Ingham’s W RLD
WILDERNESSES are in short supply in overcrowded old Blighty. Go to the American West and you can easily lose yourself in painted landscapes with only vultures wheeling overhead for company. Here you have to climb every mountain and ford every stream before you get into the wilds. Yet even in the flatlands and lowlands there are places where you can feel at one with nature.
One of those magical places is a watery land of golden reedbeds, booming bitterns and hunting harriers. Norfolk’s Hickling Broad is one of those rare places in the UK, a broad sweep of water, land and sky where you feel that the wildlife tolerates you, not the other way round.
It is the main stronghold of our biggest butterfly, the black and yellow swallowtail, which can only feed on the Broads’ milk parsley, and the Norfolk hawker dragonfly.
This time last year I watched raptors coming in to roost as dusk fell, as hen harriers sought refuge from the moors alongside marsh harriers, kestrels and barn owls. Later we were joined by cranes – huge, long-necked, long-legged waders that fly in lazy lines high above the reeds.
In glorious May I ticked off more than 50 bird species while we cruised around on our day boat.
Swallows flitted over the water as their nemesis, hobbies, hawked for dragonflies overhead.
The reedbeds were full of warblers – sedge and reed chattering away, a Cetti’s with its explosive song and a grasshopper warbler, which sounds like an angler reeling in his line.
Best of all was that rarely seen Broadland icon, a bittern. Normally this big brown heron skulks in the reeds but it did me the great favour of flying over our boat.
This paradise is now up for sale. Nearly half of the 1,400-acre National Nature Reserve is being sold by the Mills family, which has owned it for 200 years.
Given that it is at the heart of the Broads, you can imagine the “improvements” some tourism developers might have in mind.
Happily the Mills family has agreed to sell its 573 acres to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust for £2.5million. But the NWT – which already owns the rest of the NNR – still needs to raise £900,000 by the end of next March.
So if you value our wildernesses, if you think a landscape little changed since the Middle Ages is worth preserving, here is your chance to help. The Broads’ bitterns and butterflies, otters and harriers will be eternally grateful. www.norfolkwildlifetrust.org.uk THE world’s longest-lived animal, the mussel-sized 500-year-old quahog clam, knows the secrets of our climate, say scientists from Cardiff and Bangor Universities.
Growth rings in its shell show that, before the industrial revolution, solar activity and volcanic eruptions drove our climate. But, reports Nature Communications, after 1800 the climate followed atmospheric changes – almost certainly the build-up of greenhouse gases. STARDUST is bringing outer space to our cities, says Imperial College London. It has found cosmic dust on rooftops in Paris, Oslo and Berlin.
The 0.3mm particles date from the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, reports the journal Geology, and scorched into our atmosphere at 28,820mph. GREEN TIP: Leave out old apples for winter thrushes such as fieldfare and redwing from Scandinavia. CHIMPS like to get to the bottom of things, says Dutch researcher Mariska Kret. Our close relatives not only spot a pretty face but also recognise each other by their posteriors, she tells PLOS One. This is especially true when females are fertile – and their derrières become very pink. A BATTERY as big as three tennis courts could revolutionise renewable energy. UK Power Networks’ battery in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, can store energy when demand is low and release it when needed. The system could overcome the intermittent nature of wind and solar power – and ensure its precious energy does not go to waste.