Wildlife Highlights: Exploring Nature in October
Bloom in Doom would like to welcome our new British Wildlife Highlights columnist, Lizzie De Lusignan. Lizzie has previously written articles for Bloom in Doom including Rewilding our Cities: Nottingham is Un-Paving the Way and Rewilding – Making Britain a wilder place through restoration, regeneration, and reintroductions.
Illustration by Paige Blake.
I have never lived in a city before. From the meadows and woodlands in rural Buckinghamshire to the beaches, cliffs and moors in Devon and Cornwall, I have always been very lucky to live surrounded by nature. Unsurprisingly, I was nervous about the idea of moving to one of the UK’s largest cities, Sheffield.
Fortunately, my first impression of Sheffield was a good one. Not only is Sheffield one of the greenest cities in the UK, but it also has part of the Peak District within its borders -the UK’s first designated National Park. Therefore, it has not been a struggle for me to spend a lot of my free time exploring the local wildlife.
Like many big cities, there are many parks to choose from with a mixture of open spaces and dense woodland providing lots of opportunities for people and wildlife. A short drive or bus journey from the city centre can also take you straight to the Peak District where you will find impressive tors, edges, rivers and of course, peaks. There is also plenty of wildlife to see in the Peak District, from badgers, foxes, and bats to peregrine falcons, skylarks, and woodpeckers.
Something I will be looking out for in the Peak District this October are red deer. Autumn is rutting season for red deer, meaning that the males (stags) will compete with each other for females (hinds). The stags will bulk up over the summer as they often have little time to eat or sleep during rutting season; they spend most of their time chasing away other stags or stopping the hinds from leaving their harem (groups of up to 40 hinds). The stags not only put on weight leading up to rutting season, they also undergo other physiological changes such as an increase in testosterone, their neck thickness increasing, their larynx becoming more visible and even their tongues changing shape.
Photo from Yoss Traore, Pexels.
Many of these changes help the stags to display their strength and quality through their roar. The larger the animal, the louder and deeper the roar, acting as a warning to other stags and a signal to hinds. If two stags cannot determine the stronger male from the roar, they will parallel walk to assess each other’s strength and if they appear similarly matched, they will charge at each other, locking antlers and fighting for dominance in a dramatic battle for access to the hinds.
If you are lucky enough to live near a deer park then it is definitely worth going to try and find some stags to admire their magnificent antlers and maybe even witness a deer rut. However, a stag during rutting season can weigh up to 25 stone, have sharp antlers and are full of testosterone, so make sure you keep a safe distance! (For more tips on how to witness a deer rut safely look at the advice from The British Deer Society)
There are also many other species to look out for this October, with many animals preparing for winter, as well as migrating species that winter in the UK starting to arrive, such as redwings and pink-footed geese.
Hedgerows are a great place to look out for wildlife in autumn, with berries attracting a range of birds such as blackbirds and thrush as well as mammals including squirrels, hedgehogs, mice, and voles. There is also an abundance of nuts that ripen in autumn, including Beech nuts, Chestnuts and Conkers which often attract squirrels and badgers.
October is a particularly important month for species that hibernate, such as hedgehogs. To help them prepare for winter you can leave out meaty cat or dog food, or even specialist hedgehog food and a shallow bowl of water. Also remember to be careful if clearing piles of fallen leaves and always check piles of wood before a bonfire. As well as hedgehogs, many insects and bats hibernate for winter and setting up a simple insect hotel or bat box in the garden can provide them with a safe place to stay.
Whether you are living in the middle of a city or in the countryside, October is a great time to explore your local wildlife, finding areas you haven’t visited before or maybe just enjoying the change of the seasons somewhere you know well.
Thank you to Paige Blake for her beautiful illustrations. You can find more of her work on her Instagram @ptb__illustration.
Lizzie de Lusignan
Lizzie is an MSci Zoology graduate from the University of Exeter, where she was then employed whilst living in South Devon. She now lives in Sheffield and works for Twinkl, helping those who teach. She has always loved exploring nature and whilst she now misses the coastal walks and chances of spotting a seal, she is making the most of having the Peak District on her doorstep. She became interested in the communication of conservation during her degree and since graduating she has decided to continue her passion for conservation through writing.