How finely can nature be sliced? Imagine a thousand species in your lounge – it would be mayhem unless they keep a polite distance through occupying different chairs. In the wild, divisions are peacemakers. Even the simplest habitat offers subtle variety.
That variation – niches – is raised by hills, shaded by trees, and watered by the climate. Every little change benefits something and disadvantages others, and allows competing wild things to share the space. But nature also uses something else as a divider: Time.
Consider last Sunday. At 8:06pm, my dog was outside exploring in front of the trailcam.
By 8:09pm, she was inside. And now the decking was occupied by a certain small vixen.
Land use is measured in time as well as space. Here, a fox chooses her timing – with extreme precision – to avoid a potential rival, but it’s a tactic they also apply to each other. I have seen garden situations where the prime foraging hours of quiet evenings were taken by dominant individuals while the less fortunate tried their luck in rush hour.
There are at least four foxes who visit my garden, and two of them are males – unlikely to be friendly with each other, and definitely coming at different times. Here’s one of them, a handsome russet fox.
Given the opportunity, many wild creatures would exclude rivals around the clock – after all, a rabbit caught by a trespassing fox is gone forever from the territory owner’s point of view. In practice, even a species as fierce and solitary as the African leopard cannot quite achieve that.
On a grander scale, time means seasons, and they, too, slice nature into a hundred thousand niches – a rolling rhythm in gentle colour. The meadows that are now cowslips will be overrun with buttercups and ox-eye daisies before long, only for these to bow out as orchids paint the hillsides pink.
Night, day, summer, winter. They all provide a stage for life.
A Walk with Wildlife 
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