Q&A – Page 10 – Hoopoe

Author Interview with Angela Harding: A Year Unfolding

A Year Unfolding: A Beautifully Illustrated Guide to Nature Through the Seasons is a stunning book by much-loved printmaker Angela Harding, the first solely dedicated to her art. It is a celebration of Angela’s beautiful prints and a glimpse into her detailed and meticulous process.

A Year Unfolding is a journey through Angela’s year in nature, watching the seasons unfold in front of her studio in Rutland. This book shows how nature transforms and evolves over the course of the year, while also telling the stories behind some of Angela’s most popular images, giving context to her celebrated works, as well as new art created specifically for the book. The beautiful illustrations and evocative imagery of the prose make this the perfect book for readers and art lovers everywhere.

Angela Harding has kindly taken the time to answer a few questions for us below.

Could you tell us how you became interested in nature and printmaking?

Born in Stoke-on-Trent, the Potteries, one of the most industrial parts of the UK, it is perhaps surprising that I am more at home in the countryside than in towns. At school, I was the misfit teenager in socks rather than tights, whose bedroom was plastered with bird posters rather than popstars. So it has continued into my adult life, I have never lost my love of the natural world and in particular, birds still inspire my work. As a student of Fine Art at Leicester Polytechnic in the 1980s, I was first introduced to printmaking. My student home was a tiny cottage in the graveyard of St Marys church in Melton Mowbray. I would cycle the 18 miles to Leicester, collecting roadkill that I strapped to my handbags to draw at college. These drawings would then be turned into prints; at that time, I mainly worked in drypoint and etching. So my love of drawing moved easily into a love of printmaking. Today I work in a combination of block printing and silkscreen, but you can still see my love of line in the way I carve the blocks I make.

A Year Unfolding is a journey through the seasons. Why did you decide to give early spring and early summer their own chapters?

I love all the British seasons, but of all of them, it is the energy of spring and early summer that inspires many of my images. I always try to bring movement into my work, so there is a natural fit with the bursts of new growth and new life you get at these times of year. Also, the intensity of colour, the fresh greens of the garden and hedgerow. Birds become so much part of our day in spring and early summer, in the beauty of their songs and in their mad dashing flight to build nests and find mates.

The natural world takes centre stage in your prints; how important do you think art is in bringing awareness to the environment and how do you think it could be better used?

All of us have moved so far from a proper connection with the natural world—our comforts come high on what we need or what we think we need. So if my prints are a small reminder of the fact that we are very much part of the natural world, I am honoured. We all cherish those moments when we spot a kingfisher or come across a hedgehog in the garden. I hope, in my work, I communicate some of that joy. So if these wonders of experience with nature are to continue and grow, we need to be reminded how special they are and how much we value them.
You’ve created many beautiful and striking book covers, including English Pastoral, The Wild Isles and The Salt Path. What is the process of creating these? Do you approach each project differently?

Working with publishers over the years has given me wonderful opportunities to create new work and see my work published on a variety of themes. The advantage of being an older illustrator is that I come with a lifetime of experience. So when I was asked to do the cover for Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path, I could draw on the experience of having walked that coast path and spent a lot of my youth camping in Cornwall. I hope it is evident in the illustration I made for The Salt Path how much I love Cornwall and what great times I have had exploring its coastline.

The covers English Pastoral and The Wild Isles both used print that I had already made and luckily fitted with the themes of the books. English Pastoral featured a print call the Shippen Curlew—made after visiting my friends Mary and Hugh Elliot, who run the Twenty Twenty Gallery in Ludlow. Shippen is the Shropshire word for sheep shed and they live in a converted Shippen surrounded by farmland. Very sadly, Shropshire curlews are not as common as they were when I lived in Shropshire in my 20s, but they are still a bird I very much associate with the area. The Wild Isles shows a nightjar and moth against a seascape—this image is one of three prints made on the same theme. It was inspired by the trips my husband and I make on our small wooden boat—a lot of our summer months are spent sailing on the east coast of Britain.

What prompted you to make the jump from illustrator to author and create your own book?

I have always wanted to collect my work into a book. I work in themes and series so even though many of the images were made years apart, they fit together well. I hope the writing in the book is ok; I am, of course, more comfortable with a pen or chisel! I do come from a literary background; my father was an unpublished poet and a great influence. He studied English at Cambridge in the late 1940s under Professor F. R. Leavis. It is a shame my father is no longer here to see my book; I hope he would have approved. The poems that mark my chapter headings are ones we often shared together.

Finally, do you have any further projects planned that you’d like to tell us about?

I do have new projects in mind, but nothing definite that I can share with you at the moment. I am hoping to do a series of prints about the British coast that my husband and I visit on Wingsong, our boat. Travelling by boat and bike gives a different perspective on our landscape—we mainly spend time on the east coast moving from Suffolk up to Shetland, but we have both been around the whole coast by boat and by bike.

Author Interview with Roy Dennis: Mistletoe Winter

Mistletoe Winter is a collection of essays on our environment, covering biodiversity, habitat conservation, rewilding and individual species.

Similarly to his companion volume, Cottongrass Summer, author Roy Dennis expresses his alarm at the crisis currently confronting the natural world while balancing this with his sense of optimism about the younger generations and their fight for the crucial changes needed for the future. Drawing from his considerable experience of working in nature conservation, his essays are full of insight and originality, providing inspiration and ideas for everyone who cares about our planet and its species.

Roy Dennis has kindly taken the time to answer a few questions for us below.

Mistletoe Winter and its companion Cottongrass Summer are collections of essays on our environment and the challenges it faces. How did you find the response to your first collection and what motivated you to write this one?

I received such a lovely response to Cottongrass Summer from so many people, and such encouraging reviews, that I wanted to cover a range of other nature topics in a similar way. People remarked that they liked the storytelling way of explaining some of the real issues to do with nature in our ever-changing world and this allowed me to cover some bigger ideas in Mistletoe Winter.

In your essay ‘Deep snow, predators and prey’ you noted how the choice of language and terminology may have an impact on the rate at which the general public learns about environmental crises. Could you talk a little bit more about this here?

I was talking about the fact that there is so much excellent science being done on wildlife and ecological issues, but so much is ‘hidden’ to ordinary folk because it is in scientific journals, some of which are not open access, and often written in a formulaic way. We need much better availability of the results written by the scientists involved in plain language, which everyone can understand.

What do you think are the most important and urgent steps that we need to take in the UK to protect our wildlife and endangered species, such as the lapwing?

The most important step is to raise ecological recovery to much higher levels. I would compare it to the major recognition of timber shortages at the end of the First World War, which created the Forestry Commission; and the shortage of food in the Second World War, which created a much enhanced Agriculture Department. In the present crises, we need greatly expanded Nature Recovery government departments with really substantial budgets to restore nature. I’d recommended that 50% of our land and seas is principally for ecological restoration, and budgets need to be in line with the £45 billion we spend on military defence.

You mention young people’s role and engagement in the fight against climate change, as well as your own childhood experiences with nature. How do you think we can best encourage environmental awareness in young people?

I think young people are often fully aware of the climate and biodiversity crises – in fact, more so than their parents. The important step forward is for older people to recognise their worries and do something about it – urgently – for it’s the young that will have to suffer the consequences of our inaction.

Mistletoe Winter will be your second book published in 2021, following the
brilliant Restoring the Wild, published earlier this year. Do you have plans for any further books or other exciting projects?

Yes, I have a couple of interesting book ideas I’m mulling over, and we have wildlife projects we wish to carry out – but I’m a great believer in working up ideas quietly without fanfare and then getting on with them.

Author Interview with Stephen Littlewood: Wild Mull

Wild Mull: A Natural History of the Island and its People guides the reader through the world of the Isle of Mull in its glory, considering every facet of the island’s natural history, diverse species and stories of past, present and future.

Mull is a seaborne landscape off the west coast of Scotland, displaying uncommon biodiversity and full of rare wildlife experiences, but today it faces some of its greatest challenges. With superb illustrations and illuminating text, Wild Mull is testimony to the power of wild places and the duty we have to protect and learn from them.

Stephen Littlewood kindly agreed to answer some of our questions below.

Mull mountainscape across Loch na Keal by Martin Jones

Could you tell us what inspired you to write this natural history of the Isle of Mull and its people?

We live in an era when wildlife is being pushed more and more into the margins, and many people are starved of the experience and understanding of wild places. In this context, there is a consensus that Mull is formidably equipped to display a concentration of land and marine species that is very rare today. It is also a relatively accessible destination. Consequently, the island and its surroundings have become significant attractions for a burgeoning population of wildlife tourists and, it must be said, for the tourism industry which has prospered on the back of a fascination with the so-called ‘wild’. Today, Mull’s reputation for delivering outstanding and intimate associations with many iconic British species draws people from far and wide. However, until now there has been no single resource that explains how Mull came to this position, or what it is about its aggregation of species and habitats that makes it so outstanding. I felt that it was high time to rectify that, but in doing so it was important to address some of the questions that are often overlooked during the pursuit of the profound pleasure to be gained from embracing nature in cherished land and seascapes. The book was always intended to be as much a history, an explanation and an exploration of this special place, as it was a guide to its species and habitats.

Visitors typically arrive on Mull with a wish-list of species to see. That list is invariably topped by eagles (white-tailed and golden), otters, puffins, and cetaceans. What people tend to be less appreciative of, or often not at all interested in, is the backstory both to these species and of the multitude of supporting flora and fauna. All of them are equally beautiful and extraordinary in different ways, and it is the sum of their parts that enables the headline species to thrive. I wanted to encourage the reader to explore as much of Mull’s complex biodiversity as possible, whilst also explaining how, in such an apparently injury-free landscape, it is constantly under pressure and subject to continual interventions by people, in the same way as anywhere else. To do so the book had to be factual but at the same time attractive and not overbearing. This meant that it would have to deliver a visual thrill; to make all of it, even the smallest elements, tangible and exciting. I also knew that Martin could sprinkle that magic, embroider the broad design concept, and embellish the text with the kind of high-quality photo images that would prove irresistible to the potential readership. He has done this wonderfully well.

You mention that human intervention has had a profound effect on Mull. Could you tell us a little more about the historical relationship between humans and the environment on the island?

Mull’s environment isn’t perfect, or unblemished. Most of that is down to the fact that people have been surviving on, profiting from, and ‘improving’ it for 10,000 years. If we were going to tell an honest story of the island’s natural history, it had to include the role of people, for better or worse, in shaping it. To begin with, I thought that this would be a tale largely of land use, of subsistence arable farming, grazing by domestic animals, wholesale planting and harvesting of cash-crop conifer plantations and so on. Of course, these are significant elements in the story, but only when I started to examine the historical record did I realise the extent to which species have been manipulated, consciously and unconsciously, by human interventions that have fundamentally impacted the flora and fauna over time. The picture of what we think of as a natural biodiversity, not only on Mull, isn’t necessarily as we perceive it. An extraordinary proportion of our flora and fauna has been introduced, exterminated, or tampered with. What I find interesting is that each time these actions have occurred they have been judged by the social, moral or economic expediency of the age. Today, we may feel confident that we know the right and wrong ways of addressing biodiversity issues, but one wonders if future generations will have a different perspective again.

The pine marten is flourishing on Mull, which is considered by some to be a success story, given their critical status in England and Wales. However, you highlight their potential negative impact on many of Mull’s endangered bird species. How does Mull plan to tackle this conservation conundrum?

In short, Mull doesn’t plan to tackle it at all nor, I think, is it a topic that is widely discussed. The pine marten is a very recent arrival on the island, and although it was not ‘formally’ introduced, it is generally accepted that it is here to stay. Its presence is mostly felt by the inhabitants to be desirable, so hopefully, its impact upon other species will not be to drive them beyond sustainable populations. Its role as a new predator does raise interesting questions, however. It is certainly thriving, but nobody is monitoring the impact of its reintroduction, nor the size of its population. It is a protected species in Scotland, so, therefore, cannot be deliberately trapped, whilst at the same time, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) have said that, because its introduction was never officially sanctioned, if it is accidentally caught in mink traps, for example, it should be removed from the island as an illegal immigrant and liberated elsewhere. We don’t really know if its migration is good or bad for Mull’s wildlife, and we don’t have any inclination to find out. I find this a confused response and a fascinating conundrum in the light of current approaches to the restoration of our damaged environments.

Pine Marten, an ‘accidental’ introducation by Nathen Steggles Briggs

Tourism, particularly ecotourism, contributes a large proportion of the island’s economy. However, negative aspects of ecotourism, such as overuse of areas, can lead to environmental damage. What measures are being taken to keep tourism sustainable?

Ecotourism is probably now the largest contributor to the economy of Mull, but again this isn’t a question that is really generating much deliberation about the future or consideration of potential interventions. There are parking issues, particularly in the centre of Tobermory, which have been the subject of debate and are likely to result in the community and local authority trialling solutions to excess traffic in urban areas. However, in terms of ameliorating traffic growth on the roads, the impact of ‘wild’ camping, or the increasing pressures on species such as puffins and otters by wildlife photographers and so on, there is little formal debate and very little coming forward by way of attempts to make tourism more sustainable to protect the environment. It was interesting, whilst writing the book, to reflect upon the significant behavioural responses of wildlife during the Covid-19 lockdowns. There were many discernible changes, both as a response to restrictions upon tourism and the subsequent lifting of those restrictions.

Do you have any future projects planned that you can tell us about?

Mull could be likened to an accessible ‘mini laboratory’ with the potential to explore many environmental issues which are being played out on a much bigger stage. I would like to use the prism of Mull to address some of the big questions that arose in writing the book, although unpacking and making sense of the many wicked issues that come to mind is a complex and hazard-strewn path which would be a wholly different kind of journey. In the meantime, perhaps Martin and I will further develop some of the core themes of this book, which continue to fascinate and engage an ever-increasing number of interested individuals.

Wild Mull: A Natural History of the Island and its People
Stephen Littlewood (Author) and Martin Jones (Photographer) | October 2021

New Networks for Nature: Q&A with Amy-Jane Beer

Amy-Jane Beer talking with musician Feargal Sharkey about rivers © Holly Wilkinson

Amy-Jane Beer, a biologist, writer, editor and member of the steering group for New Networks for Nature, kindly took the time to talk with us about the work they do and the importance of their annual event, Nature Matters.

We discuss the role of the creative arts in engaging with the natural world, the political priority of wildlife and how best to get involved.

Firstly, could you tell us about the work that New Networks for Nature does?

Our entire focus is an annual event called Nature Matters: not quite a festival, not a conference, not a symposium, not an exhibition, not a variety show… but with elements of all these. It is two days and one evening of hugely varied dialogues, debates, readings, performances and displays about and in concert with nature. Our contributors are writers, artists, poets, filmmakers, activists, scientists, naturalists, musicians, photographers, conservationists and sometimes politicians and entrepreneurs. Our audiences contain many more of the same, plus publishers, journalists, producers, campaigners, representatives of major NGOs who use the opportunity to make new connections.

You are a relatively new charity, founded in 2009 and registering in 2016. How did the charity start and what are your hopes for its future?

The first event, held in 2009, was the brainchild of our founders: Jeremy Mynott, Mark Cocker, John Fanshawe and Tim Birkhead – four big thinkers who, in Jeremy’s words ‘shared the conviction that wildlife had a far richer role to play in the human experience than that defined by science or economics alone.’ They decided to try and reach more like-minded, creative souls and rapidly realised that an event offering both inspiration and social connection was a powerful way to build a network. By 2019, pre-COVID, that initial one-day event with 44 attendees had grown to a two and a half-day version with 30–40 contributors and an audience exceeding 250. This is about as big as we can manage on a voluntary basis with a minuscule budget funded purely by ticket sales. It’s rewarding but exhausting for the organisers, and the risk of burnout is very real. So the next phase for us as an organisation has to be sourcing funds that will allow us not only to offer an ever more diverse and accessible event but also to pay for some of the services that currently push us to our limits. It may be we offer a Friends of NNN subscription, seek carefully vetted sponsorship, or grant funding that doesn’t compromise our ethos or creative freedom.

One of your main aims is to challenge the low political priority that is placed on the natural world. Why do you think that there is so little importance placed on wildlife and nature nationally?

As a society we’ve come to take nature for granted, living lives so removed from the true sources of everything that sustains us we forget we’re not only dependent on nature, but part of it. That disconnect means that when we encounter problems, we often come up with solutions that target symptoms rather than the root cause. And the cause, almost every time, is that vast rapacious monster of global capitalism, to which politicians are wedded. Among the most toxic spawn of capitalism is a media that has reduced politics to a frantic minute-by-minute battle over the next headline. How can politicians possibly tackle the big issues when they’re doing that? In the current system, taking time to engage deeply with nature has become an almost subversive act, because it leads, inevitably, in my experience, to a recognition that we need a wildly different path.

Silk demonstration with arachnologist Sara Goodacre © Nick Williams

Your upcoming event, Nature Matters, is an annual creative celebration of nature. How important do you think the creative arts are for exploring and raising awareness about the environment?

The creative arts have a critical role to play in bringing us home to nature. And I say that as a former scientist who ‘jumped the fence’. Creativity was an aspect of my education that was horribly neglected. It’s all well and good to absorb information – to document and analyse and theorise. But in order to know what to do with all that, we need wisdom, emotional intelligence. We need stories, and we need huge amounts of love because love motivates and emboldens us like nothing else. Art makes sense of knowledge. Art asks questions science cannot and is free to go where science cannot see its way. Art lights up some of the dark. And wow, it’s getting dark right now.

This event has a huge varied list of sessions, from nature writing courses to panels on plastics in the environment and a session on nature and spirituality. What are the main goals that you want to achieve through Nature Matters?

Folk singer Sam Lee performing at New Networks for Nature © Nick Williams

New Networks for Nature does what the name suggests. It is mycelial activism. It connects people, with nature and with each other. The events are entertaining but they are not entertainment. Attendees come to listen to and admire amazing people, but also to meet and link to them. We like to think that everyone in the room at a NNN event will go away inspired but also having inspired others. I started attending about 8 years ago, very shyly, but through a few mutual friends was introduced to others and now every year I go along with the express purpose of meeting more people. As the Irish saying goes – a stranger is a friend you haven’t met yet. At NNN, a stranger is a link to many more people, more voices for nature, more opportunities to disseminate, mobilise. Many of my NNN connections have become deep friendships – but they are also highly intentional and purposeful relationships. I cultivate them because, if we can take any lesson from the current political castes, we desperately need a chumocracy for nature.

For any readers interested in your charity and its aims, what are the best ways that people can get involved?

New Networks for Nature audience © Robert Fuller

Come along! The attendees are as much part of the network as those on stage at any event. We bust a gut to keep the cost of attending to a minimum and make it accessible. There are always opportunities to ask questions, to socialise and to connect. As a rule, we don’t invite applications to perform or speak. Each event is organised by a different team and the programmes are themes and very organic. There are always a few big names in the mix but increasingly we tend to feature up-and-coming contributors or less exposed specialists – and to be honest, those more niche sessions are often where the real ‘wow’ moments happen. Unlike other festivals, we’re not really part of the promotion round – no one will get rich or famous or achieve a bestseller by appearing, or achieve social media celebrity. But we hope that everyone will go away with fresh fire in the belly, new light in the mind, and a list of names and allies to add to their personal network for nature.

Nature Matters 2021 will be held in Bath on 19th-21st November and will feature an exciting list of contributors, including ecological activist Satish Kumar, popular ornithologist David Lindo, breakthrough nature writer Nicola Chester, musician and curlew campaigner David Gray and young environmental campaigners Kabir Kaul, Holly Gillibrand and Bella Lack. To see the programme and book a ticket visit https://www.newnetworksfornature.org.uk/2021-event/

You can find out more about New Networks For Nature from their website and by following them on Facebook and Twitter.

Trees for Life: Q&A with Alan McDonnell

Alan McDonnell, Conservation Manager for Trees for Life, kindly took the time to answer some questions on the important work they do in the Scottish Highlands and their ambitious East West Wild project. The Caledonian Forest has been under threat for thousands of years and, by the 1950s, only 1% of the original forest remained. Since its creation in 1993, Trees for Life has worked tirelessly to restore this forest and its ecosystem.

In this captivating conversation, we discuss the importance of working in collaboration with landowners and local communities, how the Covid pandemic has affected them as a charity, and share different ways to get involved in helping Trees for Life achieve their goals.

Could you begin by introducing us to the goals of Trees for Life and the work that you do?

We are a rewilding charity working in the Scottish Highlands. For us, rewilding is about allowing natural processes to work on a large scale. It’s about creating potential for communities to thrive as a result of the health of the natural environment around them.

Our work has therefore increasingly focused on involving people close to where we operate. Our volunteering programme places an emphasis on nature connection. This includes practical action like planting trees, restoring peatlands, and working in the tree nursery at our Dundreggan conservation estate. In recent years, we’ve been increasing our partnerships with others interested in using nature to benefit people’s mental health. We find this hugely rewarding for everyone involved.

Our practical rewilding work includes restoring red squirrel populations to parts of their original range in north and west Scotland and communities play an important role in supporting that. We’ve also just completed an assessment of the health and resilience of Scotland’s ancient pinewoods, which we hope will be just the start of a journey to secure and expand these iconic woodlands in partnership with land managers. Finally, we continue the work Trees for Life started with, restoring native woodlands to appropriate parts of the landscape.

On your website, you state that you believe you can always achieve more through teamwork. Why do you think it is so important for Trees for Life to collaborate with landowners and local communities?

One way or another, we all have a stake in the land and an influence on its future, but people’s priorities are different. If we focus too much on our own interests in isolation, we end up in conflict. This tendency has dogged the land management debate for decades, to the detriment of everyone. We want to help change the focus to one where landowners, communities, and environmental interests look at what they have in common and what they can achieve together. We’ve already seen how this can create new possibilities for sustainable progress, and at a larger scale, for nature, people’s wellbeing, and the local economies that communities depend on.

You have several major projects in the works, including your very ambitious East West Wild project. This project aims to form a coalition of landowners and communities to create a nature-based economy, could you tell us a bit more about what this entails?

The initiative is founded on the precept that nature, communities, and the economy need each other – if one fails, sooner or later it will take the others with it. East West Wild looks at it the other way round: progress in restoring the health of nature in a large landscape can be a catalyst for both social and economic regeneration. We already know that given time and a little help, nature can surge back, so our focus now is how that could create opportunities for people and local businesses. A scoping study has identified nature-friendly forestry, farming, private investment in ecosystem services and small-scale renewable energy as some of the ways in which we can help nature to recover. Such an approach could also create jobs, and sequester carbon through sustainable land use. We’re under no illusions about the challenges involved in attracting the investment to turn these ideas into reality. But we’re also really excited about having the chance to go for such big gains as part of such a diverse partnership of interests.

Birch tree being planted © Trees for Life

The project area stretches from the west coast of Scotland to Loch Ness, encompassing multiple Glens including Glen Affric, Cannich, and Moriston. What was the process behind selecting this area for this project?

One of the earliest aspirations of Trees for Life was to realise the potential for Glen Affric to act as a coast-to-coast habitat corridor, noted I believe by George Peterken in the 1980s. However, as the idea grew in our minds, we knew we wanted to try for a big area to get the ecological multiplier effects that come from genuine landscape-scale change. We also know that the potential here is massive, with a diverse range of woodlands, peatlands, freshwater, montane, riparian, and coastal habitats all capable of restoring themselves. If we can increase the ecological connectivity at this scale, potentially 2000 sq km, the wildlife response that follows will be tremendous and importantly, resilient over the longer term.

Of course, all of that is little more than a daydream if we fail to bring the communities and landowners with us. Our key priority at this stage is to show people that a high level of ambition for the natural environment can positively impact their ways of life.

Trees for Life volunteers in Glen Affric © Trees for Life

Have you found the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the development of this project? How have you coped with the challenges of the current situation?

It’s been both good and bad. It has caused us problems as we’ve been trying to reach out and build new relationships without the spontaneity and informality of face-to-face conversations. However, as we all got our heads around online meetings, we’ve benefited from the speed at which we can meet people and reduced the need to spend time travelling. Hopefully, as we get to the point of starting the initiative in earnest this autumn, we’ll have the scope to meet people in person, which will undoubtedly help the partnership to become genuinely co-creative.

For anyone who is inspired by the vision of Trees for Life and wishes to help, how would you recommend they get involved?

You can learn more about Trees for Life and our vision for a rewilded Scotland by visiting our website.

We hope that our volunteer programme will restart in spring 2022. This includes our popular Conservation Weeks. People should keep an eye out for updates on our website and social media channels.

We have a Cycle for the Climate initiative, where people can raise money for rewilding through bike challenges – both big and small. And of course, we are forever grateful to people who choose to make regular and one-off donations to the charity. This is what we depend on to plan future projects and keep building towards a rewilded Highlands where people and nature enjoy a better relationship.

Trees for Life volunteers © Stephen Couling, Trees for Life

You can find out more about Trees for Life from their website and by following them on Facebook and Twitter.

Author Interview: Collins Birds of the World

Collins Birds of the World is the complete collection of Norman Arlott’s beautifully detailed and accurate bird paintings, brought together for the first time. Accompanied by text detailing characteristics and appearances for each species, this comprehensive new field guide is the ultimate reference book for birdwatchers and bird lovers.

Norman Arlott is a wildlife artist and has illustrated over 200 books. He has kindly answered some of our questions on his experiences and the process of creating this all-encompassing work.

Could you tell us about your background and what inspired you to become a wildlife artist?

I originally trained as a mechanical engineer but ‘jumped ship’ in the 70s to take up my real love as a wildlife artist, with a focus on birds. I made this leap with much encouragement from my wife Marie and a great deal of help and inspiration from well-known bird artist Robert Gillmor, bird photographer Eric Hosking and the great East African ornithologist John Williams. I had no intention of working on book illustrations, but I got caught up in it, really liked it and I have enjoyed it ever since.

In the intervening years, I have contributed illustrations to over 200 books, including some classics such as Birds of the Western Palearctic, Handbook to the Birds of the World and the SASOL Birds of South Africa. Many postage stamps feature my artwork from places such as Jamaica and The Bahamas in the Caribbean, Liberia in Africa and Fiji in the Pacific Ocean.

Over the last 15 years, I have concentrated mainly on writing and illustrating a series of bird guides (more coloured checklists really) covering the Palearctic, India, The West Indies, North America, South East Asia and the Philippines – many of these illustrations and accompanying text feature in the forthcoming Birds of the World.

You’ve been a part of creating bird guides for areas as broad as the Palearctic to more specific locations such as the Indonesian Archipelago and Armenia. What have you enjoyed most about your travels?

During the last 40 years or so, I have had the good fortune to travel to various parts of the globe, most notably East and South Africa. I led safaris to Kenya and Tanzania for many years, which led to many adventures and meetings. On one of my first visits, I was fortunate to form a friendship with two people: author and broadcaster Roger A Caras and zoo director Steve Graham, enabling me to visit North America. Whilst in America, I was introduced to many of my bird-artist ‘heroes’, all of which passed on great encouragement and useful tips – one snippet passed to me by the great Arthur Singer was always to remember ‘white areas are equally as important as the illustrated areas in the look of a plate’.

When illustrating Antpittas for the Handbook of the Birds of the World, you were integral in the realisation that a specimen in the Natural History Museum was misidentified. Could you tell us more about this experience?

The Antpitta discovery came about after a research visit to the British Museum at Tring. Needing to find a reference for the Yellow-breasted Antpitta, a bird I was about to illustrate for the Handbook to the Birds of the World, I was able to photograph and make notes from the one and only skin in the museum. Before embarking on the illustration I checked the text notes provided by the authors only to discover that the text and the bird I had photograph did not correspond. My initial thought was I had photographed the wrong specimen so I called Robert Prys-Jones at the British Museum and asked him to check the skin – Robert, along with Peter Salaman, then followed up my query and came to the conclusion that the specimen in the British Museum was in fact a new subspecies of the Brown-banded Antpitta. All the relevant details of this new bird can be found in the Bulletin of the British Ornitholgists’ Club (Vol 129-1). I have made many visits to the British Museum to do research for various books and this is the only time I have known a skin to be completely misidentified, especially a skin with a label annotated by P. L. Sclater, an expert on the family.

Collins Birds of the World is a huge, comprehensive collection of over 25,000 illustrations of 10,711 species. Could you tell us a little bit about the process of creating this guide?

I was asked to consider putting together a complete coloured checklist to the Birds of the World using the vast Harper Collins artwork archive. There were a few areas that Harper Collins did not have suitable artwork, such as Australia, New Guinea and some small island groups, so I painted all of these in readiness for putting together the Birds of the World plates.

I decided that to even start this project, a standard ‘list’ was needed – it was decided that the International Ornithological Congress (IOC) world list as of January 2019 was the one I would rigidly follow. Using mainly mine and Ber Van Perlo’s artwork, I promised Harper Collins that I was able to put together the 301 plates and hopefully make a really satisfying (to look at) book, even though some of the plates may contain a great number of species.

Although told by many that I was an ‘idiot’ to take on such a project, and I admit at times I had to agree, overall I genuinely enjoyed the experience of working ‘electronically’ to produce plates. Hopefully, I fulfilled the promise I made to the publisher to produce an attractive and practical book to the Birds of the World!

After my work designing the plates, David Price Goodfellow and his team went on to produce the high-resolution scans and add any missing pieces of text, so all in all a great team effort.

After such a mammoth publication, do you have any more projects lined up for the future?

I have recently been given the opportunity by Harper Collins to produce a large-format book of my ‘proper’ paintings of British birds – what a difference from the past couple of years.

Q&A with Series Editor, Chloe Currens: Penguin’s Green Ideas series

This August, Penguin Classics will launch their new series: Green Ideas. Featuring authors such as Greta Thunberg, Rachel Carson and Tim Flannery, Green Ideas brings together key environmental voices, classic and contemporary, who are advocating for change to the way we view our living planet. Exploring a wide-range of topics, from art to economics and almost everything in between, this twenty book series highlights the most important environmental issues of our time, while seeking to broaden our collective understanding of our environment.

Ahead of publication, Series Editor Chloe Currens has very kindly agreed to answer some of our questions below.

The Penguin Green Ideas series will make for wonderful additions to the recent influx of books on climate change and the environment. Could you tell us a bit about where the idea for the series originated?

Our former publicity director came up with the idea for the series in the wake of the publication of Greta Thunberg’s No One is Too Small to Make a Difference. Thunberg had managed to raise the temperature of the global conversation – we were suddenly talking about ‘the climate and ecological crisis’, about a house on fire, rather than gesturing to a milder vision of ‘climate change,’ which, if it was a threat at all, was somewhat obscure, or distant. The suggestion was that Thunberg was one of a line of great environmental thinkers, each of whom had made a similarly profound contribution to our understanding of the living planet. From our current vantage point, we could look back on the seventy-odd years of modern environmentalism and identify those key figures. Together they would form a new canon, and so it made sense to bring the series into Penguin Classics.

A fantastic array of important authors have been featured in the series. How did you approach decision-making when selecting excerpts?

The overall aim of the series was to draw out the emerging environmental canon, following it from its modern origins – roughly, Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which exploded into public consciousness in the sixties – through to the present day, with major, agenda-setting works by Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, George Monbiot, and others. A variety of subjects naturally followed, and so the series covers everything from art and literature to economics and geopolitics, though there is a guiding concern with sustainability throughout.

In thinking about the individual selections, we again took inspiration from Thunberg’s book of speeches. In just under 80 pages, Thunberg confronted readers with a new conception of the climate crisis. She jolted us into a new understanding of whom it affects – she is of the generation we are condemning through inaction; she will be 75 years old in 2078 – and who is responsible: ‘no one is too small to make a difference’ refers to the way that ‘every single kilo’ counts when it comes to carbon emissions; none of us is exempt. These speeches are the tip of an iceberg of research – of hours spent speaking with scientists, reading scientific journals – which would be out of reach for most readers. Thunberg’s genius is the way she distils the essence of the science and thus allows millions to absorb it. We had these principles in mind when approaching the other titles in the series – we sought out accessible, representative selections of each author’s central ideas: Leopold’s ‘land ethic,’ McKibben’s ‘end of nature’, Kimmerer’s ‘principle of reciprocity’, and so on.

Were there any challenges in putting together a series such as this?

What initially appeared to be a challenge – the logistics of co-ordinating a series remotely during a global pandemic – turned out to work to our benefit, as authors around the world have been able to connect and collaborate online as we launch the series. It has been a thrill to witness.

From the original concept to producing final copies, what ambitions do you hope to achieve with the series?

Together, the twenty short books encompass many of the key ideas in modern environmental thought. I hope that the series will be used by readers as a path through the vibrant, urgent, and perhaps occasionally overwhelming wider world of ecological writing.

With many more subjects to cover and authors to feature, are there plans to expand the series with future volumes?

Yes. Like any canon, this is an evolving ecosystem.

Q&A with Lynx Edicions

Lynx Edicions is a Barcelona-based publishing house, originally founded in 1989 to create the Handbook of the Birds of the World series. They are known for their fantastic ornithology titles, alongside a varied collection of general natural history. They have published over 150 titles, including field guides and bird checklists, and continually produce exciting works, such as their most recent publication Seabirds: The New Identification Guide, a full, 600-page treatment of all known seabird species.

Lynx Edicions are our Publisher of the Month for August and have taken the time to answer some questions about their background, motivations, and current major project.

Could you please tell us a little bit about Lynx Edicions and your mission as a publishing house?

Lynx Edicions is a publishing house committed to providing high-quality ornithology and natural history books. It was founded to create the 17-volume Handbook of the Birds of the World series, the first work ever to illustrate and describe in-depth each member of an entire Class of the Animal Kingdom: Class Aves. We then applied the same detailed treatment to Class Mammalia with the Handbook of the Mammals of the World. Our work has not stopped there, but rather it has grown from this strong foundation. Furthermore, we are proud to collaborate with many different organizations and professionals to publish a wide range of titles devoted to promoting understanding and appreciation of ornithology and nature, as well as its conservation.

What inspired you to create your flagship publication, the Handbook of the Birds of the World?

In 1980, Lynx Co-founder Josep del Hoyo took a 13-month trip to Africa to explore the wildlife with a special focus on birds. In preparation for the trip, he purchased several bird field guides to help identify the species that he would be seeing. On his trip, he soon discovered that the books were not as helpful as he had imagined – they lacked details and, in some cases, they even lacked species! The experience with the books was frustrating, but Josep just thought that he had purchased the wrong books and that certainly a definitive work covering all the birds existed. However, when he returned from the trip and searched for a comprehensive treatise dedicated to birds, he surprisingly found there was none. This inspired him to create one himself and he was fortunate to find two partners, Jordi Sargatal and Ramón Mascort, to join him in this monumental effort. Together they founded Lynx Edicions in 1989 and set to work on the Handbook of the Birds of the World project.

What is the process of creating handbooks of this scale? What are the challenges involved?

Creating handbooks of this large scale involve a huge amount of collaborative effort and intricate coordination of data, materials, processes and professionals. For example, the Handbook of the Birds of the World includes detailed texts and high-quality illustrations from 277 specialists and 33 illustrators from 40 countries. The impactful photographs are the contributions of more than 850 photographers from all over the world. Of course, behind the scenes is also the hard work of a carefully orchestrated team including editors, coordinators, and production staff, as well as those dedicated to the logistics of selling and distributing the books across the world.

In addition to the challenges inherent in producing such a vast work, there are also challenges related to the important focus of the handbooks – the birds and mammals themselves – with information on species sometimes hard to find. Luckily the international ornithological and mammalogical communities have been highly supportive of the Handbook projects and have come to our aid repeatedly with data, photographs and other help to treat all the world’s birds and mammals in detail. We hope that, in a small way, the Handbooks have also encouraged some professionals to investigate, photograph and even protect species that had formerly not received as much attention.

The Handbook of the Birds of the World includes sections on species known to be extinct; why was this information important to include?

Conservation has always been an important goal of our publications, and we believe that “you cannot protect what you do not know”. So, to start, we aim to explain and illustrate the wonders of the natural world, so that people can see its value and fight to protect it. Another aspect is showing the reality of extinction and those remarkable species that we have already lost, which will hopefully lead people to act to avoid more species crossing the line into extinction. In our Handbooks, Illustrated Checklists, Field Guides and most recently All the Birds of the World, we have included the IUCN/BirdLife International conservation status for every species to help call attention to these important data. We have been very fortunate to collaborate with BirdLife International, Conservation International, IUCN, Re:wild and other international organizations to pursue the important goals of conservation through our work.

One of the publishing house’s main areas of expertise is in ornithology, with publications including field guides, illustrated checklists, and guides to bird conservation. What, in your opinion, are the greatest threats to bird biodiversity?

Habitat loss is probably the greatest threat to biodiversity on Earth today and it is certainly a devastating threat to bird biodiversity. In turn, habitat loss is directly related to human action as we modify and reshape the Earth for our uses. For example, some of the top threats to birds are related to habitat destruction and degradation, like agriculture, logging, invasive species, and climate change. Action by humans has been especially detrimental to forests, grasslands, wetlands, and other freshwater habitats.

We feel it is important to educate people about the importance of birds and their natural habitats, so that they can be encouraged to protect them and to find ways to coexist harmoniously. This is what has also inspired us to pursue our Field Guide collection for birds, as well as our Illustrated Checklist collection for mammals, in order to give local communities and travellers the tools to discover and protect local species and their habitats.

A current, major project is the Lynx and BirdLife International Field Guide Collection. Can you tell us a little about the motivation behind this series and why it is so important?

Carrying on from the previous point, this project came to life after years of conversations motivated by a shared idea between Lynx and BirdLife International that the existence of country field guides is a basic element for the “emergence” and education of birdwatchers, ornithologists, bird guides and naturalists in any given country, which, in turn, has important repercussions on the conservation of nature and biodiversity, both locally and globally. The principal goal of this collection is to produce modern, standardized field guides, especially for countries without any recent or country-level guide. The main collection is produced in English, including local-language names for the species when an official list exists. But we also have a secondary goal of publishing several of the titles in their local languages to enhance the local effects of the work. We are delighted by the success of the collection so far, with a growing number of titles authored by top experts, and we look forward to producing more now that hopefully travel will increase again after the challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Author Interview: The Handbook of Acoustic Bat Detection

Acoustic detection is a popular and widespread method of environmental assessment, and its use is increasing, driven by the development of increasingly accessible and sophisticated detection devices. The Handbook of Acoustic Bat Detection provides an in-depth understanding of the principles of acoustic detection, study planning, data handling, properties of bat calls, analysis of results, and the manual identification of species. It also includes information on quality assurance, the benefits and drawbacks of automatic species recognition, and the background physics of sound.

We are fortunate to have had the opportunity to ask the authors some questions.

The applications of data derived from acoustic bat detection are diverse and wide-ranging. What motivated you to write The Handbook of Acoustic Bat Detection and what impact do you hope the book has in this field?

In our daily work, we have seen a lot of improper use of acoustic data. Mainly driven by misconceptions regarding the interpretation of acoustic data and quite often due to missing basic knowledge on bioacoustics and signal analysis. With the easy availability of acoustic detectors and the relative simple usage, these problems became more common, especially in consulting activities. Many new “bat experts” appeared in the field basing their work on automatic detection and identification systems. We hope to help such users to gain a basic understanding of bioacoustics and give more experienced users new information to further improve their work. Thus overall we hope to improve the quality of projects based on acoustic data and increase the evidence level.

This book discusses some of the different methods for processing acoustic data, such as zero-crossing. What are the benefits of this method versus full-spectrum analysis?

The main benefit of zero-crossing is the much smaller amount of data produced and the possibility of listening to the recorded sounds directly. Full-spectrum detectors produce much larger amounts of data and do not allow direct listening to the bat calls. Yet, the benefits of zero-crossing are decreasing with cheaper data storage and higher processing power. Thus today one can nearly instantaneously listen to full-spectrum sound resampled to zero-crossing or heterodyne representation in real-time. In our opinion, the real-time data gives more insights into the calls on a much easier-to-understand level, yet we accept that experts can do powerful analysis with zero-crossing data as well.

You have all had many years of experience in this field; how has bat detection and acoustic analysis developed and changed since you first started?

We started working on bat acoustics in the field when only heterodyne or zero-crossing detectors were available. So in our early days, we walked through the field listening for bats. We were already interested in better and more reliable species ID back then. Then the time-expansion system was available as well as the Anabat system. We used time-expansion a lot, but both didn’t work well for our scientific research interests. So we developed with the batcorder a real-time detector that completely changed bat work in Germany within a few years. Back in the beginning, sound analysis of bat calls was something only a few were able to do. Now with fully automated systems, the whole process changed. Surveys can run for multiple months nearly everywhere – not only ground-based but also on wind turbines or off-shore. We collect billions of bat calls a year with these systems and thus are able to learn more about their calls and ecology. Yet this is not always the best, since a lack of bat knowledge often prevents optimal solutions for bat-related landscape changes.

Bat acoustic recording visualised through the Anabat Insight Software

In chapter 11, ‘Quality assurance of reports’, you provide criteria to improve the quality of specialist reports used in impact assessments, such as which information should be included and the procedures that should be followed. How do you think the previous lack of clear guidelines has impacted bat surveying and, consequently, conservation?

In Germany, quite often surveys were conducted and it was later not possible to understand the low or high results since important information was missing. Also for legal complaints in planning processes, it was quite often impossible to understand how the data was actually sampled. If surveys and methods are well documented, it is much easier to evaluate the planning process and even more to work out optimal sampling schemes for following surveys in the new planning processes.

Now that this book is complete, do you have any future projects you would like to tell us about?

There are many projects – especially since we now face a major green-green dilemma with climate conservation often acting against biodiversity conservation. This especially is visible in the renewable energy sector. So currently some of us are investigating chances to further identify the possibilities of improving bat conservation for planning wind parks and other sources of renewables.

Another project is the ongoing improvement of species identification based on bat calls. We are working on new solutions to give better results.

The Handbook of Acoustic Bat Detection

Available for pre-order: Due September 2021

Paperback | £39.99

All prices correct at the time of this article’s publication.

Author Interview with James Aldred: Goshawk Summer

James Aldred is an award-winning documentary wildlife cameraman and filmmaker. James has collaborated on numerous high-profile projects with Sir David Attenborough, including Life of Mammals, Planet Earth and Our Planet, resulting in several BAFTA/RTS nominations. He is also the author of The Man Who Climbs Trees.

In his latest book, Goshawk Summer, James details his extraordinary and unique experience documenting a family of goshawks in the New Forest during the national lockdown of 2020. We have had the very fortunate opportunity to ask James some questions

Could you tell us about how you first came to be interested in the natural world?

Through time spent outdoors in the New Forest, where I spent much of my childhood. My teenage obsession was tracking deer, particularly Red, which were quite scarce in the Forest during the 1980s. I also got into tree climbing at an early age. Many of my friends were training to be foresters and tree surgeons and they showed me how to use ropes to access the forest canopy. I immediately fell in love with this hard-to-reach, but wildlife-rich environment and regularly took my stills camera up with me to try and capture images of the New Forest from this unique perspective.

Travel restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic presented a unique opportunity to document nature with very little human interference. Do you think this period of time will have had any lasting impacts on the country’s wildlife?

Yes, but in a rather unforeseen way. The space provided by the initial lockdown period definitely helped those birds and animals with a shorter breeding cycle, but ultimately the lockdown period was too short to be of much lasting benefit to a lot of the larger wildlife, including large ground-nesting birds such as curlew. The levels of disturbance in the post-lockdown period were very high in some places and this had the unfortunate effect of causing problems for those species that had not yet completed their breeding season. Ironically though, these high levels of disturbance in the countryside in the immediate aftermath of lockdown may yet provide useful data in terms of how best to manage large visitor numbers in the future as our population increases to grow and national parks are placed under increased pressure.

To capture footage of the goshawks required time, patience and understanding, but your efforts were clearly rewarded. Do you have any particular highlights from your goshawk summer?

There were so many, but I think the nesting dynamics between an adult male and female were particularly fascinating. Their relationship was surprisingly complex, subtle and even-keeled for such a fiery bird. The male often covered the clutch to keep the eggs warm whilst the female fed off site, and was even allowed to feed the chicks himself on several occasions whilst the female stood by and looked on. Very unusual for Goshawk females to tolerate their mate being so close to the chicks like this.

For a young aspiring naturalist, a career as a wildlife photographer would seem to be an ideal choice, especially since our collective experience and knowledge is usually limited to what we see on film/television or on paper. Could you tell us a bit about the reality of what it’s like to be a wildlife cameraman?

The reality is very anti-social working hours, high levels of frustration and a huge impact on home life! But I wouldn’t change it for the world as it is undoubtedly one of the most soul-nourishing jobs you could ever hope to do, in my opinion. It’s a tough, highly competitive industry, but this doesn’t mean you can’t get in through gentle persistence and dedication. Knowledge is everything: read, watch and learn everything you possibly can about your chosen wildlife subject before even attempting to film it.

What’s next for you? Do you have any current or future projects planned?

I’m currently working on a large project commissioned by a popular US-based video-on-demand provider. I’ve just been filming in the Congo for them and due to head out to Borneo soon. I’m also working on an exciting UK-based project about rewilding, which is a subject I find particularly compelling and relevant. All the more so since it is UK based and has the potential to inspire the next generation of naturalists.

Goshawk Summer
By: James Aldred
Hardback | July 2021