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- Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Bees, butterflies, bats, badgers … These beautiful and fascinating creatures need a little help from us, as their natural habitats are under pressure. It's time to invite nature into your home – whether it's a window box, a suburban garden or a farm. Learn how to build a pond, make places for bats to roost and spaces for hedgehogs to ramble. Discover the amazing secret lives of Ireland's wildlife, from tiny bugs to large mammals. Do try this at home!
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Dedication
Every little creature matters, from the tiny wood mouse to the spectacular barn owl. And what you do matters too. So, if you are helping wildlife in any way, open a bottle of wine or munch into a cream cake. Because what you are doing is vitally important. You are wonderful, and this book is dedicated to you. Take a bow!
Contents
Introduction
When I was a kid, I wanted to own a nature reserve. Preferably in a hot place, perhaps somewhere in Africa, where gazelle and giraffe would casually walk by. It took years before it dawned on me that in fact, I did own several nature reserves. They took the forms of window boxes, back gardens and finally a farm in north Meath. There is more wind and rain than in my African dream, but the animals around me are just as interesting when you get to know them. And they may even be under more threat here, where we intensively use the land for our food, fuel and homes.
Most wildlife books give you facts and figures on the size, weight and shape of an animal. But that doesn’t interest me. I am 170cm, 65kg and have an upper arm length of 38cm. But what does that tell you about me? Unless you wish to buy me a dress, that information isn’t useful.
To a scientist, it is a mortal sin to compare animals to people. It’s called anthropomorphism – imagining animals as being just like us, with emotions and individual personalities. In this book, I invite you to join me in this mortal sin, to put yourself in the place of an animal. You might be a bat whose eyes hurt under bright light, or a springtail that can jump unexpectedly into the sky. Because, you see, I have no doubt that these animals have their own individual feelings and passions. 10 We will try to get inside their heads, to think about how we could make a better world for them, from their point of view.
Saving the planet can be a little overwhelming. Where do we start? My suggestion is to pick one animal every year. And over the year, try everything you can to attract it to your home. Make a plan like the one at the back of this book, and fill it in as you go along. And whatever you do will have effects on many other species. For example, you might build a pond for newts, but hedgehogs might drink from it. Or you could plant some flowers for bees, and bats may feed over them. So be prepared for the unexpected. And be patient – it took newts four years to move into our pond, and some species of bat can take a while to try out bat boxes. Do what you can, and next year try a different species.
A lot of the suggestions involve doing nothing – for instance, letting the grass grow. Remember, anywhere can be a nature reserve, from a giant farm to an apartment balcony. You can be a voice for nature. Just put yourself in their skins.
Give it a go!
What Lies Beneath
People usually don’t take much interest in the animals beneath our feet. If we can’t see it, then we tend not to think about it. But life underground is crucially important to life above ground. Soil ecology is closely related to plant and animal ecology.
What is in the soil? There’s a micro food web of bacteria, fungi and small animals, all leading busy lives beneath your feet. Creatures beneath you right now include nematodes, protozoa, springtails, beetles and earthworms.
Earthworms
Earthworms are amazing. They drag stuff from above the soil down below the earth, bringing nutrients deep into the ground. Their tunnels aerate the ground, and their casts (earthworm poo!) are particularly important for soil health. There are up to 10,000 types of microbes in these casts, and these nourish plants and help fight plant diseases. There are many YouTube videos on bioturbation (earthworms tunnelling through soil), and they’re strangely relaxing to watch! Grab yourself a cuppa, light a scented candle and switch on some bioturbation. You will feel much better afterwards. 12
Activities for children
See how many earthworms you have! Dig a 20cm by 20cm (by 20cm deep) pit. That’s about the length of a shovel. Carefully pull the soil apart. Put it all in a tray and count the earthworms, then return them to their soil.Springtails
If you have ever pulled a Christmas cracker, you may have found a little plastic toy that springs into the air when you push its rear end. The animal equivalent of this is the springtail – they’ve been described as the Tigger of the insect world. Springtails have a forked structure attached to their belly called a furcula, and when they need a quick getaway, they release it and bounce high into the air.
It looks as if they are popping away randomly, with little sense of direction, but in fact they have a small tube by their back legs called a collophore, which they use to direct their spring. When they are not springing around, they use this collophore to groom themselves. Their jump is enormous: up to 300 times the size of the insect. That would be equivalent to people being able to spring over skyscrapers!
I have often thought about what animal trait I would like to have if I was able to magically conjure up powers. I think I’d like a furcula. And a collophore, so I would look good too when I suddenly arrived at my destination. 13
Dung beetles
Dung beetles are essential in our fight against poo. They also look spectacular, with shiny little bodies. There are several different types – you have probably seen wildlife films of ‘rollers’. These tiny beetles push large balls of poo. In the films, they are usually dwarfed by an enormous poo, and are pushing it up a hill, until they reach their burrow, where they push it in. They have enormous strength and perseverance, and watching them makes the rest of us feel very inadequate.
These beetles are not found in Ireland. But we have ‘tunnellers’ here. These dig tunnels, fill them with dung and lay eggs in it. Moving the dung around also helps to disperse seeds, as well as bringing nutrients underground, which benefits plants. A third type of dung beetle is the ‘dweller’, which breeds in surface dung.
What would we do without them? Moving dung around clearly gets it out of our way. Bringing it underground brings nutrients to plants, improves the soil structure and gets rid of parasites that could reinfect animals. The underground dung also increases the activity of underground microbes. Dung beetles are also an important foodstuff for bats. There is a concern that when wormers are used in cattle and horses, dung beetles can be killed by the chemical in the cowpat. And without dung beetles, we are all in deep shit. 14
Building healthy soil
Don’t allow soil to be bare. When soil is bare, soil erosion takes place. If you have a gap somewhere, cover it with a green manure – basically throw seeds in to cover the soil. On farms, oats can be used to cover fields; in gardens, you can use comfrey or mustard. Use whatever you like, but don’t leave the soil naked!Try not to disturb the soil with digging or ploughing. Our local primary school came to visit once and calculated the amount of soil lost in a one-hectare field that I had recently ploughed. I can’t remember the exact weight, but it equated to the weight of 26 primary schoolchildren. They all rolled down the hill field to make the point. No-dig or light tilling is the way to go.Stop compacting the soil. When you walk or drive heavy machinery over the soil, it squashes everything beneath, and makes it harder for small creatures to wriggle through. So, make paths through your garden, and stick to them. And avoid using heavy machinery.Start a compost bin. Earthworms will love you for it. Just throw in your uncooked food waste, paper and cardboard, and forget about it. You may end up with lovely compost. Or, like mine, the stuff will vanish, magically disappearing into the ground, dragged away by earthworms.Stop concreting and hard surfacing. We are losing vast amounts of soil every year to hard surfacing, often for our cars. We need to find ways to allow soil to breathe. There are alternatives to paving your garden to park your car. You could go retro – in the 1970s, my neighbours all paved the areas 15along the wheel tracks of their cars. Grass was free to grow in between, underneath the car body. If you want it to look more stylish, you can use a lattice of concrete. This looks like a chess board, where there is a square of concrete, then one of grass, then one of concrete, and so on. Or you can use a geogrid mesh, which is strong enough to drive a car on, while sitting on your lawn. An additional advantage to all of this is that flooding is reduced when water can soak through the earth. And with the increase in rainfall due to climate change, we need our gardens to protect our homes.Only use animal wormers if you need them. Most vets will carry out analysis of dung, to let you know if your horse or donkey needs worming. Have this done before you routinely worm your animals. They may not need it.Larger Mammals
Badgers
I have watched wild badgers for many years, and was lucky enough to encounter one up close when I worked on a project in Dublin. A flood defence wall was being built along a river, and a badger sett was along the river too. The new wall would cut through the sett, so the decision was made to build an artificial sett. We would trap the badgers, move them to the new sett and feed them for a month or two. We would then release them and allow them back to their old sett when the work was finished.
The badgers were very resistant to being trapped. Night after night we sat for hours, watching cats, foxes and everything else go into the traps. And then one night, Michael appeared. He was a young badger, with a bad gash on his head. He had clearly been in a fight with another badger – or with a car. He sat quietly in the badger trap until he saw us, and then, in total despair, he covered his eyes with his paws and made loud sobbing sounds. Honestly, he looked like a large, sad, furry toy.
When we moved him to the new sett area, I opened the cage. But like a kidnap victim with Stockholm syndrome, he refused to 17leave and huddled in the corner. How would we get him out of the cage? I took a stick and started gently pushing him out. He removed his paws, looked at me with a clear look of ‘please stop torturing me!’, then placed his paws back over his face and resumed sobbing. He was like a child who is so upset that they can’t catch their breath. Poor Michael.
We crept away and waited, and finally he shot out of the cage, and down to the new sett. It was several days before he was brave enough to come out for food.
Badger setts
One hole in the ground looks much like another hole in the ground when you are trying to identify mammal underground homes, but if you can fit a football inside the hole, you probably have a badger sett. If you do find a sett, keep it a secret. Badgers have been persecuted for many years by badger baiters, and traps and snares are still set today by these cruel people.
There are several different types of sett, and they can be enormous. The main sett is like the ancestral home. It has been passed down through the generations, and badgers are extremely attached to it. They often bring in pieces of plastic bag to line it with, making it waterproof and giving it a strange interior design aesthetic. My husband found one that was lined with hundreds of Coca-Cola bottles. Main setts are big, with lots of entrances, and are used most of the time. Many setts have indoor toilet areas.
The annex sett is like the granny flat, with a smaller number of entrances, generally used when badgers want to have a quick night away from the relatives. The outlier sett has just 18one entrance and is further away – a bit like a holiday cottage, when they plan to stay out all night and they’re far from home. Of course, these sett descriptions can intermingle. Just like ourselves, badgers move around and change the design of their homes.
As badgers extend their setts, they drag out a lot of soil. They use their hind legs to kick the soil out, moving backwards in their tunnels. The soil that is dumped at the entrance is called a spoil heap. So, in addition to the football-sized hole, you may find some mounds of soil – and also some dried grass and bedding.
Badgers are exceptionally clean animals and, like myself, they often drag out their bedding to air it. I hang my duvet on the line, but they spread their bed around in the sunshine. This cleans it and gets rid of parasites. The same process gets rid of dust mites in my duvet. Then they inspect their bedding, judging whether it has to be thrown out or can be reused, before dragging it back into their chamber.
Tunnels are usually semi-circular, with corridors leading off them at sharp angles. The tunnels lead to chambers, which are a squashed oval shape, about half a metre high and wide. The sett must be warm enough to protect the badger (some research shows that the temperature inside the sett is around 11°C) while allowing enough oxygen through so the animal can breathe. The chambers must also fit bedding, plus another badger sometimes. It must all be a little squashed.
Sometimes tunnels where a badger has died are closed off, providing an underground, in-house burial chamber. Later on, when only a skeleton remains, spring cleaning is done and the 19skeleton is tossed out with the soil. If you ever find a skull, and are wondering what it is, lift it up (wear gloves!). If the jaw remains attached, it is a badger skull. Their lower jaws are attached by bone. You are probably moving your jaw around right now, as I am, wondering how our jaws are attached. Unlike those of badgers, our lower jaws are only attached by muscle. Without this muscle, our lower jaw would fall off. Now that’s something to chew on!
Two captive badgers were recorded building their own heating system. They carried straw and hay to a chamber within their sett and allowed it to ferment. It reached 38°C, and the badgers would move closer to it when they were cold. They did this several years in a row.
Who does the housework in the sett? Not surprisingly, it seems that the parents do most of the work, digging and carrying bedding around. Older males and females spend a lot of time keeping their home clean, while the sett is used by the whole group. It’s just like Christmas in most households.
We built an artificial sett at home. There are many designs on the internet for homemade sett design, so it might be worth giving this a try. Four years later, badgers still have not moved in – but they have started to mark the sett with latrines (little toilets) outside the entrance. Perhaps they are trying to tell me what they think of my sett! After all, if you had a perfectly good ancestral home, why would you move into a home built by another species? If badgers built a home for me, I might appreciate the toilet areas and heating systems. But I wouldn’t enjoy the tiny rooms and long corridors, and my ancestors being sealed into the walls. Meanwhile, my badgers visit our 20sett regularly. They check out my grand design and have some peanuts and a poo. As humans, we are probably getting something wrong when we build artificial setts.
Badgers and bovine TB
Badgers suffer from tuberculosis, or TB. The million-dollar question is whether they can transmit TB to cattle. I believe it is very unlikely that a cow will catch TB from a badger. And here is the science behind my opinion:
TB in cattle is usually found in their lungs. For a badger to infect a cow, it would have to come within 1.5 metres of the cow, and ideally be breathing at it. Sadly, we all now understand about social distancing and aerosol droplet dispersal. And lots of interesting science has taken place in Ireland, looking at badgers and cattle, and their social distances.
A project led by National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) Divisional Ecologist Enda Mullen spent three years tracking badgers in the Wicklow countryside. Forty badgers, from 12 social groups, had radio collars placed around their necks. Then enthusiastic NPWS staff and volunteers from Trinity College Dublin plotted 12,500 movements of the badgers as they roamed the countryside.
How would the badgers meet the cattle? Might a badger be lured into a farmyard by some spilled grain, coming into contact with livestock housed in sheds? This study proved otherwise. The badgers tended to avoid farmyards – and particularly farmyards with cattle. If they visited farmyards at all, they tended to visit equestrian farmyards and disused farmyards. But most badgers kept away even from these. A single 21individual badger (which the researchers christened ‘Violet’) seemed to like a trip to the horses, and went to visit a stable several times, but most other badgers kept far away from all livestock, and were even scared of visiting disused farmyards.
A second study, undertaken by Declan O’Mahoney in Northern Ireland, confirmed that badgers avoid cattle. Declan works with the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute in Belfast, and his approach was slightly different. He placed proximity collars on 58 cattle and 11 badgers in a bovine TB (bTB) hotspot in Northern Ireland. If the badgers and cattle came within 2 metres of each other (close enough to share a breath), the collars would emit a pulse. This would be plotted via GPS. In addition, motion-sensor cameras were placed all over the farmyards to video anything that moved.
The results were amazing. There were over 350,000 interactions between cattle and cattle. There were 11,774 interactions between badger and badger. Clearly, you hang out with your own species. And there were no interactions between cattle and badgers. Zero!
So, is TB being transmitted by badgers? And if so, how? The researchers looked at water troughs. But badgers and cattle did not use water troughs concurrently. In fact, badgers rarely used water troughs at all. So, the researchers turned their attention to the farmyards. In a mammoth undertaking, they recorded 500,000 hours of video at farmyards and analysed the results. That must have been a really tedious job! The visiting animals recorded most were feral cats, some of which were in poor condition. Farm cats play an important role in rodent control, but can also be carriers of TB, and any animal 22in poor condition is more susceptible to disease. Mice and rats were also seen on camera, and, very rarely, an individual badger (perhaps a friend of Violet’s?) visited a meal shed for a few minutes. Most other badgers kept away – and all badgers avoided the cattle sheds.
Cattle are large, sometimes dangerous and scarily frisky. It seems that badgers are aware of this and keep far away from them. However, the badger continues to be blamed for transmission of the disease to cattle. Over 100,000 badgers (some pregnant and nursing) have been killed under the TB eradication programme, and yet the rates of bovine TB in Ireland have increased. It’s time to stop scapegoating the badger, and support farmers in finding the real underlying causes of this disease.
A year in the life of a badger
Badgers have their young in early spring, and female badgers come into heat soon after birth. They often become pregnant again before their first cub is weaned. Any mother of so called ‘Irish twins’ will know how this feels. If the badger doesn’t become pregnant again, she will continue to come into heat about every 28 days.
Amazingly, although badgers may mate in spring, the blastocyst – the collection of fertilised cells – swims around in the female uterus for several months. While the blastocyst is swimming about, the female can come into heat again, and another blastocyst can form. This is called superfetation, and is very unusual in mammals. One blastocyst may be a different age and size to another. Lyndsey Stuart in TCD has worked 23out how it happens. All the blastocysts finally implant into the mother’s womb in wintertime. So, though cubs are born together, they can have different fathers. Female badgers don’t put all their eggs in one basket!
The male tries his best to seduce the female. He struts around the outside of the sett, purring and generally sounding attractive. If that fails, he uses scent glands, like DIY aftershave, to create that special smell. Mating can take from 1 to 90 minutes. The aftershave clearly works wonders.
There are often 2 to 3 cubs in a litter, and they are adorable when born, with small pink noses. They start to wean at about 12 weeks, but may continue to feed and generally hang around with their mother for many months. Sadly, as with most wild animals, at least half the badgers born don’t make it to their second year.
Many badgers stay around their group forever, and it was thought that this could make them inbred. However, DNA analysis is showing that this isn’t the case. At least 50% of the cubs born in a group have parentage from outside the group. Badgers are clearly sneaking away in the night for some scent marking and purring in other setts.
Badgers can live for up to 15 years in the wild. Although they don’t hibernate, they often spend long periods underground, tucked away in their setts in the winter months.
Attracting badgers to your area
Badgers often wander along defined paths and tracks. You will notice that there is a track through the grass, and you may see coarse hair caught on a wire fence or footprints of 24a badger in mud. Put out food along these tracks in winter. Badgers like to eat cat and dog food, peanuts, fruit and even cooked potatoes. It is also worth putting out water in frosty or hot spells.Activities for children
Look for a badger footprint. This is best done in spring in muddy areas. You will need moulding plaster for the next part. Take a cardboard Tetra Pak-type container from your recycle bin. Pull both ends out of the container and place it over the footprint. Mix some moulding plaster with water. Pour the plaster into the container, up to a centimetre or two, and leave it for half an hour. Remove the container and, hey presto! You have made a lovely plaster-cast of a badger footprint.Foxes
If you are out late at night, and hear a bloodcurdling scream, you are hearing a fox (hopefully!). Foxes are amazing – they look like dogs but behave like cats, and you can see them everywhere.
When I was young, I used to help out with a wildlife group in Blanchardstown in Dublin. They had some small sheds and cages and ran a wildlife hospital. One lunchtime, I opened a shed to find utter devastation. Food, cages and bedding were everywhere, while a rook squawked 25miserably in his cage. Sitting peacefully in his own cage was a fox. I eventually found a small hole in the fox’s cage. The fox, which had been hit by a car and knocked unconscious, had suddenly come back to life, clambered out of his cage, trashed the place and terrified the rook, then climbed back into his cage and fallen asleep. I began to believe that foxes could do anything.
Foxes, hens and lambs
How do you keep stock safe when the fox is so agile? I myself have lost hens to foxes, and in fact was in my chicken pen once with a fox. He was so fast, I felt as if I was moving in slow motion, slowly shouting, yelling and waving my arms, as he sped by.
But there are fox-proof pens. By far the best is any type of electric fence. Specialised chicken electric fences are sold, which have an electrified wire mesh. These are fantastic – one shock and your fox will not return. And the mesh is easily moved to allow the hens onto new grass. With a traditional hen pen, a line of ordinary electric fencing wire can be run near the bottom of the pen. This will also work. Remember that foxes can dig, so if you have a traditional hen pen, make sure it has a ‘skirt’ of wire running along the base to prevent foxes burrowing in.
Although foxes may take lambs, work by Ray Hewson with the University of Aberdeen finds that they mostly take carcases or lambs that are very weak. Many farmers nowadays bring their sheep indoors for lambing, which keeps them safe and makes it easier to monitor the births. 26
A year in the life of a fox
Foxes are omnivores. They will eat rats, mice and rabbits, as well as berries, fruit and earthworms. They also love eating our leftovers, and you may have seen them eating a bag of dropped chips or raiding a bin. In doing this, they are providing a free refuse-disposal system, not to mention a pest-control service, eating both our dropped rubbish and the rats drawn to it.
Scent is everything to foxes, and they communicate a lot through smell. They have scent glands under their tails, by their anal gland, and even in their feet. Foxes have very, very smelly feet. Unfortunately, because of this, hounds can track their paths easily. They also leave scent trails in their urine, like dogs. This marks their territory and gives a lot of information on the individual fox. Fox toilets are basically the Facebook of fox lives, announcing who the fox is with, and where she’s going.
Foxes live underground in dens. Unlike badgers, who really love a tidy home, foxes are messy, with bits of beds and bones thrown everywhere. It’s just like a teenager’s bedroom. Vixens tend to share a territory, although they may not live together. Normally, the male fox mates with just one vixen, the dominant female, and brings her food when she has cubs. However, in stressful situations, when it’s likely that the foxes will get killed, the male may mate with more than one female. It’s just like people with wartime romances. This was first noticed in urban areas, where foxes are likely to be killed by cars. It may also be the reason that fox numbers have been found to increase in the countryside after wintertime fox hunting.
When the vixen is in heat, she screams in a really spooky 27way. Irish people have imaginative minds, and thought this was the scream of the banshee, a long-haired hag, dressed in a dark cloak, who foretold the death of someone from your household. Terrifying stuff! In fact, it’s an attractive love song to a male fox. The vixen is pregnant for 52 days, and usually has 4 to 5 cubs, which look like teddy bears, with brown fur and rounded ears. The male brings food for the vixen, and other vixens may act as babysitters. The cubs are completely dependent on milk for the first three weeks, then weaning begins. The young continue to suckle for another six weeks or so.
When the cubs start to emerge above ground, they are absolutely clueless about danger, and you may get quite close to them. They play a lot, barging about and knocking each other over. This tests their strength.
In October, the young disperse. The vixens tend to stay around their home territory, while the males roam further afield. Like ourselves, they can move home for a variety of reasons. They may be pushed out of their home range if there is not enough food, shelter, or other resources – just like many unemployed young Irish people, who had to emigrate during our last economic crash. Or they might be pulled to a new place by the attentions of a young vixen.
Foxes can live up to 14 years in captivity, but generally live about 3 years in the wild. Resist the temptation to ‘tame’ a local fox. Don’t try to feed it from your hand or encourage it to befriend you. Not all people are as kind as you – for their own safety, foxes must always associate humans with danger. 28
Attracting foxes to your area
Put out food, especially in the winter and in very dry weather. In dry weather, the ground is hard, so it is difficult to find earthworms. Foxes will eat lots of stuff – dog food (dry and wet), cheese and fruit are favourites. In theory, foxes will eat unsalted peanuts, but they never touch the ones I put out for mine! Leave out fresh water for them in dry spells.Plant some dense shrubs that foxes can hide in. Foxes also can den under sheds and woodpiles, but don’t like open space.
