The Complete Naturalist

For as long as I can remember I have been mesmerised by plants and animals, and not just the living, breathing ones. Everything about them, feeding signs and other evidence they leave behind, even their dead bodies can tell us so much about them. But although I have been an amateur naturalist all my life, to this day I continue to learn how and where to look at the living world. That is really what this book is about – using my experiences and the tricks of the trade that I have amassed over the years to gain more insight into the world we live in.

My interest started as soon as I could crawl and pretty soon I was putting my mother through situations no mother can be prepared for: giant silk moths in the wardrobe, tarantulas under the bed and the countless dead animals I would find while out and about and bring home to dismantle at leisure – a form of behaviour my family found particularly disturbing! But to me there was very little difference between wishing to see and understand the internal workings of an animal and my brother pulling a lawn-mower engine to pieces for the same reason.

Through those dark, misunderstood times, a wonderful book called The Amateur Naturalist by Gerald and Lee Durrell became my friend, inspiring me to look, investigate and satisfy my natural curiosity. That book was a major influence on my becoming a naturalist, and it was very much the inspiration behind this one. I am deeply grateful to Lee Durrell for providing such a generous foreword to The Complete Naturalist.

Things haven’t changed much since those early days, despite the fact that I am now a responsible adult with my own house – my home is still stuffed full of natural curios, both living animals and the inevitable collections of debris, skulls, bones and feathers. To me this hands-on approach is totally in keeping with the ethos of this book. You will never really understand something by looking at pictures and writing. Just as you need to stroke a feather to comprehend what an extraordinary combination of form and function it is, you also need to turn a skull over in your hands if you really want to appreciate the beauty of this remarkable collection of bones.

Having said that, you will find a lot more about the living than about the dead in these pages. After all, the living, breathing, breeding natural world is all around us and its influences are felt by all of us, naturalist or not, whether it’s the greenfly in your salad, the sticky stuff that gets on your car in the summer or the birdsong that gives a bounce to your step on the way to work or school on a spring morning. Like it or not, we are part of this natural world – it’s just that modern life has allowed us to surround ourselves with a cocoon of comfort that isolates us from it.

At its most basic, being an amateur naturalist is simply about enjoying being in touch with our natural surroundings. It’s about the joy of observation and discovery, of learning to understand. Some people are put off by the fear that being a naturalist involves learning a lot of science. This is a complete fallacy; to appreciate the miracle of a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis does not require any specialist knowledge. The experience is all that is needed to change the way you look at insects. No PhD required – in fact, a lot of the best and keenest naturalists I know are kids.

On the other hand, you do need an odd collection of personal qualities. You have to be tough enough to be buffeted by the elements and sensitive enough to appreciate the finer points of a Wild Pansy. And even I will admit that it takes a different approach to life to see beauty in a Fox’s faeces, not to mention some slick thinking in order to explain yourself to those who catch you looking in the first place!

What I have tried to do in this book is introduce you to the various groups of living things that you are likely to come across in your garden, on country walks and on holiday, and to give you a bit of information on what they are and how they live their lives. I have described a range of useful skills and investigative techniques and explained projects and tricks of the trade that you can try out in the field and when you take your specimens home.

What I really want you to do is get out there, get down on your hands and knees, get your hands dirty, look, learn and enjoy.

The way the animal and plant kingdoms are organised may seem a bit baffling at first, with all those long scientific names, but knowing just a bit about it will help you understand which animals and plants are related to each other; that in turn will give you clues to their appearance and behaviour. The kingdoms are the biggest group; the further down the list the more closely related members of a group are, with members of the same species normally the only ones that can mate and produce viable offspring.

‘King Philip Came Over For Great Sex’ is how the Americans remember the order of classification.

Try not to be daunted by this system. Great naturalists from Linnaeus, Darwin and Wallace until the present day continue to fine-tune, correct and reclassify plants and animals. It is still very much a work in progress as we learn more and more about the natural world and its sweet little mysteries. Keep in mind that this system is intended to make life easier for biologists; just as books are classified in a library, each animal and plant is grouped with other animals and plants with which they have the most similarities.

The scientific names which you will find scattered through this and many other books on the subject are really nothing more than labels. If you always work in the same locality you can get away with using common names, but when you start talking to people in another country, these often fall down and become next to useless. Say something about woodlice to Americans and they will nearly always look baffled, as they know them as sow bugs, but mention their scientific name, and you are on your way to a common understanding.

These names come in two parts: the first is the genus, which may contain similar and closely related species and is always given a capital letter; and the second is the specific name, which is unique to this animal and is written with a small letter.

Codes of conduct

As a naturalist, you have a duty to the natural world around you. I will remind you of these rules again and again in the course of the book, but here is a summary of the most important ones.

•Keep disturbance to a minimum. Never collect more of anything, whether it is a flower or a batch of frog spawn, than you need for your studies, and always release specimens in the same place as you caught them as soon as you have finished looking at them.

•Never handle any living animal unnecessarily. Learn as much as you can from observation alone. If you do have to handle specimens, do it gently and quickly.

•Never make sudden movements. A lot of wild animals are of a nervous disposition and even the smallest of them can scuttle at great speed. Approach them slowly and quietly, from downwind if possible.

•Be extra careful if approaching anything you have reason to believe may be venomous or otherwise harmful to your health. If in doubt, don’t do it.

•Do your homework in advance. There are many protected species of plant and animal that you are not allowed to pick or keep without a licence.

•If you are setting traps, bait them with suitable food and water and check them regularly. Many small animals need to eat almost constantly, and you are seriously failing in your obligations if you let them die while they are supposed to be in your care.

•Use a buddy system, particularly if you are going anywhere off the beaten track or in water. Take a reliable friend with you, or at least make sure someone knows where you are and what time you are expecting to be back.

•Take your litter and detritus home or put it in a proper bin. Never, ever, dispose of it at sea.

•While it is always best to observe various species under natural conditions in the wild sometimes it is necessary to keep some animals for a short while in captivity to study. If this is the case it is very important to be aware that some species in some countries are fully protected by law – such as Sand Lizards and Great Crested Newt in the UK – with this in mind where ever you are in the world, it’s worth doing you homework and research first, if in doubt contact a local conservation organisation for help and guidance.

•If any animal is taken into captivity – this especially applies to aquatic organisms – it is important that they are kept for the minimal amount of time possible to allow your study and then put back exactly where you found them to minimise the spread of diseases, such as Ranavirus and Chytrid fungus, which are responsible for huge losses in wild amphibian populations. This applies as much to spawn and tadpoles as it does to adult amphibians.

•If you are keeping amphibians in a vivarium, it is essential that both your hands and the vivarium (and vivarium furniture) are thoroughly sterilised and cleaned both before and after the release of your study subjects.