Wildlife Essays (beautiful books to enjoy)

England is home to lots of lovely native wildlife, from songbirds to hibernating mammals to marine creatures.  And in order to feel a passion to help them and their habitats, the best solution is to get to know them. Just as you would help a friend in need, once our wild neighbours become your friends, you will wish to help them too!

So here is a small selection of marvellous books from wonderful writers who know about the wildlife with which we share our island. You can buy them from independent bookstores (we always link to Bookstore, so if you don’t live near one and order online, you can nominate your nearest indie bookstore to receive a percentage of the profits). Or reserve (or request) at your local library (authors still earn royalties!)

Odes and Nightingales is a gift book showing the language we use, to describe the natural world. Words like petrichor (the earthy smell of rain) to murmuration (aerial dances of starlings). In Japan there is ‘forest-bathing’, and in Norway there is ‘Friluftsliv’ whih translates as ‘free-air life’ when connecting with nature.

The natural world has inspired poets and writers through the centuries, and the phrases used are often what we bring to mind: Wordsworth ‘wandered lonely as a cloud’, Keats wrote his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and Shakespeare ‘compared his muse to a summer’s day’.

Find extracts from some of our best loved nature poets and writers in including Robert Burns, Tennyson, Jane Austen and Emily Brontë.

Discover words from around the world including Inuit words for snow, to Japanese blossom viewing parties. And even the Icelandic custom of closing the office early on a sunny day!

Love is a Toad (a year long journey exploring wildlife)

Love is a Toad is a book where the author (who is fortunate enough to be blessed with the tremendous name of Lucy Lapwing!) traverses meadows, bogs and hedgerows with fellow nature enthusiasts, to dig down into our relationship with the natural world.

Over a year she meet blackbirds, slugs, dung beetles and toads. From a river swim to wanders through woodlands, she explores how nature makes us feel – from wild grief and anger, to soaring joy and hope. This is a prod at our connection to the natural world, exploring its complexity, in all its muddiness and messiness.

Turning to Birds (sitting quiet, to listen to nature)

Turning to Birds looks at the eye-opening world of small moments, when you dare to just sit, listen and watch the natural world. Actor Lili Taylor decided to take a break from her work, to seek silence and song amid the world of birds around her.

Now more seen with pair of binoculars than an autocue, she writes beautifully crafted essays to share the encounters with birds that have captured her heart and imagination. From learning the virtual of patience in New Mexican (thanks to a quail) to experiencing a distant moment of connection with a woodcock in Ohio.

From the exhilaration of witnessing a migratory flock of birds from the top of New York’s Empire State Building, to the quiet joy of observing a nest of hatchlings in her own backyard.

Simply by paying attention to wild birds, Lili has witnessed a wide and deep world parallel to ours  – one of constant change and movement, full of life and with a will to survive.