do with the survival of the Human species. So the next time you worry about whether or not you should buy that pair of designer jeans, consider this: by being fashionable, you may just be contributing to the evolutionary degradation of the whole human species and our ultimate extinction. Buying a supermarket own brand is not just cheaper, you could say it’s your duty to all of Humankind.

One of the joys the study of the natural world brings is that there’s always a new fact waiting to be learned. I thought a knew quite a lot about the large blue butterfly. I knew that it was extinct in the UK. I know that it was reintroduced. I know that its caterpillars rely on a specific species of myrnica red ant, which take the caterpillar into their nest and feed it. They do so because  the caterpillar mimics the pheromones of ant grubs and (and this is the bit that blows my mind) sings the songs that the red ant grubs sing. Yes, really. I knew that the caterpillar doesn’t just mimic any old ant grub, but a queen ant grub.

But I recently met a man who was involved in the project to reintroduce the butterfly. He’s actually witnessed the large blue caterpillars being picked up and taken into the red ant nests, and he told me that when it wants to be picked up by the ants, the caterpillar also changes shape, rearing up and mimicking the body shape of the ant.

Large Blue Butterfly

Every time I think I can’t be more astonished, I found out something new. This world is so special. If we lose our wildlife, as we are undoubtedly doing, we don’t just lose a pretty butterfly or a small ant. We lose the complexities and interactions and sheer wonder that millions of years of evolution can create. We lose the ideas and the chemicals and the antibiotics and all the other solutions that nature has worked out to the various problems of living. And one day, we may be badly in need of them.

This is Colin. He is probably the UK’s (and perhaps the world’s) most famous Cuckoo. He lives on Thursely Common, in Surrey. But only some of the time

Colin the Cuckoo

Cuckoos like to travel. With enviable commonsense, Cuckoos spend the British winter far from our shores, in Central Africa, where they pass the time eating. Interestingly, one thing they don’t do in Africa, is say “Cuckoo”. The call so familiar to us as a harbinger of Spring  is a mating call, and is only ever made here in the UK where the birds breed.  Colin is a bird who has become more used to humans than most. He is still a completely wild Cuckoo, and every autumn he sets off back down to Africa. But for the last few years he has grown to tolerate photographers who now gather in large numbers in a large green field in Thursley common, an otherwise fairly bleak expanse of  rather boggy heather moorland.  His affection may have something to do wit the ready supply of mealworms that are now left out for him. Sadly, the many photographers present break the rules on bait feeding (don’t do it regularly, don’t over-feed, don’t make the wildlife dependent on it), so Colin is able to spend less time foraging for food than other Cuckoos and more time concentrating on the one thing that really motivates him: sex. “Cuckoo” is a mating call, designed to drive the ladies into a frenzy, and as I’m sure you will agree, he’s a rather handsome chap. So much so that I can almost forgive the fact that Colin, like every cuckoo, started his life deceiving his unwitting foster parents that this enormous chick in their nest was actually one of theirs. Female cuckoos can actually change the colour and patterning of their eggs to suit the nest of the host species that they are using. Identity theft? Cuckoos thought of it first, and they’ve been doing it longer and better than humans ever could.

I recently went in search of a creature I’ve never seen before, with the delightful name of the “Grizzled Skipper”. To me, that conjures up images of Captain Birdseye, or maybe Captain Barbarosa in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. But no,the “Grizzled Skipper” is actually a small, dark-grey-to-black butterfly.

grizzled skipper butterfly

Now this butterfly is one of a family of Skippers, and it has a fairly rough-and-ready look, so I suppose that “Grizzled Skipper” could make sense in some ways, but it’s a tiny little thing, barely bigger than my thumbnail. It looks delicate enough to blow away in a light breeze. So here’s my plea to the people who name these things: can we at last get a name that makes you think of what you’re looking at?

I went to check on some common lizards recently, in an area of Somerford Common, Wiltshire, where I’ve seen them many times. My heart sank when I saw the notices from the Forestry Commission, advising that they they were thinning out the trees. They had done that recently in areas of Savernake Forest, changing dark woodland full of brambles and ferns into open, sunlit spaces dotted with rather lonely trees and devoid of the Fallow Deer that I’d gone there to see.

I was right to be worried. I was  met by a scene of devastation. For hundreds of yards, the bushes either side of the trail had been flailed close to the ground.  Gone were the piles of rotting wood and drifts of leaves in which the lizards lived. Gone were the flowering plants and bushes upon which bees and butterflies had nectared in the summer. Gone were the young blackthorn shoots upon which rare butterflies had laid their eggs.

flailed trail

One of the challenging things about conservation is that our wildlife can be particularly picky. Some species of butterfly need new growth in order to survive. Others rely on the plants that new growth gradually crowds out. Some wildlife needs dense cover, other species need light, airy spaces. Whatever actions you take to our environment, there will always be winners and losers. This truth, and the perfectly reasonable need for the forestry commission and other famers and landowners to make a living, often leads to scenes like that above. The argument is made that the habitat will return, and it will. The failed bushes will gradually re-grow. The gorse and bramble will spread again. Perfect homes for lizards and butterflies will eventually be found along the track above, just as they once were.

Common Lizards, Somerford Common. Now the log, the clover and the Lizards are gone.

But there is a problem with this argument, which is – where do things go in the meantime? You can build the most perfect habitat imaginable, but if the species that you intend to exploit it dies before its ready, or if they cannot reach it, then it is worthless. Imagine we “solved” the housing crisis by dynamiting all existing housing stock so that we could build new flats ten years later. Or solved it by building homes in the middle of the motorway. That is the issue I have with what has been done to Somerford Common and so many other places. Rather than flail one side of a track, giving the wildlife somewhere to escape to and survive until the old habitat returns, all of the habitat has been removed – and not just along this track, but along several adjacent ones and many of the spaces in between. In lizard terms, this is ethnic cleansing.

What I would like to see is the work done in smaller stages, but it is simply uneconomic to bring heavy equipment into a forest only to do a couple of hundred yards of track. And against that argument, sadly, the wildlife will always lose.

Fresh from my close encounter with Boar, a week later I went back in search of them. This time, I was fortunate enough not just to meet two females, but also their piglets, or “humbugs”. And these animals were sufficiently trusting to allow me, after a time, to sit quietly with them.

There are people who say that we should not disturb wildlife and so should never interact with them. To a large extent, I agree with that. But where human and animal treat each other with respect, where the animal is not made dependent on the human for contact, food or shelter, and where the encounter is always upon the wild animal’s terms – i.e. it can come and go, or send you away as it chooses, then I think it’s OK.  And so I was happy to sit quietly and respectfully and watch as a female boar suckled her young not fifteen feet from me, all the while fully aware that I was there. (A boar’s sense of smell is so acute that they would have known I was there if I was a hundred yards away, never mind five). I’ve had such encounters with wild animals many times now, with many different species. It is always a matter of respect and trust. Respect the animal, and all of its needs (including the need not to become so relaxed around people that it falls prey to the unscrupulous) and it may, just may, trust you back.

Boar Sow suckling

This sow was suckling two very different sizes of humbug, which makes me suspect that she has adopted the offspring of another female. The humbugs weren’t bothered by the arrangement. One good feed later and all were fast asleep in the sunshine. Had the ground not been so uncomfortable, I would have been as well.

Sleepy piglets

After several hours, I left the boar, largely because I had taken every photograph I could ever imagine. When I got home, I discovered that I’d clocked up some 2,500 images. Camera shutter units do wear out, and I’d probably taken a year off the life of my camera. But it was more than worth it to spend time with these animals. Ugly or beautiful, dangerous or cute  – that’s for you to decide, but I know where my vote lies.

humbugs at play