Author Interview – Hoopoe

Author interview with Richard Broughton: The Marsh Tit and the Willow Tit

Marking the first monograph for either species, Richard Broughton’s The Marsh Tit and the Willow Tit reveals the remarkable lives of these wonderful little birds. Compiling decades of personal research, as well as a detailed review of external studies from across both Europe and Asia, it explores each species’ taxonomy, food and foraging patterns, social organisation, challenges and conservation, alongside more than 150 illustrations, maps, charts and photographs.

Dr Richard Broughton is a research ecologist with a wealth of experience across birds, mammals, forests and farmland in Great Britain and Europe. He has studied Marsh Tits, Willow Tits and their habitats for over 25 years, and prior to this he completed a Master’s degree in GIS as well as a PhD in Marsh Tit ecology, before joining the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Cambridgeshire.

We recently chatted to Richard about his inspiration for the book, which challenges he faced when developing such a detailed study of these two species and more.

You have studied Willow Tits and Marsh Tits for much of your career. What initially captivated you about these charismatic birds, and what inspired you to write a book about them?

I had Willow Tits on my local patch in Hull when I was a youngster at school, and I had Marsh Tits and Willow Tits around my first office near Huntingdon when I started my science career. Both species were always a bit special and enigmatic – not so common that you saw them every day, but when you did it was like seeing parallel lives going on around you. They’re a lot like us, mostly preferring to live as couples in stable relationships, with busy social lives and a close attachment to their neighbourhood.

From a research perspective, Marsh Tits and Willow Tits are fantastic species to study. They are widespread from Britain to Japan, they’re territorial and they don’t migrate, so the same birds are present all year round and you can really get to know them – how they communicate, organise themselves within their communities and solve the problems of living in different types of woodland, it’s all really fascinating. And there’s so much that we still don’t know, with lots of discoveries to be made, but also some urgency. We don’t fully understand exactly why they’re declining in many areas, so the inspiration for writing the book was partly to bring together all that we know about their ecology and what pressures they’re facing. If Marsh Tits and Willow Tits are struggling, then we need to listen to what this is telling us about our woodlands and forests.

Both species have suffered severe range declines – how can the general public work to better support these birds amid habitat loss and climate change?

The main thing is to know where Marsh Tits and Willow Tits are still hanging on, and where they are declining – taking part in surveys and reporting sightings to the county recorders and BirdTrack are great ways of helping to monitor both species. Protecting and expanding their habitat is essential, but for that we need to know where they are, and in what numbers.

It’s also important to realise how we can unintentionally make things harder for Marsh Tits and Willow Tits when we do favours for their competitors. There is growing evidence that increasing numbers of Blue Tits and Great Tits could be harming Marsh Tits and Willow Tits by taking over their nests and dominating their foraging space. The vast scale of bird-feeding in gardens, woodlands and nature reserves is changing our woodland bird communities, and it really boosts the dominant species, which can then put extra pressure on Marsh Tits and Willow Tits. For this reason, it’s important to consider the unintended negative impacts of well-meaning interventions, such as bird-feeding and nestboxes, on more vulnerable species like these.

I was surprised to learn about the ineffectiveness of nest boxes in supporting Marsh and Willow Tit populations in relation to competition. Do you think this is also the case for other species across the UK, and what alternatives could we use to mitigate this issue?

The problem with nestboxes for Marsh Tits and Willow Tits is that they’re far more likely to increase the densities of their dominant competitors, especially Blue Tits. If you add more nestboxes to a woodland then you will get more Blue Tits, but Marsh Tits and Willow Tits don’t work that way.

This is because they have much larger territories, and you could fit 15 pairs of Blue Tits into a typical Marsh Tit or Willow Tit territory. These large areas contain enough natural nest sites for Marsh Tits and Willow Tits, and so these species are limited by the area of woodland habitat and not by tree cavities or deadwood for building their nests. As such, adding nestboxes cannot increase the numbers of Marsh Tits or Willow Tits like it does for Blue Tits.

This shows how it is important to fully understand a species’ ecology for any conservation actions to work. A better solution is to promote diverse, wilder woodlands that have plenty of opportunities for Marsh Tits, Willow Tits and other woodland species at more natural densities. If not over-managed, woodland can quite quickly develop enough nesting sites on its own.

Within the book you mention the woodland restoration projects being undertaken in Scotland, which are striving to establish woodlands to support native species, including Marsh Tits and Willow Tits. Can re-establishing these complex habitats truly help to encourage population growth? And what would be your main recommendations for large-scale restoration projects with these species in mind?

Expanding woodland habitat is a good way to help buffer Marsh Tits and Willow Tits from population declines, as the losses in Britain are greatest in areas of more fragmented habitat. In Finland, too, logging and habitat loss is driving population declines. Increasing the amount of woodland reduces habitat fragmentation, which in turn helps birds to disperse across the landscape and provides space for more breeding pairs, so it can only help. The natural range of Willow Tits, and probably of Marsh Tits, once covered much of Scotland, and so restoring forest cover in that country could help to re-establish their populations.

Looking ahead, Scotland could eventually provide an important refuge for Marsh Tits and Willow Tits, being further from the intensive agriculture, urbanisation and more intense warming of southern Britain. We can look to other natural and regenerating forests in Europe to see what this restoration could look like in Scotland and elsewhere in Britain – varied tree density and structural diversity, lots of standing and fallen deadwood, and plenty of water in streams, pools and soils. Where we still have such places in Europe, like in Poland’s Bia?owie?a Forest, then Marsh Tits and Willow Tits both find places to live in different parts of the same woodland.

The Marsh Tit and the Willow Tit is very thoroughly researched and includes an extensive breadth of information. Did you encounter any challenges when developing such a detailed study of these two species?

I was lucky that there have been major studies of Marsh Tits and Willow Tits in Europe over the past century, and I have been involved with several of them in recent decades, so I was familiar with their findings. For other studies, it has never been easier to find and access published papers and reports online, and even to translate them automatically.

Nevertheless, it was still quite challenging to find many studies from Asia, which is where more than half of the world’s Marsh Tits and Willow Tits are thought to live, along with their closest relatives, the Black-bibbed Tit, Caspian Tit and Sichuan Tit. This is slowly changing, as more research is being done in China, Japan and South Korea, but there are still large gaps. In Europe, too, we still know relatively little about Marsh Tits or Willow Tits in some regions. Even in Britain, the recent discovery of a previously unknown population of Marsh Tits in the Scottish Borders shows that we still have things to learn!

What have been some of your favourite moments while researching this book? And did any of your discoveries surprise you?

It’s been a great pleasure to look back through all of the previous studies of Marsh Tits and Willow Tits and pay tribute to the dedicated researchers who spent so many years in the woods and forests, peering into the lives of these little birds. What shone through for me is just how connected the forest ecosystem really is. Marsh Tits and Willow Tits are part of a complex web of life, with some really surprising relationships. For example, Bison and Red Deer stripping bark from trees helps to create the cavities that are the Marsh Tit’s favourite nest sites. Meanwhile, Willow Tits forage on carrion from Wolf kills, which helps them to survive northern winters. At the other end of the spectrum, Marsh Tits and Willow Tits both drink nectar from blossom and might be significant pollinators of woodland shrubs, and they might also be seed dispersers for some woodland plants.

We’re just starting to understand these relationships, but in many parts of Europe they have been broken by the loss of forest species, such as large mammals. It’s exciting to think that nature restoration and rewilding could rebuild some of these ecological networks in our woodlands. Again, there’s still so much to learn about Marsh Tits and Willow Tits, but getting to know them opens a window into the wider forest ecosystem, and the more you look, the more you find.

Finally, what is occupying your time now? Are there new books on the horizon that you can tell us about?

I’m still monitoring my Marsh Tit population at Monks Wood in Cambridgeshire, coming up to 24 years of study, and I’m busy with interesting research at UKCEH on hedgerows, woodland regeneration, sustainable farming and nature restoration. In the past year I’ve been busy as the new Editor in Chief of the BTO’s scientific journal Bird Study, helping other researchers to publish their studies. I’m also still involved with research at the Biaowiea Forest in Poland, which always has exciting opportunities, and last spring I was there finding the nests of Marsh Tits, Willow Tits and Wood Warblers. The Wood Warbler is another declining woodland bird that has lots of really fascinating and surprising behaviour, and that’s another species that I think could be worth writing about.

The Marsh Tit and the Willow Tit is available to order from our online bookstore here.

Author interview with Dr. Tim Reed: Protected Species and Biodiversity – A Guide for Planners and Ecologists

Protected Species and Biodiversity: A Guide for Planners and Ecologists is a comprehensive, accessible book that collates every key element required to gather and interpret survey data for protected species.

Progressing through individual species and group tables, and providing information on planning systems, biodiversity, government guidance and its interpretation, how to secure better quality data, biodiversity net gain and more, this guide also codifies what a planner can expect from an ecologist to ensure the effective safeguarding of protected species. As such, it is an essential reference guide for planners and ecological consultants alike.

Dr. Tim Reed has had a lifelong interest in the use of data quality and survey methods as a basis for credible decision-making by those whose actions influence landscapes and protected areas. This has included developing survey methods for waders on moorland, standardising nature reserve management plan formats, chairing development groups for national-level databases, and collaborating with the EU on data standards for directives. Over the past 20 years, Tim has helped major worldwide corporate companies establish biodiversity as part of their risk-management processes, while also working on public inquiries across the UK.

We recently had the opportunity to chat to Tim about what inspired him to write a book aimed at planners and ecologists, how Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) could potentially affect protected species across the UK, the importance of technological advancements in accurate data collection and more.

Firstly, as someone who has spent most of their career working in planning and sustainable development, what inspired you to write this book?

Years ago, when working on immigration and extinctions in island bird communities, one of the things that impressed, but also worried me, was the extreme variability in the quality of data from year to year. Were the gaps in species records (apparent extinctions) real, or were they due to issues with data collection or recording? Moving onto protected areas and the related planning policy framework, the same problems with data quality surfaced there.

Later, when I began working on planning disputes it was clear that local planning authorities (LPAs) were staffed by good, but often overwhelmed, planners. A series of Association of Local Government Ecologists (ALGE) reports have confirmed this. ALGE reckoned there were issues of capacity (people/time) and competence (often limited specialist knowledge) that stopped LPAs doing what they wanted to do. These remain today.

Looking at the often frankly poor material dumped onto them by would-be developers, it was and is hard for planners to know how to address it, how to find out what’s needed, and where the gaps were and are. Suitable methods had been scattered across journals, books, and specialist documents, and were often hard to fathom. The absence of a recent one-stop synthesis of most of the material needed was the main driver for Protected Species and Biodiversity; trying to fill an acknowledged hole. The fact that Natural England and DEFRA’s guidance for Protected Species left much to be desired was a further problem. The idea of the guide was to try and provide an accessible way of seeing what needed doing. Something that would be suitable for planners, householders and developers’ ecologists alike – and for LPA planners to use and see if what had been claimed by applicants had been done properly, or not.

If the guide works, then the hope is that a better, more informed level of debate can take place. If so, better data will be provided and protected species and biodiversity will be the winners. The core methods section (Chapter 5) is suitable for protected species in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Common Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) on a gloved hand. — Common Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) by J P, via flickr.

Biodiversity Net Gain is a recent development in planning and land management. How do you think the introduction of this policy will affect protected species across the UK?

As I try to show in the last bit of the guide, BNG isn’t focused at all on protected species; delivery is still expected through protected species legislation. Yet, there is clearly a hope that BNG will sneak in more of all sorts of species, some of which may be rare or protected. Duffus et al (2024) have neatly shown that the score in the area-condition metric used by BNG isn’t related to either species richness or abundance. Instead, more information is needed, along with species surveys. If so, then they need doing well – and there is a debate to be had on that in the guide too.

This book emphasises the importance of collecting high-quality data for use in planning. As data quality improves, could there be a shift in our understanding of the UK’s condition? And could the true state of the UK’s biodiversity be worse than we initially thought?

Better knowledge, better use of standardised methods, and a better understanding of what the resultant data does or doesn’t mean, along with less use of unverified mitigation techniques: all will help us understand potential impacts of planning proposals on biodiversity a little bit better than we do now.

Better data might well show problems, but could also help in some circumstances by showing that some things are better than we thought, or by waving a flag before it is too late to act. Getting consistently reliable data will allow more meaningful actions at a local and wider scale.

Great Crested Newt by Leonora (Ellie) Enking. — Great Crested Newt by Leonora (Ellie) Enking, via flickr.

Chapter 5 offers an extensive insight into the data local authorities should collate when conducting an in-depth evaluation of protected species. Did you face any challenges in keeping this section accurate?

Of course things do, and will continue to, change. Even when the first draft of the text was completed there were basic changes in NE/DEFRA guidance that required reappraisals and revisions. The species guidance was equally dynamic. So, yes, it was tricky keeping up to date. The role of the guide is to bring together what we knew at the time of writing in an accessible way. If things change dramatically, there may be a case for a revised version in 5-10 years’ time. But in the meantime, it is there and might as well help people trying to understand what needs doing, or where claims need contesting, and why.

How important do you think technological advancements, such as bioacoustic methods, will play in collecting more accurate data?

Technology is critical in helping us better interpret the environment. For example, I use a range of bat recorders, and recorders have got better, and more efficient with time.

Technological improvements are fine, but they still come with error terms. Knowing and stating the limitations of methods and data are critical to help us understand what we can and can’t do with a set of data. In Public Inquiries, I regularly saw untenable claims relating to bat data that rarely matched the reality of the technology used. Query this, and the case often began to fragment. eDNA has its own issues too. So, yes in principle to advances in technology, but yes also to clear health warnings and stated limitations in any planning submissions that use them.

Hazel dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius) by Frank Vassen. — Hazel dormouse (Muscardinus avellanarius) by Frank Vassen, via flickr.

What do you hope readers and practitioners will take away from your book?

The main message is that good data is key to an informed discussion between developers, opponents and planners. Being able to see what is needed, how it might be done, and why the precepts of BS 42020 (Biodiversity Standard) are core to the process. Openness, transparency and knowing what is needed will help us all – and biodiversity in particular. Poor data, bad methods and doubtful claims won’t help. If this guide helps LPAs pick some of those up, then it was worth writing.

Finally, what is occupying your time at the moment? Are you working on any other projects we can hear about?

Although now largely retired, I continue to write a blog on matters that interest me: serious and whimsical. I’m standing down now from Chairing a Friend’s Group for an island nature reserve. Having written the management plan for the site, the dim and distant origins of the island intrigue me, and there are plans in the pipework for a small book on the history and ecology of the island.

Protected Species and Biodiversity: A Guide for Planners and Ecologists is available from our online bookstore.

Author interview with Ursula Clare Franklin: Mission Penguin

Following the loss of her husband, Ursula Franklin embarked on a mission to see and photograph every species of penguin in their natural habitat. In this breathtaking book, join Ursula on expeditions to some of the most remote places on earth, from the Falklands to Tristan da Cunha and Antipodes Islands, in search of these much-loved birds. Interspersed with stories from Ursula’s adventures, each chapter explores a different species of penguin, detailing their identifying features, the ever-increasing threats they’re facing, and the conservation efforts needed to ensure future generations can experience the wonder of these animals.

Ursula Franklin is a keen wildlife photographer who grew up in Yorkshire, and is now based in Somerset. She developed a keen interest in photography when she was a child and her wonderful husband supported her passion until his sudden death in 2012. As a way to process her grief and heal, alongside her husband’s constant encouragement for her to ‘do something with her photography’, Mission Penguin was born.

We recently had the opportunity to talk to Ursula about her expedition, how she thinks we can we work to protect these vital species in the future, her favourite memories throughout this journey and more.

Plus, enter our prize draw to be in with the chance of winning one of four exclusive Mission Penguin prints here.

Having travelled around the world and seen every species of penguin in every habitat, which species surprised you the most and why?

Like many people, I had always associated penguins with snow, so it was amazing to discover that some species breed in forests, others in the desert and one species even at the equator. The species that really surprised me, however, and for a totally different reason, was the Royal Penguin. This species breeds on Macquarie Island, and in the north of the island are the rusted remains of huge digestors which were once used to extract oil firstly from seals and then when they ran out, penguins. Millions of King and Royal Penguins were slaughtered leaving just a few thousand birds when the barbaric practice was finally stopped. Having suffered years of persecution by man, I marvelled at how trusting the birds were. As I sat on the beach, groups of Royal Penguins waddled up to me, inquisitively studying my boot laces, camera bag and equipment. They were so curious and seemed utterly fearless. It was hard to imagine humankind betraying such trust. Luckily, over the last 100 years, their numbers have steadily increased and in 2022 they were finally taken off the list of near-threatened species (IUCN red list). Hopefully they will continue to increase despite the human-induced climate change crisis.

Royal penguins waddling across Sandy Bay, Macquarie Island.

You were lucky enough to witness the full, daily lifecycle of a number of penguin colonies by watching them from dawn until dusk, and I particularly loved the photographs of the Gentoo penguins on Saunders Beach at sunset. What does the typical day in the life of a penguin look like?

A day in the life of a penguin varies hugely depending on the time of year, especially during the breeding season, or when moulting. At other times of year, the birds spend their time foraging in the open ocean. During their annual moult, which usually lasts around 3 weeks, they are no longer waterproof so cannot go into the ocean to feed – instead they must stay on land living solely off their fat reserves. The breeding season is when they spend time on both land and sea. For most species, males and females share incubation of the egg/s and often take it in turns to go foraging to feed the hungry chick/s whilst the other parent stays to protect it/them. With some species, as the chicks get older, they are left in a crèche, or some stay in a burrow, allowing both parents to go to the ocean to collect food for their increasing appetites. The birds often leave at dawn when foraging, and the length of time they are away depends on how far they must swim to find food. For some species, warming ocean temperatures have shifted prey populations further from the colony leading to chick starvation and mass breeding failure. When the parents do return with food, some species engage their older chicks in long food chases before finally stopping to feed them. This is done to build up the strength of the chicks prior to fledging and is hilarious to watch. The adults then stay with their chicks at the colony overnight before the whole process starts again early the next morning.

A Gentoo penguin colony at sunset, Saunders Island, the Falklands.

You travelled around the world and have seen so many different places as a result of this project – what was your favourite memory and why?

This is such a hard question. I could say the very beginning of the mission on the Antarctic Peninsula with the sighting of my first penguin – this was a Chinstrap Penguin and has since become my favourite species, probably because the black strap under their chin makes it look as if they are smiling. Or I could go to the very end of the mission at Snow Hill Island with the Emperor Penguin colony, which was like being on the film set of the movie Happy feet and a very fitting and emotional accomplishment of Mission Penguin.

My favourite travel destination, however, is the Falkland Islands. With fewer than 4000 people, beautiful coastlines and over one million penguins of five species I’m sure you can understand why. My favourite island is Saunders Island and my favourite location there is ‘the neck’. The accommodation is very basic and although small can technically sleep 8 in 4 sets of narrow bunk beds. Incredibly, on my last visit, my friend Hazel and I were the only occupants – apart from the penguins of course! What a joy and privilege to be the only humans sharing their world and a memory that will stay with me forever.

The Neck, Saunders Island, The Falklands.

Having witnessed first-hand the negative effects of both climate change and human activity on penguin colonies, and their respective habitats, how can we work to protect these vital species in the future?

Penguins are key indicator species for the health of our oceans and the effects of global warming. Although there are no penguins naturally occurring in the Northern Hemisphere, our everyday actions here will ultimately filter down to the Southern Hemisphere and affect these animals.

One of the most threatened penguins is the African Penguin, and research suggests that this species could become extinct in the wild by 2035 unless we act now. Whilst we have little influence on African governments regarding marine ‘no-take’ zones, limiting coastal development, (oil refineries etc) can still help. For example, all of us can reduce our use of plastics (especially single use), and switch to renewable energy sources.

For more direct and immediate help we can also sponsor penguin nest boxes. African Penguins naturally lay their eggs in burrows which are dug out of layers of guano (bird poo!) laid down over hundreds of years. In the 1800’s most of this guano was collected and shipped to the UK to be used as fertiliser. As a result, there has been a 99% decline in the population over the last 100 years. As land temperatures continue to rise, penguins now nesting out in the open air are either dying from hyperthermia or abandoning their nests to save themselves, leading to mass breeding failure. Carefully researched and crafted nest-boxes that replicate the conditions of a guano burrow are proving effective – to help visit the Saving Penguins website.

A shortage of suitable nesting sites mean breeding African penguins are exposed to the full heat of the sun often with disastrous consequences.

Photographing every species of penguin is no small feat, especially alongside a full-time job! What were some of the biggest challenges you faced and what did you learn along the way?

When I announced to a friend that I was going to photograph every species of penguin in their natural habitat, I had no idea how many species there were or where they could be found. My research took me to places that I had never even heard of and to say many of them were ‘off the main tourist route’ would be an understatement! Simply getting to the required and often incredibly remote locations was definitely the first challenge. Many of these are also found in the roughest oceans in the world, and I suffer dreadfully from sea sickness. Needless to say, I was often very unwell but even that could not detract from the awe and wonder of these amazing expeditions. Once at the location, sometimes I only managed fleeting glimpses of just a few penguins of that species so not many photographs, but I appreciate how very lucky I was to actually see and photograph every penguin species on the first attempt.

The weather also presented significant challenges (especially the wind), and trying to photograph from a Zodiac (Rigid Inflatable Boat) while being tossed around in large swells was at times nigh on impossible. I also needed to keep my equipment warm in Antarctica and dry in the humidity of the Galápagos. Sunshine, although lovely in itself, also made photographing black and white birds more difficult than normal in terms of achieving correct exposure. I certainly learned to tolerate imperfections but also became a better photographer along the way. I also witnessed firsthand how tenacious and resilient penguins are – characteristics that we can all learn from.

The strong wind blowing the crests of these Moseley’s rockhopper penguins also made photographing them more challenging.

Mission Penguin came to fruition as a result of loss and grief, and throughout the book I found it heartwarming to read about the healing effects of your expeditions. How important do you think nature is in healing from grief, and what are the benefits of spending time exploring the natural world?

Nature is indeed an incredible healer. I have lovely memories of my mother taking us out on nature walks when we were young as we didn’t have much money, and nature was all around us and free! I think from that age I learned to appreciate the wonder of nature and delight in simple things, so when grief struck, getting out in nature and reconnecting with life and beauty was essential to my healing. Nature stimulates all of our senses which certainly helped me to feel fully alive even in the context of death. What inescapable joy to hear the birds singing, see the dappled light in a woodland glade, smell the flowers, taste the salty sea air, and hug a tree! Being immersed in the natural world really helps to put things into perspective and to feel part of something much greater than ourselves. In nature I feel fully grounded which gives me an inner peace and the strength to keep going, one step at a time.

Southern rockhopper penguins, Pebble Island, the Falklands.

What’s taking up your time at the moment? Are you working on any other projects or planning any upcoming expeditions that we can hear about?

Following the completion of Mission Penguin I have spent more time delighting in the natural world on my doorstep. In the last couple of years, I have finally taken up gardening, which my husband would have found hysterical having tried to persuade me all our married life! My focus however is gardening with wildlife in mind, and I think we would have had very different definitions of a ‘weed’! I am also rewilding one large area and quickly learned the hard way that rewilding is not the same as letting things go wild! I am still taking lots of nature photographs and readers can see more of my images here.

As well as writing the book, I started giving talks on Mission Penguin to local groups and this quickly expanded to other topics as they keep inviting me back for more. I now have about 6 talks in my repertoire so that is keeping me busy as well as continuing with my singing – another fabulous activity for wellbeing.

King penguins returning from a fishing trip.

I am a firm believer in making the most of every moment. We only have one life, so live it well. Fill it with friends, joy, laughter – and of course, penguins.

Enter our competition to be in with the chance of winning one of four exclusive Mission Penguin prints signed by author Ursula Franklin here – good luck!

Mission Penguin is available from our online bookstore here.

Author Interview with Guy Shrubsole: The Lie of the Land

Brought to you by the Sunday Times bestselling author Guy Shrubsole, The Lie of the Land discusses how a handful of wide-scale landowners are responsible for the destruction and degradation of our vital landscapes, painting a humbling picture of some of the most notable failures of land stewardship in Britain’s recent history. However, Guy also presents a glimmer of hope as he relays the stories of those trying to help nature recover, from small-scale farmers to community groups and individuals. In doing so he gives the public hope that we can all become custodians of the countryside once more.

Author portrait of Guy Shrubsole in a forest. — Photograph by Nick White

Guy Shrubsole is a researcher, writer and environmental campaigner who previously worked as an investigator for Friends of the Earth, and is co-founder of the Right to Roam movement. He was Policy and Campaigns Coordinator at Rewilding Britain for a number of years and has published a number of books including Who Owns England? and The Lost Rainforests of Britain.

We recently had the opportunity to interview Guy about The Lie of the Land, where we discussed what inspired him to write this book, how the privatisation of land has affected its conservation and preservation, what he hopes the reader can learn from his work and more.

Firstly, can you tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write The Lie of the Land?

I’ve been thinking – and campaigning – about the issues in The Lie of the Land for some years. Witnessing moorland being deliberately set ablaze for the purposes of driven grouse shooting was an early spark; as was reading about the landowners who drained the Fens, and the vast wet commons that once dominated Cambridgeshire which teemed with fish, wildfowl and eels. In some ways The Lie of the Land is a natural sequel to my first book, Who Owns England? – taking its analysis that half of England belongs to just 1% of the population and looking at the ecological consequences of this.

Have there been any instances where private land ownership has benefitted the environment and increased its accessibility for the public, and if so, what can be taken from this?

Absolutely, I discuss in the book how there are some brilliant nature-friendly farmers and landowners doing great work – heroes like Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell with their rewilding work at Knepp, or Jake Fiennes at Holkham, or James Rebanks in the Lake District. But I argue that we can’t simply rely on these few ‘good stewards’ to turn the nature crisis around on their own. We need to call out bad practice (as Fiennes does in his book Land Healer) and make all landowners more accountable to the public for how they’re treating the land. Look at how England’s peat bogs – a vast natural store of carbon and a crucial national asset in the fight against the climate crisis – have been mistreated by the 150 or so estates that own them and set fire to them each October. Look at the institutional investors who own great swathes of the Fens – organisations like the Church Commissioners – and how they continue to profit from what is essentially a ‘carbon bomb’, the wasted peat soils of the fenland losing fertility and carbon with each passing year.

The trouble is, a lot of estates and lobby groups for landowners hide behind the assertion that they are the ‘custodians of the countryside’, who can be trusted to look after it without the need for public oversight or pesky environmental regulations. But as James Rebanks says, “I’m a very proud defender of good farming, but the ‘custodians of the countryside’ argument only washes if we are genuinely doing that – otherwise it’s self-serving nonsense.”

Those Blue Hills by Jim Roberts Gallery. — Those Blue Hills by Jim Roberts Gallery, via flickr.

What do you think needs to be implemented to increase the perceived viability of community land ownership and management, compared to privately owned spaces? And how do you think we can increase the quantity of community land ownership going forward?

We need to give communities the power to take ownership of more land, for starters. That means introducing a Community Right to Buy in England, like the one they’ve had in Scotland for the past twenty years – a set of powers that has led to communities buying up half a million acres of Scotland. I visit one such community buyout in the book, Langholm Moor – a former grouse moor that was bought by the people of Langholm a couple of years ago: they’re now turning it into a nature reserve. No more moorland burning, no more predator persecution: they’re going to re-wet the peat bogs and are allowing birch and rowan to naturally regenerate up the hillsides.

We need to have that opportunity in England, too. And the good news is, the new Labour government announced in its first King’s Speech that it will introduce a Community Right to Buy in England. But we’ll have to campaign hard to make sure it happens, and that landed interests don’t water it down. And we need to unlock our own imaginations, to start to dream bigger about how communities could take control of land and manage it for nature. As the Scottish land reform campaigner Alastair McIntosh has written, community ownership of land “creates a new constellation of possibility.” Let’s reach for the stars.

Les coquelicots by Dmitry Djouce, via flickr.

I particularly enjoyed your last book, The Lost Rainforests of Britain, and it really opened my eyes to the remarkable habitats around us that many people, like myself, never knew existed. Do you think landowners are aware of the importance, in some cases rarity, of the land they own? And how has the privatisation of the UK’s rainforests affected their conservation and preservation?

Thanks! I think an increasing number of landowners and farmers are now aware of temperate rainforests – after writing Lost Rainforests, one of the loveliest messages I got was from a Devon sheep farmer who had discovered the very rare Hazel Gloves fungus growing in an old hazel grove on her farm. And it’s been really encouraging to see such snowballing momentum to bring back Britain’s rainforests since the book was published – like the Wildlife Trusts announcing rainforest restoration projects from Skiddaw in Cumbria to West Muchlarnick in Cornwall, and the Cornish landowner Merlin Hanbury-Tenison doing great work on his farm at Cabilla.

Unfortunately, not all landowners recognise the importance of the habitats they own – even sometimes when they’ve been officially ‘notified’ of their existence through the land being designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). In the book I tell the story of the landowner who destroyed part of the River Lugg SSSI – and how his example is sadly only one of many instances since the first SSSIs were designated in the 1950s. Ultimately, if we’re to protect our remaining habitats, I think we cannot only rely on voluntary initiatives by enlightened owners, but have to give precious habitats strong legal protections – and make sure our environmental watchdogs, like Natural England, have real teeth.

What do you hope the reader can learn from your book?

I hope that readers get angry about the problems, take inspiration from the suggested solutions, and get out there and campaign for them to become reality!

Mar Lodge Estate by John Knight, via flickr.

The final chapter of your book details your 10-step proposal. At which point during the writing process did you develop these, and how did these recommendations adapt and evolve throughout the researching and writing process of The Lie of the Land?

In all of my books, I aim to set out clear political recommendations – for me the point of writing is not just to interpret the world, but to change it! From the outset I had quite a clear sense that all my recommendations in The Lie of the Land would be about how we can democratise decision-making over land, make landowners more accountable and give all of us a greater say over how land is used. That, to me, seems to be our last, best hope of turning the nature crisis around.

My own feelings of optimism about fixing this mess we’re in were definitely boosted by the conversations I had, and site visits I made in the process of researching the book. There are loads of communities yearning to look after land, loads of river guardian groups blowing the whistle on river pollution, and plenty of examples from other countries – and from our own nation’s history – of how we can protect and restore nature and do a better job than we are currently. But we need some policy changes at a national level to unlock these energies and scale them up. As William Gibson (allegedly) once said, ‘the future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.’

Are you working on any other books or projects that we can hear about?

Steady on – I’ve just written this one! Currently I’m enjoying meeting with lots of people across the country to get the ideas out there – and I am campaigning hard for these policy changes. I also work with the Right to Roam campaign (you can join our mailing list at www.righttoroam.org.uk). But I definitely would like to write more books in the future!

The Lie of the Land is available from our bookstore.

Author interview with Stephen Moss: The Starling

Marking the sixth volume in Stephen Moss’ Bird Biography series, The Starling delves into the fascinating life of one of our most talented and surprising birds. Starlings are renowned for their iridescent plumage, impressive vocal abilities and stunning murmurations, and this captivating tale explores how they’ve shaped our world, inspired art and music through the decades, influenced the agricultural industry and more.

Stephen is a naturalist, author and broadcaster well known for his work with the BBC Natural History Unit working on landmark programmes such as Springwatch and The Nature of Britain. He currently holds the position of senior lecturer in creative writing at Bath Spa University and is also president of the Somerset Wildlife Trust.

Stephen recently took time out of his busy schedule to answer some of our questions about his latest book The Starling, including what inspired him to write about this species, how his opinions of this bird has changed throughout the writing process and more.

The Starling marks the sixth volume in your bestselling Bird Biographies series. What inspired you to turn your attention to Starlings for this latest volume?

I always look for three things when it comes to choosing a subject for a bird biography.

First, does the species show some unusual or specific behaviour or habit which mark it out from other species? For example, the Robin’s habit of singing and holding territory in winter, the Wren’s bizarre breeding behaviour where the male builds several ‘cock’s nests’ for the female to inspect, or the Swallows’ epic migrations.

Second, does it have a strong cultural presence – in music, literature, mythology, popular culture and day-to-day society? Examples include the Robin’s association with Christmas, the Swallow’s position as a herald of spring, the Swan’s royal connections, and the owl’s reputation as a mysterious bird of the night.

And third, does the species relate to both me and the reader? Basically, is it one of Britain’s favourite birds, and if so, why? It also helps if I like the bird and have had a lifelong connection with it – which is true of all the species I have featured in the series so far – as then I can add personal anecdotes from my life as a birder.

Just like the previous subjects in the series – the Robin, Wren, Swallow, Swan, and owl(s), the Starling fits the bill in all three of these categories. It is a very sociable bird – more so than almost any other species during both the breeding season and in autumn and winter, when they gather in those famous murmurations. There are also plenty of historical and cultural references, including the fact that Mozart kept a pet starling which used to whistle his new compositions, and which he mourned in a solemn burial ceremony after it died. Most of all, we have a love-hate relationship with this bird, giving it a real ambivalence in our eyes – which makes it a fascinating subject for a book. And as you mention later on, like most of us, I grew up with Starlings. I now live on the Somerset Levels, just a stone’s throw from the famous winter gatherings, which I have now enjoyed for almost twenty years.

This book explores how starlings have influenced both farming and the arts throughout the years – were there any discoveries that surprised you on this line of inquiry?

The biggest surprise was that the widely known and oft-repeated story that Starlings were introduced into North America by a German emigrant who wanted to bring every bird mentioned in Shakespeare to the New World turns out to be mostly a myth! He wasn’t German (though he did come from a high-ranking New York family of German descent); he had no interest in Shakespeare, and most importantly he wasn’t the first person to release Starlings into the wild in the USA – that happened over 20 years earlier. Check out the chapter on ‘The Global Starling ‘to find out more details!

You mentioned having been around starlings for most of your life in the first chapter. Has your research and writing of this book altered your opinion of these birds?

Definitely! I do have a real soft spot for Starlings – though I also agree with the expert scientist Chris Feare that they look like second-hand car salesmen when they walk! I love the fact that they live alongside us but don’t really care about us – just going along with their day-to-day lives.

I also discovered a lot more about the science of their murmurations, and also about our human response to them, which ranges from loathing to love.

Finally, their ability to adapt to locations around the world where they have been introduced – including South Africa, Australia and New Zealand as well as North America – is also very interesting, and again tells us a lot about our ambivalent attitudes towards these fascinating and often overlooked birds.

Starlings are often regarded with distaste and annoyance by many. Are there any common misconceptions impacting people’s perceptions of this overlooked species? And how can we move towards acceptance, and ideally, appreciation of these birds?

As my old friend and colleague Bill Oddie famously said, people think of Starlings as ‘bird table bullies’! And yet those same people who don’t like them in their garden love watching their spectacular murmurations! They are also often overlooked – like all common, familiar and widespread species, we tend to take them for granted.

Yet paradoxically, as we saw when another common and familiar bird, the House Sparrow, started to go missing from our towns and cities, when we begin to lose a species, we do begin to appreciate them more!

Starlings are in decline, and almost all urban roosts like the ones in the middle of London, including the famous one in Leicester Square that I used to see when I was growing up, are no more. Fortunately roosts in the wider countryside do appear to be making a bit of a comeback.

If anyone still doesn’t like Starlings, I would urge them to come down to Somerset on evenings between November and February, where we still get a quarter of a million or more Starlings murmurating together before going to roost on the Avalon marshes – it really is truly incredible!

How do you think the historical representation of ‘pest species’, such as Starlings, has affected our attitudes towards them, and how do you think we should approach the somewhat controversial topic of conservation vs agriculture vs pest control in the future?

I don’t like the word ‘pest’, though it is at least a bit less loaded than ‘vermin’! As I discuss in the book, Starlings have always been unpopular with farmers, even though they predate on many so-called insect pests in the soil, such as leatherjackets. They do eat fruit and can also cause problems with their droppings, but overall, I think they are less harmful than many people think.

I also believe that we tend to dislike species, especially those that live alongside us, that remind us of ourselves. This includes gulls, crows and of course starlings, which often seem to behave rather like us, and we don’t like that!

Starling Murmuration - Eastbridge. — Starling Murmuration – Eastbridge by Airwolfhound, via flickr.

I, along with many of your readers, will be excited to see where this series will go next. Have you begun working on the next book? And can you give us any clues as to what comes next?

I have, although I am taking a bit of a break from writing as I am trying to get a better work-life balance and travel to see birds around the world – including Starlings (exotic species in Africa and Asia as well as our own familiar species!). I have long wanted to do the House Sparrow, as it has such a fascinating historical relationship with human beings, and lives closer alongside us than any other species of bird. As a result – just like the Starling – we are very ambivalent towards it.

When we chose the Starling, we had a shortlist of three, the others being Skylark and Kingfisher; yet bizarrely, when I did an X/Twitter poll amongst 2,000 people, the vote split almost exactly to one third for each!

I can’t do some species that readers of the series have suggested, either because, like the Blackbird and Blue Tit, they don’t have very unusual or distinctive behaviour or cultural importance; or because others have already written similar (and excellent) books – such as Sam Lee on the Nightingale and Charles Foster and Sarah Gibson on the Swift.

Currently I am keen on either the Peregrine Falcon or the Puffin, both of which have really strong biological and cultural aspects to their lives – I’d be fascinated to hear which of these species NHBS customers – and your excellent staff – think I should choose!

STEPHEN MOSS is a lifelong birder, broadcaster and bestselling author, whose books have appeared in almost twenty different countries. The Starling is the sixth volume in his celebrated ‘Bird Biographies’ series, following the Robin, Wren, Swallow, Swan, and Owl – and of course The Twelve Birds of Christmas, which featured the dozen species in the famous festive carol. In total these have sold over 100,000 copies, and been translated into Dutch, German and Chinese.

The Starling is available to pre-order from our bookstore here.

Author interview with Richard A. Fortey: Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind

For years, Richard Fortey has found the uniqueness of fungi fascinating, from their strange forms, colours, reputation, rapid appearance and disappearance, to their often unseen role within the natural world. Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind takes the reader on an enthralling journey through Fortey’s forays searching for the strangest, most extraordinary and most delicious species. Focusing on a selection of the larger fungi and a handful of microfungi, this charming book celebrates their profusion, diversity and importance.

Richard Fortey is a palaeontologist, nature historian, writer and presenter who worked as the Natural History Museum’s senior palaeontologist until 2006. Richard has served on the councils of the Systematics Association, Palaeontographical Society, British Mycological Society and more. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1997 and was awarded an OBE in the 2023 New Years Honours for services to palaeontology and geology.

We recently spoke to Richard about his book, his first introduction to fungi, his hopes for the future of mycological research and more.

The fungal kingdom is enigmatic, and in recent years it has gripped the attention of naturalists and the wider public alike, thanks to books such as this one. Do you remember your first introduction to fungi that sent you on this path of discovery?

As a child in Ealing on the fringes of London, we were lucky enough to have a large garden. I remember wondering at a great clump of glistening ink caps that appeared around a rotting stump – apparently overnight. In a day or two they had turned into a black soup. About the only book available then (I must have been about ten years old) was The Observer’s Book of Mushrooms and Toadstools, but I managed to identify our stump fungus as Coprinus micaceus. Finding others in the book became a challenge.

Fungi are everywhere, spores floating through the air, mycelial networks underneath our feet, and even in the deep ocean. Can you describe one of your most unexpected encounters with the fungal kind whilst compiling this book?

At my sister-in-law’s house in the rainforest of New South Wales, there were a host of fungi on the ground and on fallen trees. One of them growing on a trunk seemed to be an old and edible friend – the Oyster Mushroom. But when I went out in the dark, I was amazed to see it glowing with a ghostly greenish light. It was an Aussie double of our oyster, and a decidedly poisonous one. I used a photo of it taken by its own light in the book, and it still looks quite unearthly even now I know its identity.

You open the book describing an enchanting trip to the hills of northern Italy for a celebration of the foragers’ favourite, the Bolete. If you were to organise a mycologically focused celebration in the UK, which location would you choose?

When it is in top form it is hard to beat the New Forest for variety and number of species. Boletes used to abound there, and every kind of milkcap and brittlegill still does, and it is about the only place to see the extraordinary Nail Fungus emerging from pony dung.

In your book, you allude to the challenges of understanding taxonomy as a novice or intermediate mushroom fan through the lens of species names. However, you also highlight the importance of both binomial nomenclature and common vernacular names. Do you have a favourite species name, both scientific and common? And to take this further do you have any personal/pet names that you find yourself using for species?

The common small bracket that grows in tiers on dead logs is known as the Turkey Tail – and it really does look like a fanned-out tail of this big bird, with a neat white rim and a neatly zoned dark upper surface. The best scientific name really doesn’t beat around the nomenclatural bush, and it must be Phallus impudicus. The Stinkhorn indeed resembles an upright human reproductive organ and even retains a distinctively scrotal sac at its base. And it smells like rotting meat – the species name refers to that. As for pet names, my young nephew always referred to the beautiful but poisonous scarlet Fly Agaric as “Killer Diller” – and that name seems to have stuck.

As someone with a long career in the sciences, a lifelong mycologist, and an inspiring naturalist, which direction would you like to see mycology take in the next few years as it expands as both a field of research and a subject of interest?

There’s no question that DNA studies are taking mycology into a new direction – not least enabling us to ‘see’ fungi even without having their fruitbodies, for example, by sampling soils in different habitats. I believe that fungi are even better indicators of environmental health than our plants, and I really hope that conservation bodies – and farmers – realize that they need to fully recognize the contribution of fungi to total biodiversity. There are so many different species that identification often poses a challenge, and I personally welcome the development of apps to help, but there is no substitute for getting down on hands and knees on the forest floor. If a fraction of those who make birds their hobby took up mycology it would do no end of good to public awareness.

Finally, what’s occupying your time at the moment? Are you working on any other projects that you can tell us about?

I have had an ongoing project raising fungus gnats – which are also very diverse. One large fungus can feed a hundred tiny flies, and these in turn feed insectivores. Their importance in the food chain has been underestimated. Which species of fungi feed which gnats is still incompletely known, however this is the kind of project I can do in a small woodland like my own.

Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind is available from our online bookstore.

Author interview with Stuart Ball and Roger Morris: Hoverflies of Britain and Ireland

Hoverflies of Britain and Ireland is a beautifully illustrated photographic field guide that details the hoverfly species readily available in Great Britain. This revised and updated third edition details 13 additional species and features more than 840 stunning photographs, alongside a host of other improvements to aid reliable identification. As such, this is the most accessible, authoritative and easy-to-use guide available, and a must-read for all entomologists and naturalists alike.

Stuart Ball and Roger Morris have been running the Hoverfly Recording Scheme since 1991 and published the Provisional Atlas of British Hoverflies in 2000. Stuart and Roger both worked as entomologists for the statutory nature conservation agencies, are both active members of the Dipterists Forum, a society that promotes the study of flies, and have subsequently run many hoverfly identification courses prior to their retirement.

We recently had the opportunity to talk to both Stuart and Roger about the book, including how they first became interested in working with hoverflies, where the ‘new species’ that are now detailed in the third edition have come from and more.

Firstly, can you tell us a little about yourselves and your history of working with hoverflies?

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, we worked for the Nature Conservancy Council’s ‘Invertebrate Site Register’ and were active entomologists with a broad interest in flies. Alan Stubbs, our boss at the time, was looking to re-vitalise the Hoverfly Recording Scheme following Philip Entwistle’s retirement and twisted our arms to take it on. The idea was to combine Stuart’s interest in computing and data interpretation, and Roger’s interest in hoverflies, to try to get the scheme back off the ground. At that time there were about two cubic metres of record cards and about 50,000 computerised records. We took the project on, knowing that we would have to computerise those cards, check the existing computerised data and draw in data from numerous other datasets. Little did we realise what it would entail and how it would change our lives! We produced a provisional Atlas in 2000, a second one in 2011 and now have maps available online. Although we are still running the scheme, we do want to see it safely transition to a new generation before we become too long in the tooth!

Volucella zonaria, Britain's biggest hoverfly enjoying the buddleia om the summer sun. — Volucella zonaria by Martin Cooper. via flickr.

You are both involved in organising and managing the database of the Hoverfly Recording Scheme. Can you tell us a little bit about it and why the scheme is important?

We split responsibility – Stuart manages the database and deals with data import and final validation processes, whilst Roger deals with day-to-day contact with recorders, including verification of iRecord data and active engagement via the UK Hoverflies Facebook group. The dataset now comprises over 1.8 million records and is the largest dataset for an insect group, except for Lepidoptera and Odonata. The size of the dataset, combined with the unique ecological significance that arises from their various larval feeding strategies, makes hoverflies an excellent subject for many lines of research. The most obvious one has been interest in pollinators, but there are growing avenues of interest in hoverflies because they are sensitive to climate change and also because they are often highly habitat specific. Scheme data is also used in the triennial ‘State of Nature’ reporting.

There are 13 additional species included in this updated edition. Where have these ‘new’ species come from?

When we started work on the new edition there was scope to expand the book, but obviously much less scope to completely re-organise its structure. The species chosen were mainly included because experience has shown them to feature among the species whose photos are posted online and, therefore, people want to know about them. One big change we have made has been to make sure that all Eristalis species are covered and that we have a key to assist in their identification.

Hoverfly perched on a green plant with seeds. — Hoverfly by nmahieu, via flickr.

The third edition includes a new section on putting data to good use. Why was this important for you?

Our objective from the onset has been to produce a book that is somewhat different from a traditional identification guide. We wanted to make sure that readers thought about both the animal they saw and its larval biology. Moreover, we wanted to encourage high-quality recording. Our background in nature conservation has taught us that the biggest impediment to insect conservation is a lack of reliable data. So, we felt it was necessary to show readers how records might be used and what messages they can convey. The use of models to investigate aspects of wildlife biology and conservation is relatively new, so showing readers that data can be used for a lot more than just ‘dots on maps’ is essential if we are to foster an ongoing high-quality recording community.

Traditionally, hoverfly guides use dichotomous keys as the primary aid for identification. What challenges did you face in producing an identification guide based on photographs and why did you feel that a photographic guide was the right choice for this book?

When we originally developed the book, it was not our intention to replace the existing monographs which include full keys, such as British Hoverflies (Stubbs & Falk 2002), Hoverflies of Northwest Europe (van Veen 2010) and the newer Hoverflies of Britain and North-West Europe (Bot & van de Meutter 2023). Our intention was to produce a companion to these books which illustrated the key features using field photos of live flies and close-up shots of specimens to make the identification process more accessible. The huge growth in records coming from photos posted online meant that we especially wanted to target photographers who wish to put a name to the animals in their pictures. Moreover, had we used traditional keys, the book would have been 400+ pages long and would have been considerably more expensive. Britain’s Hoverflies was quite a brave move for WILDGuides at the time because they had not tackled such a large insect family. The design and the contents had to be marketable, appealing and affordable to people who might not normally buy a book on flies. Coming up with guidance that does not involve keys has been a challenge and we must credit Rob Still for the design inspiration and turning our rough ideas into something workable. Since that first edition, the book has evolved and expanded. It is now a lot bigger, but we have held to our basic belief that it should be complimentary to these other works rather than a replacement.

Syritta pipiens - Thick-legged Hoverfly taking nectar from a small, yellow flower. — Syritta pipiens – Thick-legged Hoverfly by Nikk, via flickr.

This updated edition includes revised maps, flight-period charts and population trends for hoverfly species across Britain. Have you observed any changes in behaviour or distribution in response to developing environmental challenges? And do we have a clear idea of how these insects are likely to be impacted in the future?

All insects are responding to a plethora of environmental changes, but we are in a better position to investigate the challenges facing hoverflies because there is such a big dataset and new data arrives in volumes that we could only have dreamt of 30 years ago. Some species are expanding their range, while for others the frequency with which they are recorded is diminishing and/or their range is contracting. Species that were once at the edge of their European range have moved northwards, some quite dramatically. Several new species have arrived, apparently under their own steam, as their European ranges have expanded, but others have been assisted by lax biosecurity. A few species have disappeared from south-east England or are in the process of doing so.

It might be assumed that the twin evils of habitat loss and agricultural intensification (including pesticides) are primarily responsible for these changes; however, we think that climate change is having a far more profound impact than is currently accepted. Flies have very thin-skinned larvae and are highly susceptible to changes in humidity, so increases in the frequency and intensity of heatwaves and droughts will have a big impact on them. This sensitivity makes them important indicators – they are arguably climate change canaries that help to explain why so much of Britain’s precious biodiversity is disappearing. Flies are at the bottom of the food chain, so if you lose flies there will be fewer insectivorous birds and mammals, let alone predacious invertebrates such as wasps and spiders.

Hoverflies of Britain and Ireland is published by WILDGuides and is available to pre-order from our online bookstore.

Author interview with Gabriel Hartmann: Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds, Volume 1: Introduction

This book (or rather book series, since it will be more than just one book) has been an incredibly long time in the making, and the sheer scale of the project alone makes it a huge achievement. What were the main challenges you came across and how were they overcome?

Our project began in 1998 when the French publisher Delachaux et Niestlé requested us to create a new feather identification guide based on colour photos. The illustrations of feathers in our Atlas are arranged according to a unique, recognisable pattern on a standardised grey background, each of them depicting the feathers of an individual bird, which allows readers to grasp the essence of different feather types at a glance. We use a method of directly scanning feathers on a flatbed scanner that was developed at the University of Amsterdam. But printing costs were prohibitive. Print-on-demand technology made it possible to produce smaller, more affordable print runs. We used this technology to produce our first collective work of the Feather Research Group titled The Tail Feathers of the Birds of Central Europe. We also produced two feather calendars with a series of colour plates that were composed for our Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds as a test run to see how the colours came out in print.

In 2009, after 10 years of intense work, we produced a DVD with 1,280 colour plates featuring illustrations of feathers for 330 Passerine species. This compilation from many sources resulted in a wave of interest in our project. Meanwhile, the number of Passerine species for which colour plates were ready had nearly doubled to more than 600 species. We decided to publish our collective work under the name The Featherguide rather than any individual names. In this way, everyone in our group can identify with this eponym and no one needs to feel that anyone is adorning themselves with borrowed plumes.

The most time-consuming aspect of our work is the composition of feather images for bird species that are not found in any feather collections. Thanks to the kind support of the Feather Identification Laboratory at the Smithsonian Institution, and generous curators at Natural History Museums, it was possible to develop a technique that allows us to extract depictions of isolated feathers from photographs of bird skins. The missing part of the feather that remains in the skin is digitally added in a seamless way. A single colour plate produced in this way from many different puzzle pieces takes up to one week. With 1,350 bird species to be covered in our Atlas and our goal of illustrating all important plumages, you can imagine how many months and years this adds up to. We thank readers for their patience and interest.

Our project has inspired a number of off-shoots that will be welcome by most readers. For example, the French feather identification book by Cloé Fraigneau, which is now available under the title An Identification Guide to the Feathers of Western European Birds, emerged from the initial planning sessions we had with the director of Delachaux et Niestlé. The series of books on feather identification by Professor Hans-Heiner Bergmann was inspired by our flyer distributed at the International Ornithological Congress in 2006. A book titled Feathers: Displays of Brilliant Plumage by world–renowned photographer Robert Clark features several photographs of original feather sheets that were mounted for our Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds, each depicted on a full double page. Even Audubon Magazine featured a series of photographs of original feather sheets from our Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds. The Feather Atlas for North American Birds, published online by the Forensics Laboratory of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was inspired by our original project description in the Conference Proceedings of the International Bird Strike Committee. The Featherbase website, which gets several million visitors per year, adopted the same grey background colour that we had chosen for our illustrations and also adopted the idea of depicting wing and tail diagrams in the way that we presented in our original project description.

Group photograph of the Feather Research Group in 2016. — Group photograph of the Feather Research Group in 2016 © Jessica Louise Wright.

The study of feathers has an obvious application for species identification, particularly when dealing with bird remains. But can a study of feathers also provide us with an insight into bird evolution and taxonomy, or indeed other areas of research?

Yes, indeed, much can be learned on these topics through the study of feathers. Subtle variations in the phenotype constitute the raw material for natural selection to act upon. Through the study of feathers, we can gain a deeper understanding of evolution. The high amount of phenotypic plasticity in bird wings is a clear example of evolution in progress. Many species exhibit subtle fluctuations in the extent and depth of emarginations on their primaries, resulting in different numbers of slots in their wings between different individuals. Another area of phenotypic plasticity is unusual variations in the number of flight-feathers. Our Feather Research Group compiled a large body of such variations from scientific literature and from our own research.

While feathers were not unique to birds, emarginations are. Birds as we know them today are thought to have evolved from Mesozoic stem birds that coexisted with feathered dinosaurs. The only line that survived the cataclysmic event on Yucatan 66 million years ago evolved emarginations in their wings. If we consider birds as a class of their own, then the feature that distinguishes birds from feathered dinosaurs is the presence of emarginations. The evolution of emarginations can bring clarity into today’s scientific discussion on the origin of birds, which largely portrays birds as living dinosaurs, thereby blurring the line between reptiles and birds. Emarginations make birds unique. Neither bats nor insects nor pterosaurs have emarginations in their wings. Not all bird families living today have emarginations in their wings, giving rise to the question whether these bird families never evolved emarginations or whether their emarginations disappeared during the course of evolution. Emarginations can be lost either through the evolution of very narrow, pointed wings or through devolution into flightlessness.

Whether our findings have any relevance for taxonomy is up to taxonomists to decide. In the past, taxonomy was entirely based on phenotype, while today it is largely based on genotype. Phenotypic variations do not play a significant role in current taxonomy, unless one is interested in the possible inheritance of epigenetic switches that regulate the expression of the genotype into the phenotype. For example, it is not clear whether the fine-tuning of the gradient in retinoic acid that is linked to two genes on the sixth and eighth chromosomes (and is responsible for the regulation of the vane width of feathers) was already inherent in the genome of Mesozoic stem birds and was activated through one of these epigenetic switches, giving rise to emarginations in modern birds. This question may be possible to answer by looking at the genome of bird families that appear to have never evolved emarginations so far, such as rails.

Close up of an orange feather. — **Feather by Quinn Dombrowski, via flickr.**

Who do you think these books will appeal to and who will benefit from such a comprehensive and high-quality atlas?

Anyone who visits the Featherbase website and finds the scans of feathers depicted there to be useful or interesting will also benefit from our work. If only 1% of the millions of visitors to this website see any value of having a printed Atlas with feather images of similar or even higher quality, this will make our Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds worthwhile.

Many of the scans shown on the Featherbase website are from the collection of Dr. Wolf-Dieter Busching, the former director of the Naumann Museum in Köthen, Germany, who built up the largest scientific feather collection in the world, comprising feathers of around 2,500 bird species. During the time of the former communist regime in East Germany, it was difficult for Dr. Busching to obtain paper of a consistent colour for mounting the feathers in his collection. Therefore, his feather specimens are mounted on paper of many different colours, sometimes blue, sometimes red, sometimes yellow. Since the vanes of feathers are semi-transparent, the colour of the paper they are mounted on influences the colour of the feathers. In addition, the feathers in Dr. Busching’s collection often overlap each other, thereby hiding parts of the neighbouring feathers. In our Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds, we show all feathers on the same standardised grey background and without overlap. In this way, each feather is fully visible and the colours of the feathers can be reliably compared.

Of course, the production of a series of books with high-quality colour plates is more expensive than running a website. The cost of such a series in printed form will limit the number of potential buyers compared to the number of visitors to the Featherbase website. We will keep the cost as low as possible to maximise the number of people able to afford our series in printed form.

Close up of black and white rooster feathers. — Rooster feathers by Ruth Hartnup, via flickr.

The first volume in the series provides readers with a global overview of feather characteristics. Were there any particularly surprising data or revelations that resulted from compiling such a comprehensive collection?

There were several surprises indeed. Two of the most peculiar discoveries, or rather rediscoveries, were made in the families Tityridae (tityras, becards and allies) and in the family Trochilidae (hummingbirds). In the families Tityridae, two genera, Tityra and Pachyramphus, have a small, crippled primary number 9 in between normally-sized neighbours in the wings of adult males, while females and juveniles have normally formed wings. The function of the reduced-sized P9 may be related to sound production (sonation) during the display of adult males, but so far, we could not find any references in the scientific literature that would substantiate such an assumption. Amazingly, this peculiar phenomenon had even escaped the attention of Dr. Wolf-Dieter Busching, who devoted his entire life to the study of feathers, and none of our other collaborators in the Feather Research Group noted this phenomenon.

There are currently three mounted feather specimens of adult males of these two genera on the internet, one of them from the collection of Dr. Busching and two from other feather collections. In each of these three feather collections, the reduced-size P9 was mistakenly glued in front of P10 rather than in its correct position between P8 and P10, indicating that the respective feather researchers had no clue where this feather belongs and seem to have misjudged it to be a reduced outer primary, as is found in many passerines. However, when we consulted an older publication on feathers from 136 years ago, it turns out that this odd, reduced-size feather was already noted by Hans Gadow in 1888, at least in the genus Tityra, while its presence in the genus Pachyramphus seems to have escaped his attention, too.

The second peculiar discovery in the family of hummingbirds concerns the presence of emarginations at the tips of the outer primaries in males of 22 species from five genera. Most of us in the Feather Research Group had assumed by default that none of the hummingbird species have any emarginations, based on our experience with the many species for which we had examined feathers. The great majority of the 377 extant hummingbird species do not have any emarginations, as in the related family of swifts. So, it would have been easy to miss these exceptional few species if the effort had not been made to look at every single hummingbird species based on photographs of live birds. Again, the fact that only males of these exceptional species have emarginations, while females are missing them, leads to the assumption that these emarginations have something to do with the display flight of males. In this case, there is indeed a scientific paper dating back to 1983, which confirms this assumption for just one of the 22 hummingbird species in which males have emarginations. The only feather experts who knew about this study are Professor Lukas Jenni and Dr. Raffael Winkler from Switzerland. The authors of this study found that males create noises with their emarginated primaries and that these noises are used to protect nectar resources. Filling the slot between emarginated primaries with a glue film or clipping the distal 2–3 mm of these primaries caused males to sing more to protect their territories. We can deduce that the other hummingbird species in which males have emarginations use them in a similar way to produce sound. There is, however, a sixth genus of hummingbird in which males have inverse emarginations at the base of the primaries, not at their tips. This phenomenon of emarginations at the feather bases instead of at their tips does not make any aerodynamic sense, so it is likely that these inverse emarginations have some type of ornamental function in males.

These two discoveries, or rather rediscoveries, in the families Tityridae and Trochilidae teach us to remain open and not adhere to preconceived ideas. They also teach us to consult old literature that may have been forgotten or considered outdated.

The first volume will initially be published in black and white to make it affordable to as many people as possible. The online database of feathers is also available to everyone in the hopes that citizen scientists and members of the public will help to verify and correct the results. Given that birdwatching is such a popular pastime, do you think that there is a large body of untapped knowledge within the birding public?

There definitely is a large body of untapped knowledge within everyone, not only within the birding community. The key is to allow everyone to express their inner potential themselves. We are in favour of encouraging birders to publish their own data under their own names. Professor Peter Finke, who advises our Feather Research Group, calls this approach of empowering citizens to publish their own data Citizen Science Proper. What has been prevalent so far is Citizen Science Light, in which so-called experts scoop off the knowledge of the public and make a name for themselves with borrowed plumes, so to speak. Professor Finke published a book titled Citizen Science: The Underestimated Knowledge of Laymen (, which answers this question in much greater depth, giving many examples for birdwatchers in particular.

With regards to the global survey of emarginations in all bird species of the world, that became possible on the basis of photographs of live birds, which citizen scientists generously share on the internet. Our approach of opening our research findings on the number of emarginations in all bird species of the world by listing the internet links of the original photos that were used for this study is a way of thanking these many thousands of photographers. They all deserve to be mentioned as co-authors of our study. By sharing our findings and providing the original links to the photos that were used, we offer these photographers a way to give us their feedback on what we discovered thanks to their generosity. Anyone else who likes to share their observations on the photographs of live birds and scans of feathers that were used for our study is also welcome. We greatly value this interaction with birdwatchers and the general public.

close up of grey and brown feathers, — Photo by Tina Hartung, via unsplash.

How many volumes will the series eventually comprise, and do you know when they are due to be published?

After our last meeting in 2016, the World Feather Atlas Foundation purchased ten large scanners for our Feather Research Group. Five of these scanners went to the Featherbase team to support their endeavour of creating a World Feather Atlas. The remaining five were given to other collaborators in our group. The Featherbase team adopted the same grey background for newly mounted feather specimens as we adopted in 1998 for our Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds. This unified the backgrounds on all scans, creating the basis for a potential cooperation to speed up the work on our Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds.

The production of colour plates for the passerines took 24 years because they were all produced by only one person. If the work on the colour plates for the non-passerines is divided up by the holders of these ten scanners, it will be possible to produce the remaining colour plates more quickly. At the same time, the holders of these scanners can use them for their own projects.

Most important to us is to respect the copyrights of everyone who produces scans of feathers. Any contributions to our Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds must be based on mutual respect for everyone’s free will. Those who contribute scans of feathers are treated at an equal level to those who contribute text. In the past, illustrators of bird guides were often underappreciated compared to the authors. All too often, illustrators were not even mentioned on the book cover. We feel that this relationship between illustrators and authors needs to be amended. Illustrators deserve to be cited alongside authors. In our Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds, the work of those who produce scans of feathers is even more important than those who write the texts, because the texts can only be written on the basis of these scans.

The Full Edition of our Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds will comprise a total of ten volumes including the introductory volume. Each of the subsequent nine volumes will cover about 150 bird species, adding up to a total of about 1,350 bird species. The Concise Edition will consist of two volumes. . The most precious thing we have to offer are the large-size colour plates in the full edition. The illustrations of feathers in the Concise Edition will be a cut-down version of the original colour plates and considerably smaller.

Atlas of Feathers for Western Palearctic Birds, Volume 1: Introduction is available to pre-order from our online bookstore.

Author Q&A with Rob Thomas: The Storm-petrels

In the latest work of the Poyser series, Rob Thomas brings us the definitive work on Europe’s storm-petrels. Meticulously researched by one of the world leading experts, this book follows European Storm-petrels, tracking their lives as they breed, migrate and overwinter. Rob shares the story of the group’s evolution, behaviour, ecology and adaptations, interspersed with charming personal anecdotes and observations.

Rob Thomas has been working at Cardiff University for over 20 years. He is a senior lecturer in Zoology who specialises in bird behaviour and ecology, and has been studying storm-petrels since he was 16. His work has taken him to Wales, Scotland, Portugal and the Faroes, where he studies storm-petrel breeding behaviour and long-distance migration journeys. He is the co-director of Eco-explore Community Interest Company and is a trustee of the Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru (INCC).

We recently had the opportunity to chat with Rob about what inspired him to write a book on storm-petrels, his favourite storm-petrel facts and more.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to write a book about Storm-petrels?

I’ve been birdwatching since I was a small boy – initially in the land-locked county of Breconshire in mid-Wales where I grew up, but as a teenager I started visiting the islands of west Wales and later Shetland, where I encountered storm-petrels for the first time. Since then, I have been fascinated by these remarkable little seabirds and the islands where they breed. Birdwatching led me into bird-ringing, and later into a career as a university researcher and lecturer, and storm-petrels have been the subject of much of my research and teaching work, including supervising various MSc and PhD projects on the behaviour, ecology and conservation of different storm-petrel species around the world. In recent years there has been an explosion of storm-petrel studies, partly due to advances in miniaturised tracking technology and the genetic methods that can be used to study storm-petrel diet and evolutionary relationships. Given the mass of new discoveries being made, together with renewed interest in the folklore, art and literature relating to storm-petrels, they became the natural subject for a new book about these truly remarkable seabirds.

a small brown and white bird is skimming over the ocean water, with droplets falling from its feet — White-faced Storm-petrel (Pelagodroma marina). Image by Ed Dunens via Flickr

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing these species, and how do you think we can work to minimise the impacts of this challenge in the future?

Seabirds are among the most threatened groups of birds globally, and storm-petrels themselves are vulnerable to a wide range of threats, including various forms of pollution (e.g. plastics, oil and other chemical pollutants, as well as light pollution), overfishing, and the looming impacts of rapid climate and oceanographic changes. For storm-petrels, perhaps the greatest threat of all comes from the arrival of non-native predators on their breeding islands; rats and cats have caused the local extinction of storm-petrels on numerous islands, as well as the likely global extinction of one species, the Guadalupe Storm-petrel. Fortunately, this threat can very effectively be addressed by the eradication of non-native predators, and this is steadily being carried out on seabird islands around the world, including in the UK and British Overseas Territories such as South Georgia. This is one of the most dramatically – and immediately – effective methods for helping storm-petrels that we have in the conservation toolbox.

There are often challenges with tagging storm-petrels due to their small stature. Are there any technological advances in surveying and research techniques that you would like to see employed and that would aid in tagging and monitoring them?

The miniaturisation of tracking technologies over recent years (geo-locators and GPS tags, as well as associated technologies such as accelerometers and depth-loggers) has led to a genuine revolution in our understanding of the behaviour and ecology of storm-petrels at sea. It is only in the last few years that GPS tags have become small enough to track birds as small as the smallest storm-petrels, including our own European Storm-petrel; the familiar species of the NE Atlantic (weighing approx. 25g), and we suddenly have a quite detailed understanding of where they go and what they do at sea. This tracking technology is now being deployed on some of the very rarest species (e.g. Monteiro’s storm-petrel of the Azores), to understand their conservation needs. One very exciting new development is the combination of tracking storm-petrels on their foraging trips at sea, with DNA analysis of the prey that storm-petrels deliver to their chicks, and remote-monitoring of behaviour in the nest burrow using miniaturised cameras and audio equipment – these can be used alongside more traditional methods, such as manual nest-checks and weighing of nestlings, to understand the factors on land and at sea that contribute to breeding success or failure.

A small black bird in a hand — European Storm-petrel. Image by Rob Thomas

I really enjoyed learning that the oldest European Storm-petrel recorded was estimated to be 40 years old, an astonishing age for such a small seabird. Do you have a favourite piece of information you discovered throughout researching and writing this book?

Yes! I have many favourite storm-petrel facts, including my provisional top five:1) storm-petrel chicks can hibernate (i.e. strategically reduce their body temperature and become torpid across multiple days) in order to save energy between food deliveries by their parents; 2) storm-petrels have the largest eggs relative to their body size (approx. 25-30% of the mother’s body mass) of any birds; 3) we still don’t know how many storm-petrel species there really are (the 28 formally-described species in the book is definitely an underestimate); 4) the New Zealand Storm-petrel was thought to be extinct for 176 years, until it was re-discovered in 2003 and happily seems to be thriving; and 5) the name ‘petrel’ may not refer to the disciple Peter walking on the waters of the Sea of Galilee as has often been stated, but may actually be derived from a much older old word ‘pet’, meaning ‘to break wind’ (yes, I am easily amused).

The world is currently facing a worrying decline in not only storm-petrel populations, but also many other seabird species worldwide. What would you say to people who might question the importance of safeguarding and conserving these animals

Most people have never heard of storm-petrels, let alone seen one. But this does not mean that storm-petrels are unimportant – they are perhaps more important that even I (a self-identifying storm-petrel fanatic) had assumed. Species do not need to be useful to humans to be an important part of the ecosystem that they inhabit; they are ecologically important in their own right, whether we are aware of them or not. Furthermore, storm-petrels reveal to us many of the ways in which our own activities as humans are impacting the natural world. Even storm-petrels, among the wildest of creatures, breeding in some of the most remote parts of our planet, are badly affected by our pollution, our entourage of non-native pets, livestock and plants, and they are highly sensitive biological indicators to the ongoing climatic and oceanographic impacts of our activities that are changing the composition of the planet’s atmosphere. For all of these reasons, it is important that we understand and act on the things that storm-petrels can tell us, or we ignore these messages at our peril.

two small brown-black birds are flying above the sea surface, they have their wings outstretched and a bar of white feathers at the base of their tail — Wilson’s Storm-petrel (Oceanites oceanicus) Image by Ryan Mandelbaum via Flickr

Is there a species of storm-petrel that has so far eluded you, and which you would still love to see?

Oh yes, there are many! I have personally encountered only six or seven of the 28 or so storm-petrel species that are currently available (depending on how species are counted). I am hoping to spend the rest of my life occasionally meeting new storm-petrel species; two of my most-longed-for are the White-vented Storm-petrel (probably the smallest seabird in the world), and the Matsudaira’s Storm-petrel (one of the least-known and most-endangered of the storm-petrel species).

Finally, are you currently working on any other projects that you can tell us about?

Yes, an exciting new project involves working with local conservationists on the Faroe Islands (which host the largest colonies of European Storm-petrels) to understand the impacts (both positive and negative) of marine developments such as wind farms, fish farms and artificial lighting on these internationally important breeding colonies. Another very exciting new initiative is a collaborative project known as ‘Seaghosts’, led by Raül Ramos Garcia of the University of Barcelona in Spain, tracking the movements of different species of storm-petrels from breeding colonies across the North Atlantic, across their annual cycles. Seabirds ignore national boundaries, and such international collaborative projects are key to understanding threats and conservation solutions at a global scale.

Storm-petrels is published by Poyser Monographs and is available in harback and flexibound here.

Author interview with Stephanie Kim Miles: QGIS for Ecologists

QGIS for Ecologists teaches the fundamental stages of mapping land for ecological projects and reports and is ideal for those working in ecological consultancy and conservation, or for students with little to no training on the use of this software. Guiding the reader through the processes of basic survey mapping, aerial imagery, habitat mapping, designated sites and more, it provides a useful resource for anyone unfamiliar with the most accessible platform used to create maps for reports.

Stephanie Kim Miles works as a GIS Officer for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, having previously worked as an ecological consultant specialising in ornithology. We recently had the opportunity to talk to Stephanie about how they first became interested in QGIS, the challenges they faced while writing a book on such a complex software and more.

Firstly, can you tell us a little about yourself and how you first became interested in QGIS?

I studied Environmental Science at Lancaster University for my undergraduate degree. When I graduated, it seemed to me that all the cool jobs wanted you to know Geographical Information Systems (GIS). At the time, GIS was not being taught as part of degree programmes, so this was not a skill I had. I was lucky enough to find a role with the promise of being taught GIS on the job and I began working for a multinational engineering and environmental consultancy. I learned how to create maps and spatial analyses for Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) for port expansions and offshore renewables projects, particularly wind farms. Whilst studying for my Masters in Conservation and Biodiversity at the University of Exeter, I tutored fellow students in the use of GIS. When working in an ecological consultancy, I performed field surveys for protected species and used QGIS software for the first time to map the results for reporting. I also became one of the tutors for the course: Beginners QGIS for Ecologists and Conservation Practitioners for the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM). I am currently working for The Bumblebee Conservation Trust (BBCT) where I use QGIS to map and analyse spatial data. I use QGIS to support the monitoring and evaluation of bumblebee conservation projects and to map bumblebee records for BeeWalk, a citizen science recording scheme.

Figure 6.4 Protected Species Map from a Water Vole Survey. — Figure 6.4 Protected Species Map.

For those who might not know about this software, could you give us a brief overview of what QGIS is and its applications in relation to conservation?

QGIS, as with other GIS software, is a computer programme used to visualise, analyse and map any data with coordinates. You do not need to know how to write computer code as the interface uses a mouse to click through menus, like in familiar Microsoft Office applications, for example.

QGIS is free of charge making it accessible to those working in small consultancies and conservation charities. The software is open-source, meaning that anyone with the ability to code can write scripts called plugins to automate certain tasks. Fortunately, such coders exist within the ecological community! Particularly useful is the TomBio plugin written by Rich Burkmar and other contributors at the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The TomBio plugin enables you to import biological records and easily map them at a suitable scale for the data accuracy as points or grid squares at different scales (as you may have seen on the National Biodiversity Network (NBN)).

In ecological consultancy, you need to access the impact of works on the habitats and species present and suggest mitigations and improvements. In conservation, you need to be able to access the site condition prior to conservation interventions, during and after habitat improvements and/or species work have taken place. Both ecological consultancy and conservation use similar processes to do this, such as the Ecological Impact Assessment (EcIA) reporting process. This consists of an initial desk study to find existing ecological data and environmental designations, followed by field surveys, the findings of which are written up in a report. At every stage, GIS can be used to map and analyse the data to provide the information and visualisation required for reporting.

What inspired you to write this book for fellow ecologists?

While developing the teaching materials for CIEEM courses I found I was essentially creating a textbook. I have continued to teach QGIS to colleagues and trainees while working in conservation, becoming more and more aware that a textbook would be really useful for me and those I was teaching. I felt that publishing a book would enable me to train more people in the use of GIS for ecology and conservation than I could on a one-to-one or class basis. I think it is really important that as many ecologists and conservation practitioners as possible can use GIS, I believe every project can be improved by understanding where everything is in relation to each other and creating beautiful, accurate maps to show it.

This book starts with the basics of QGIS, working up to the creation of several types of maps. How did you decide on the breadth of this book and which tutorials to include??

I chose the tutorials to cover maps I have most frequently needed to produce for ecological reporting: a basic survey map, an aerial imagery survey map, a designated sites map, a desk-study map, a protected species map and a Phase 1 habitat map. As part of this you use UK sites and data, learn how to download free-to-use maps and datasets, georeference images and import GPX files into QGIS. Once you have worked through the tutorials, workflows are provided that you can follow with your own sites and data. I hope that having this refresher to refer to means you can maintain GIS skills in your own workplace, without having to reread the entire book to remember what you need to do.

Did you face any challenges in creating an easily digestible guide for such complex software?

Yes! When I first started training others and began writing down instructions for creating maps, I found that I would often leave out certain steps I was very familiar with. In person, teaching a class or one-to-one, I was there to provide any additional steps I had not written down. I knew that in writing the book I would need to make very sure that I had not missed anything! To do so I have spent a number of years perfecting the tutorials and data used to make it as streamlined and clear as possible.

Another challenge has been the changing nature of data availability, sources and copyright, as well as software updates that all make the processes work slightly differently. I have worked hard to ensure, as much as possible, that the workflows will remain current even if external data sources change.

Chapters 5–11 contain exercises for readers to undertake to improve their understanding of the subject and enhance their learning experience. Can you briefly describe how you created these and explain why you feel practical exercises were important to include?

Part 1 includes Chapters 1–3 and provides a summary of the book, an introduction to myself and to QGIS. The practical Part 2 begins at Chapter 4 with instructions for downloading QGIS and the data needed for your first maps. The exercises for producing maps are in Chapters 5–11. Part 3 contains the answers to the exercises in Chapter 5–11. Part 4 is Chapter 12 with the workflows for each maps produced in Chapter 5–11, so you can easily refer back to how each map was made, without having to reread the exercises again.

I wanted to include exercises aimed at creating maps that ecologists need to produce for reports. As GIS is a practical skill, it was very important to me that, as soon as possible within the book, you are able to create your first map. I have found that it is important to be able to produce maps while learning the basics of GIS. This helps to build confidence in what you are doing and see the results of your learning quickly. I hope that making several types of map, starting simply and ending up with the most complex, makes it easy to follow and it is clear how you will apply the skills you are learning to your work.

Will you be working on any more projects like this in the future?

I hope to write a follow-on book about the use of QGIS and QField for data capture in the field using tablet devices.

QGIS for Ecologists is available to pre-order from the NHBS bookstore