Wild life- Diary of a Nomadic Naturalist- November

"Not all bees are black and yellow. In Europe, we tend to think of honey bees and bumble bees and, perhaps- if pushed- of the solitary red mason bees that various wildlife organisations are urging us to protect and make provisions for in our gardens. In other countries, however, the word “bee” comes with much more colourful associations.

In my previous incarnation, as a research biologist, I must have spent many weeks trawling through the dry and chilly storerooms of various famous museums, which is a story in itself. This last month, I have been revisiting my last big scientific project- a study of bee and wasp colouration- as I have sifted through the masses of images on my hard drive. Periodic hard-drive purges and desktop re-arrangement are undoubtedly as much a part of the modern scientist’s annual routine as mending butterfly nets and topping up specimen jars was for our antecedents. In my case, I have many gigabytes of images gleaned from Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History and two Belgian museums.

Museum trips were one of my great pleasures as a scientist and, in this case, I spent many happy days going through countless tight-fitting wooden drawers, deciphering Victorian handwritten labels and photographing anything that caught my eye. There were startling metallic Mexican orchid bees (complete with the impossibly long, drinking-straw-like probosces they need to access nectar) and sinister shiny blue thread-waisted “digger wasps”, with their fearsome-looking stings and a thousand other species in every colour of the rainbow.

People tend not to group ants with wasps and bees, but they are related- they are all members of the hymenoptera: a sophisticated insect family with numerous equally vibrant, but more obscure members.

In the case of my own work, I generally talk about colour in its literal sense, but amongst the hymenoptera- the bees, wasps, ants and their relatives- there are so many creatures with private lives that are certainly “colourful” in the word’s more figurative sense. For example, I am told that the thread-thin waists of the digger wasps allow them enough flexibility to sting forwards, as well as behind them. A similar trick is used by certain ants, who bite would-be-attackers and then angle their rear-end forwards, and spray formic acid from the end of their abdomens into the wound; a very biological version of adding-insult-to-injury. Then there is the “gay” behaviour seen in certain Australian parasitic wasps and there is the ability of worker bees to detect how many sexual partners their mother- the Queen- has had. However, all this pales in comparison with the lives of the digger wasps mentioned above, which sting other insects with a paralysing venom, drag their helpless victims’ bodies into subterranean hollows and then lay their eggs in the still living insects’ flesh, leaving them to be eaten alive from the inside out, once the eggs hatch into larvae.

When Tennyson famously wrote that nature is “red in tooth and claw”, it seems that he was making an understatement. "

-Extract from the forthcoming book, "Weirdbeautiful" (c) Victoria Neblik, 2009. Text and images all (c) V Neblik. All rights reserved.

To join the mailing list for advance notification of "Weirdbeautiful"'s publication, e mail neblik@yahoo.co.uk with "Weirdbeautiful book mailing list" in the title. You will not be sent any spam or other mailings and your e mail address will not be passed on or sold to any third parties. I also have a technical book on aspects of bee, wasp, ant, ichnuemon fly and sawfly colouration due out soon: "Beautiful Bees, Wasps, Ants and Sawflies: Structural colouration in the Hymenoptera"-this was co-authored with Prof. Jean-Pol Vigneron- for details, please e mail the same address. Thanks.

Diary of a Nomadic Naturalist- October 2009

British birds bore me rigid. I can offer no justification or excuse for my total lack of enthusiasm for them- I just cannot get excited about a small brown winged creature flitting between the balding branches in the shrubbery. Overseas, it is a completely different story- I have no sooner landed in foreign climes than been transformed into the most insufferably obsessive twitcher. I cannot be alone in this as almost all countries seem to sell laminated brochures of their common wildlife –especially birds- for the interested tourist.

This month, I am in Israel and, as on previous visits, I am getting good use out of my laminated bird-leaflet: in this case, “Birds of Israel- A pocket Guide to common species”. The “Nature in Israel” people have clearly gone one step further than many of their foreign counterparts in selling, not only general guides to wildlife and bird leaflets, but specific pocket guides to trees and shrubs, wildflowers and mammals, all of which I am working through.

The wildlife in this region is a curious mix of European, African and Asiatic species, with a few endemic species, thrown in, as if for good measure. Turkey is famous for its birdlife because it lies at the intersection of continents. Israel has a similarly favourable location and some wonderfully diverse landscapes; the lush north of the country invites very different species from the barren sands of the Negev Desert to the south. Of course, many of the birds here would be familiar to any Briton – great tits, house sparrows, goldfinches, chaffinches and so forth- even greenfinches, plovers and barn owls, but there are other more exotic creatures, too. The spectacled bulbul- a black, white and grey bird, with a striking yellow patch under its tail is a familiar garden resident. Hoopoes, which theoretically visit Britain from time to time, actually do inhabit Israel all the time.

Pigeon fanciers in Britain talk about “ash red” pigeons- really a brown variant of the better known grey/blue racing pigeon. However, in Israel, the feral pigeons really are red. Or, to be more accurate, the urban pigeons familiar across Europe, are largely replaced in cities by their similar but strikingly red-tinged cousin- Streptopelia senegalensis- the Laughing dove, which, as its name suggests, is also an African species.

Of all these birds, the one of greatest interest to me is the one I have been unable to find- a beautiful medium sized green animal with a vivid blue face and broad, sharp black stripe across its eyes. My guide calls it Merops orientalis , or the “Little Green Bee Eater”, which somehow implies that there is only one in the country (perhaps why it has proven so elusive, so far). So, my aim this month is to track down the Little Green Bee Eater, wherever he is hiding, and photograph him- if not for posterity, at least to show my British bird-watching friends- a creature that is most certainly not brown nor drab- now that is a bird worth getting excited about.

- Victoria Neblik, Jerusalem, Israel, Oct 2009. (c) Victoria Neblik 2009.

-This post is an extract from my forthcoming book- "Weirdbeautiful". The book will combine my pick of extracts from this blog with exclusive, unpublished wildlife photos, diary articles, interviews, quotations from famous scientists and other short science-themed articles. When the book is released, I will make an announcement on this blog. To join the mailing list for advanced notice of release, e mail: neblik@yahoo.co.uk with the subject line "Weirdbeautiful book mailing list". Thank you for reading.