discoverwildlife.com BBC WILDLIFE 67plants, and only taking small handfuls.
There’s a neat rule of thumb, “One in 20”,
which means picking no more than one
flower out of every 20 found. If in doubt,
Plantlife advises leaving them alone.
In The Nature Seed, Jones and Greenway
offer another useful tip: stroking flowers,
rather than picking. This, they say, can
cultivate a sense of gratitude and a “care
ethic for the land”. Yes, children can
be heavy-handed and trample things
inadvertently, but it is only by experiencing
nature that they will learn to handle it gently,
the authors argue. (The same might be said
for adults.)
Many of the dilemmas involving
wildflowers are similar to those we face
when foraging wild foods, and with collecting
natural objects of any kind. “Just check
you’re not taking too much!” says KellyA neat rule of thumb, “One in 20”
means picking no more than one
flower out of every 20 found
Thomas. “Beaches would soon be empty if
everyone took away a full bag of pebbles, and
there’s only so many acorns in a forest.”
If you’re not sure what to do, then
photographs or drawings are a great option,
Thomas says. “The memory will always be
with you, and you’ll know you’re leaving the
place in a good state for wildlife.”
At the end of the day, most UK
conservation organisations advocate a
common-sense approach to spending time in
nature, mindful that it is vital to our mental
health and wellbeing. “Some people have
worry beads,” observes the nature writer Lev
Parikian in his book Light Rains Sometimes
Fall. “Others might have a key ring or a
pocket knife or a perfectly contoured pebble
But [in autumn] all I need is a conker in my
pocket to hold and rotate and smooth my
fingers over as I walk down the street.”Puffin skull
It is rare to find a whole
puffin skull and beak but
in autumn, at the end of
the breeding season, the
colourful keratin panels
that make up the outer
covering of the beak fall
off and occasionally turn
up on beaches.
Cuckoo egg
The Eurasian cuckoo
lays a beautiful – but
ultimately deadly – copy
of the egg laid by the host
bird. Each female cuckoo
specialises in copying the
species she grew up with.
The image above is a
lookalike robin egg.Long-tailed tit
nest
Made by both the male
and female, this oval nest
is amazingly stretchy
because it contains so
much soft moss and
spider silk. It can expand
to accommodate the
growing brood inside.Mermaid’s
purse
The egg cases of dogfish,
catsharks, skates and
rays are dark and leathery
when found empty on
land. If you soak them
in water, they magically
recover their original
colour and texture.Caddisfly case
Caddisfly larvae live in
streams and look like
underwater caterpillars.
They build exquisitely
beautiful cases to pupate
in, spinning together
grains of sand, shells,
stones, leaves and other
tiny bits of debris.ETHICS O