Eco Comment – All Saints and All Creatures

Saturday is the feast of All Saints and our patronal festival. In many countries it is a fixed holiday and for many years was considered a ‘day of obligation’ so the faithful were expected to attend mass and ‘engage in rest from work and recreation’. In more recent times this is celebrated on the nearest Sunday. The more secular however associate this time with ‘All Hallow’s Eve’ which has been subsumed into the commercial event of Halloween.  

“From ghoulies and ghosties and long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night Good Lord deliver us.” This prayer is attributed to Robert Burns, the poet, but nowadays it appears to be used as a warning/excuse for all things spooky from dressing up and trick or treating plus cooking and eating scary food to watching horror films. 

Alternatively, we can think about hibernation.

Sadly, as humans, our bodies lack the necessary metabolic adaptations to make that dream a reality. In fact there are only three mammals in the UK that enter a true state of hibernation; bats, hazel dormice and hedgehogs and there are different states of hibernation in hot and cold environments with variable function, durations and dangers to the animals in question. 

Hibernation is a way for many creatures – from butterflies to bats – to survive cold, dark winters without having to forage for food or migrate to somewhere warmer. Instead, they turn down their metabolisms to save energy. It also appears that animals in hot climates undergo a form of hibernation called aestivation. This works in a similar way and enables them to survive extreme heat, draught or lack of food. 

Hibernating is apparently so much more than simply sleeping through the cold, dark nights and days of winter. Depending on the species it can vary from long, deep unconsciousness to light spells of inactivity. 

Hibernation also brings with it risks to the dormant animals as they are vulnerable to predators. Nature has an amazing way of delineating between species. Some like shrews have to cope on their own as the breeding adults die off and the youngsters have to carry on searching for insects to feed on. Squirrels are active and alert all winter and actually breed in January. Mice and voles are active and alert all winter. Badgers enter a state known as winter lethargy and spend most of their time underground, putting on weight and allowing their body temperature to drop; but it’s not hibernation. I happened to watch the One Show the other night and there was a feature on badgers which ended with some rather acrobatic badgers which had managed to climb up a grapevine in a greenhouse and were quite happily eating the grapes. They were obviously not showing much lethargy as everyone in the studio was surprised to discover that they climbed. 

Butterflies and insects have differing methods of surviving the cold but can be seen on a sunny day and or be found in houses with the central heating on. Reptiles and amphibians also have ways of surviving the winter.  

Hibernation is governed by three things: day length, temperature and food supplies. So is climate change making a difference? It has been shown that hazel dormice are now hibernating for five weeks fewer than they did 20 years ago and some hedgehogs are waking up prematurely in the spring when food is still scarce. 

We in the Cathedral Eco Group are hoping to do a study into the forms of wildlife found around the cathedral and will be seeking volunteers in the very near future. It won’t be onerous but will require a phone with an app facility, patience and probably some good thermals as we can’t rely on fur or feathers. Watch this space for more news. 

Acknowledgements must be made to an article from Discover Wildlife for the information about hibernation. 

Susan Morgan
Eco Group