Nature’s Top 40: Britain’s Best Wildlife. Chris Packham

we need, and the difference between want and need is a notable one. So, listing things is sometimes helpful but patently questionable, and I’m not sure that it makes you particularly happy sometimes, either. But I am certain that it gets you out of bed and that it can act as a wonderful fuel to get your life lived more fully. Oh, and people say that listing is geeky. So what? If you’ve picked up and paid for this book you are at least a little bit geeky, and that’s good; be proud of it!

      It’s tempting to imagine that naturalists invented listing, but I’m sure it would be hotly contested from many sides. Historians are also consummate listers, and collectors of anything are listers par excellence, but I think we hold our own. I have a British bird list, a world bird list, a garden bird list, a dogwalking bird list, a garden moth list, a British butterfly and bat and amphibian list, an orchid list, a travel list … and, to be fair, that’s nothing. I’m an amateur when it comes to listing. But these are all empirical lists; there are also the subjective lists – and these are very exciting because they are dynamic and more interactive. We brag about the former, but we debate the latter.

      My Top Ten Favourite Films Of All Time (the last bit is fabulously childish, but necessarily demonstrative, and should follow all such list titles) obviously bears no resemblance to the list from which I was trying so hard to tick smooth snakes and sand lizards, although Raquel Welch of the One Million Years BC era still features in several lists. And it can be thrown into turmoil by a single release; it can require a systematic reappraisal, taking hours and contentious ‘discussion’ with my movie guru James. And that is great, too, because opinionated lists must be argued about as a matter of honour. I mean, how can this self-appointed ‘guru’ have Blade II in his Top Ten? Or, more to the point, how the hell did black grouse lekking make it into the Top Five of this list when glow-worms are languishing in the 30s? And who seriously thought: it’s right that a spider’s web is not Top Ten material? And, to my mind, puffins should not be seen or heard in any list, gaudy little chavs. Starlings, swirling about going to roost, good, but so passé. That’s like still having The Italian Job in your Top Ten Movies. I mean, come on, update will you?

      What is even more exciting about Nature’s Top 40 than the order is that it’s a UK-based list, and that it finally gives us a chance to bunch together a set of spectacles, which undeniably deserve their status, if not their final positions, in your or my opinion! It proves beyond doubt that the UK is not the land of ‘little brown jobs’, or ‘quite good for its seabird colonies’, or ‘has a few nice spots’; it is rich in things that can stop you in your tracks, make your heart miss a beat, make you hold your breath, make you travel a hundred miles, make you want to shout out loud, make you make lists of things it will make you do!

      Joking aside – and I know that many of you will immediately count through to see how many of this 40 you have already seen – the actual ‘final’ positions don’t matter. What does is that you use this list to get you out to experience and enjoy these spectacles first-hand and that you get some youngsters out there with you. Ask yourself this: how many twelve year olds today have seen all the UK’s reptiles in the wild, or, more importantly, lie awake wanting to? If this list is to endure, we need some more of these apprentice listers, and that could be down to you.

      Chris Packham

      2008

      PS The answer is … I’ve seen 37. I haven’t seen the roosting parakeets or the wild goats, and I would most like to get to grips with adders dancing.

Introduction

      Music charts lend themselves to a list according to their popularity based on the solid statistics of sales volume, as do films, and of course computer games and books … but wildlife? Some may wonder how we dare make a Top 40 list of Britain’s greatest wildlife spectacles in such a manner, and may feel that the act of giving each of our chosen entries a number might even cheapen the very spectacle we have filmed and written about.

      Others will be indignant that their favourite spectacle has unfairly been demoted to the lower regions of the Top 40. But look down any of the numerous Top 40 lists that have formed the basis of a variety of television programmes, such as the Funniest Moments on TV. Undoubtedly part of the fun is exclaiming in a faux-indignant way that the clip of talk-show host Russell Harty being attacked by Grace Jones is not as funny as the lower-ranked, but hilarious, moment where a slightly-worse for-wear Delia Smith screams, ‘Lets be having you!’ to a bemused Norwich City football crowd at half-time. There will also be those wildlife purists not best pleased that immigrant (and therefore ‘lesser’) spectacles, such as ‘parakeet roosts’ and ‘rutting goats’, have audaciously elbowed a spot in the list and now vie for attention alongside our native British spectacles. And, come to think of it, why are badgers playing and kingfishers fishing completely absent from the list altogether?

      Our Top 40 was compiled from contributions by members of the public, following a request on the BBC Nature’s Calendar website for their suggestions. The 40 most popular suggestions put forward were then ‘moulded’ into an order by a panel of wildlife experts who argued (I believe well into the night) on the relative merits of each species and exactly why, for example, the thrilling clouds of butterflies, which was positioned at no. 27, deserved a higher spot than the enchanting light show put on by glow-worms at a more lowly number 38.

      The factors taken into account when compiling this list included a combination of how unique the spectacle is to Britain, and a ‘thrill-ability factor’. Some of the entries in our ‘wildlife chart’ involve huge numbers of one species, such as pink-footed geese returning to roost, or bluebells flowering synchronously in a spring wood; others comprise either fewer or single individuals with particularly remarkable or fascinating behaviour, such as spiders building webs or great crested grebes courting. The best spectacles inevitably involved large numbers of one species (or a combination of species) acting in a remarkable manner, with Britain additionally being the best place in the world to view that event. The prime example of this is gannets diving, which deservedly made our number 1, because Britain holds an astonishing 63 per cent of the world population of gannets, and the very sight of flocks of these birds pelting into the water is frankly breathtaking.

      It is important to bear in mind that these spectacles have not, of course, evolved for our viewing pleasure, and we are nothing more than voyeurs in what serve as vital functions in the mating and survival games of each of our entries. So, in addition to helping you find out more about how to come across each spectacle, the body of the book is primarily written to enable you to understand exactly what is going on and why, which should hopefully enhance your enjoyment and renew your appreciation of the wonderful wildlife still eminently viewable on and around the British Isles.

      We make no apologies for the order of our Top 40; you may not agree with it but, hopefully, it may just occasionally form a stimulus for conversation in place of the latest TV series plotline. Perhaps you will be encouraged to make your own ‘Wildlife Hit Parade’. The primary motive behind the series and this book is, unashamedly, to encourage people to jump off their sofas, turn off their television sets and stow away the computer games console in order to get some fresh air in their lungs and a few spectacles under their belts instead.

      Finally, with some insider information, the vast majority of these spectacles can be seen with a little planning and the requisite luck. Only when the joy or ‘Gospel of Wildlife Watching’ spreads to as many people as possible (irrespective of the order in which we place them), will these plants, the animals and their habitats be truly cherished, valued and conserved for future generations.

40 Mating natterjacks

       The ‘Birkdale nightingale’, ‘Bootle organ’ and ‘Thursley thrush’ are all regularly used colloquial monikers that, in certain regions, have replaced the more commonly accepted name of our smallest and rarest British toad,