Ingham’s W RLD
TOMORROW is the one day of the year when love is all around and hearts are all aflutter. And you are in good company: nature has its fair share of lovebirds too. Already some species are performing courtships that make giving your beloved a bunch of flowers seem pretty tame.
And birds can offer wayward humans a lesson in fidelity. Many species pair for life, sticking together through the highs and lows of life on the wing. You can see this for yourselves now in the uplands where ravens are rolling and tumbling, even flying upside down to impress their mates.
On the moors below male black grouse will shortly stage their own dance- offs, gathering in circles for what looks like a Native American war dance as they compete to woo the dowdy females.
And, says the British Trust for Ornithology, male greenfinches will prove their prowess with butter fly- like display flights. Wood pigeons stage flypasts too, gliding up and down while smacking their wings together in a loud clap.
Out on our lakes great crested grebes will dive and emerge with a gift of pondweed in their bills before a face- to- face display of head waggling.
Male honey buzzards win feminine hearts by flying over the nest in an arc while somehow clapping their wings above their backs.
And for some species love is for life, not just for spring. Mute and Bewick’s swans valiantly honour the vow “till death us do part”.
A Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust study of 4,000 pairs of Bewick’s found only two divorces, with Limonia and Laburnum together for a record 21 years and pro ducing 13 cygnets.
Jackdaws and bullfinches opt for lifelong love while swallows are more pragmatic. Next month they’ll begin the 6,000- mile trek from the Cape of Good Hope with mates aiming to reunite at the same nest sites as last year.
If the female gets back first she’ll wait 10 days for her mate and if he is a no- show, perhaps lost in action over the Sahara, she’ll “divorce” him for another lover.
If the male turns up he will usually fight for her and more often than not righteous anger will help him win back the love of his life.
So enjoy your cards and prezzies – love isn’t just for the birds.
SEALS are no mugs. On a Beans Boats trip to the grey seal colony at Blakeney Point, Norfolk, they kept following in our wake. The guide said the propellers disturb fish which are hoovered up by the seals. It’s like gulls following the plough or Eric Cantona’s trawler. WRECKING the environment is funding terrorism, say Dutch researchers. Somali- based Al Qaeda offshoot Al Shabaab is funding its campaigns through the illegal trade in, of all things, charcoal, which it sells to Arabia. Twente University says satellites show a dramatic increase in tree felling and charcoal production. It earns the extremists £ 63million a year, reports Energy for Sustainable Development. BIOLOGICAL warfare isn’t just for tyrants and Bond villains. A parasitic wasp with an unpronounceable Latin name turns its ladybird host into its bodyguard by infecting it with a virus, says a Royal Society journal. This paralyses the beetle, which lies on top of the wasp pupa and lets it develop to infect another day. GREEN TIP: Now is a good time to put up nest boxes – many birds are already singing courtship songs. A GRAY wolf that last year became the first seen in the Grand Canyon in 70 years has paid for her wanderlust. Echo made headlines after walking 500 miles from Wyoming to the Canyon but has been shot – illegally – by a hunter in Utah. He mistook her for a coyote. Well that’s all right then. BRITS like to get sniffy about American idiots but we have our own here. The first little bustard to visit Britain in 18 years has been shot. The pheasant- sized bird, which probably strayed here from central France, was found dead near Norwich. The RSPB and Norfolk Police yesterday appealed for information to catch the hunter.