BBC Wildlife Magazine

BBC Wildlife Magazine is a celebration of the natural world, featuring all the latest discoveries, news and views on wildlife, conservation and environmental issues. With strong broadcasting links, authoritative journalism and award-winning photography, BBC Wildlife Magazine is essential reading for anyone with a passion for wildlife who wants to understand, experience and enjoy nature more.

Step into a winter wonderland

Whatever you do, don’t feed the bears!

BBC Wildlife Magazine

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Every month, only in BBC Wildlife

Wild TIMES • What’s happening right now

Skating on thin ice • Cheeky Adelie penguins will risk a telling off in order to steal some food

Magical merlins • A rare chance to spot the UK’s tiniest bird of prey

Conservationists welcome peat compost ban • Sales of peat to amateur gardeners will be banned in England from 2024

Rhythm of love • Male hyraxes that sing in the strictest tempo get females’ pulses racing

Bunch of keys • This month, rodents collect the dangly wings of ash

Rising racket has meaning • New research shows how jackdaws use group vocalisation

ORIGIN OF PIECES • A remora’s sucker

GILLIAN BURKE • “Seeds come in a breathtaking diversity of size, form and function”

SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS • Anyone planning a bonfire this autumn should check it first for hedgehogs and toads that may have snuck inside, ready for hibernation. Better still, put the matches away – both garden and wildlife will benefit if you leave piles of leaves and other clippings to decay. Surveys show Britain’s urban hedgehogs are at last planning a bonfire this autumn should check it first for recovering: this has to be the easiest way to help, surely?

Sarah Kienle • Assistant professor of biology at Baylor University, Texas, on the latest leopard seal research

Mega migration • Seeing vast numbers of insects cross from Asia to Europe has been a revelation for scientists

Lygodactylus fritzi.

Boy’s find leads to new study • Garden discovery reveals a link between oak trees, gall wasps and ants

COLLECTIVE NOUNS • A murmuration of starlings

Lost & Found • Swordfish, Isle of Man

A STAR IS BORN • Some of Britain’s weirdest fungi erupt into our consciousness this month. Collared earthstars bide their time under the leaf litter in the form of vast numbers of fungal threads called hyphae. Now they burst forth as onion-shaped fruiting bodies that soon split, the skin peeling back to expose a taut central dome. The slightest touch – rain, for example – releases the dust-like spores inside.

Berry tasty • In winter, ivy provides a highly nutritious meal for birds

FEMALE OF THE SPECIES • Lucy Cooke on the primates using brains not brawn to survive

No stone unturned • The Arctic visitor at home on ‘messy’ British beaches

POO CORNER • African forest elephant

MARK CARWARDINE • “We are hopeless when it comes to potentially dangerous animals”

Bird disease spread by garden feeding • BTO to reconsider guidelines to householders in the light of new research on trichomonosis transmission

Here to stay

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COME FLY WITH ME • Catch the strange side-slipping flight of overwintering geese as they plummet towards the ground

STUCK ON YOU • The parasitic freshwater crustacean that likes to draw close to its fish host – before sucking its blood

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