When your fiancé is reading a biography of Francis Crick, who was married to your great aunt Odile, and points out this bit and says “Look, your accident gene runs in the family”

I was utterly charmed by @bsbicountries.bsky.social’s quest to find a medley of Britain’s endemic species. Also, YES to Pokémon references in nature writing

Online this Tuesday evening. Delving into the exciting & urgent question of how we can include the lives & experiences of nonhumans in writing w/ fellow author Emma Geen, hosted by @walklistencreate.org! Tickets here: walklistencreate.org/walkingevent...

Books that intelligently poke at our complex relationship with wild nature, should be compulsory reading - this is one of them. @chantallyons.bsky.social immerses herself in the world of wild boar and those people with an opinion on their growing presence. www.waterstones.com/book/groundb...

Believe there are still tickets going for my panel with @sophiepavs.bsky.social & Peter Cairns at the Edinburgh Book Fest tomorrow morning - if you’re around, come! www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival...

Two brilliant new reads on coexistence with creatures great & small - @adamweymouth.bsky.social on wolves, & @julianhoffman.bsky.social on fellow humans, bears, wrens, swallows & beyond in Greece ❤️

I’ve always heard that damsons are generally too sour to eat as they are - but I’ve found a tree near me whose fruit is green-fleshed yet divine (like miniature Victoria plums). Are my tastebuds off or have I found a Magical Damson Tree?

On 2 Sept at 7pm, I'll be holding an online @walklistencreate.org writer's salon with Emma Geen (author of one of my all-time favourite sci-fis) on the deeply fascinating question of how to write the worlds of other animals. Book a ticket and join us! walklistencreate.org/walkingevent...

Sorry but this photo of my parents’ rescue dog from Sri Lanka being walked in the rain kills me

Thanks so much Dave :)

Loved @argatyredkites.bsky.social’s new book on his ultimately triumphant battle to save #beavers from being shot & bring them to his land in Scotland. 1/2

March 2025: Defra withdraws GL45 amid concerns of Avian Flu. June 2025: BASC starts legal proceedings against this decision June 2025: Avian Flu outbreaks start popping up across the UK, including at commercial gamebird rearing facility. Defra 1 - BASC 0. raptorpersecutionuk.org/2025/07/07/d...

Raced through this by @drjuliashaw.bsky.social - had no idea of the issue of illegal gold miners in South Africa! Compelling storytelling throughout.

Wonderful to see the @wainwrightprize.bsky.social going from strength to strength & to see so many deserving books on the longlist this year! It remains an absolute honour for my book to have been Highly Commended in the Conservation category last year ❤️ wainwrightprize.com/news/longlis...

An entire Dorset village faces eviction, proof that private money rules rural England. On 5 July, join Right to Roam for a peaceful trespass at Bridehead to protest the feudal grip on land. #RightToRoam #Bridehead #LittleBredy #Dorset www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

We must protect the precious babirusa 🥲

Thank you so much Nic 😍 (I think we spoke at the Small City Bookshop event?)

Thank you so much Tom - it’s always a pleasure to get a nuanced review like this one!

I could watch boar wallow videos all day

Thanks so much Bill! Libraries are the BEST

My book ‘Treated Like Animals’ is now available in paperback - direct from the publisher, from bookshops, physical and on-line. pelagicpublishing.com/products/tre...

This article about the boom in baby lions as pets in Thailand is… one of the most disgusting things I’ve read in a long time. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Crying at how bad the new Walking with Dinosaurs is compared to the original one in 1999 😭😭😭 www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

🚨 BATH: Lidl are once again trying to trash a wildflower meadow in Bath. There’s beavers living there, and this land should be protected and enhanced not tarmaced (which will obviously make the flooding worse.) Please object asap and donate to legal transitionlarkhall.wordpress.com/save-baths-w...

BRISTOLIANS! @sophiepavs.bsky.social, @hedgehoghugh.bsky.social & I are at @smallcitybookshop.bsky.social this Thursday eve, talking about the tightrope line between care and control of the environment. Do join us! www.thesmallcitybookshop.co.uk/event-detail...

LIFELINES is published today, 25 years after my wife and I arrived in northern Greece with the aim of changing our lives. It's a book about shelter and generosity, borders and brown bears, people and pelicans. It's about how the lifelines of the world hold together the greater home of us all.

Feeling invigorated & inspired by my recent trip to Slovenia to explore how people there rub along pretty darn well with a population of about 900 brown bears 1/6

I love stumbling on unexpected books in charity shops. This is my latest - a well written and compelling account from the 1970s of building an oxhide boat based on a monk’s writings and crossing the Atlantic in it… (w/ a few charming wildlife encounters along the way)

Is this brown bear scat? I think it is, but would appreciate peer review. Seen near Caldes, Trentino. (It was “moist fresh” but I couldn’t detect any warmth when I hovered my hand an inch over it…)

The Orso del Pradel artwork was awe-inspiring in person. I hiked with the hope of seeing a bear and also the hope of not seeing one.

I do this quite often and usually the library says yes to my request! (For other people’s books, not mine 😂) I bloody love libraries.

My little bendy rowan, gifted at the @righttoroam.bsky.social book launch for Wild Service last year, is growing strong! Nurturing it through this pre-drought… @amyjanebeer.bsky.social @nicolawriting.bsky.social ❤️

I rather love this story about a city in Poland planting flowers “unpalatable” to #WildBoar to keep them from digging up public green spaces and verges. Forest of Dean next?? euroweeklynews.com/2025/04/30/f...

These guys got the first living footage of the Indonesian coelacanth! Amazing work. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Landowners release 50million pheasants a year into the British countryside - and a new study shows how this is boosting the number of ticks carrying Lyme disease www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Two recent reads I thought were fantastic - ‘Stronghold’ is a compelling account of preserving salmon in the Pacific; ‘A Tale of Trees’ by @derekniemann.bsky.social lays bare the damage done to our woodlands in the 20th century & deepened my understanding of woodland ecology 1/2

Just a few more signatures & we’re there!

Our petition has passed 97,000 signatures and just gone up to 13th most-signed petition in the list. Thank you for all your support! We aren't there yet but we are very close to 100,000 signatures which will trigger a parliamentary debate. Plz keep sharing! petition.parliament.uk/petitions/70...

I briefly visited the science museum in the little town of Estremoz in Portugal. Couldn’t find the stairs up to see their dino skeleton but they have peacocks on arrival so 10/10

Responses must be in by April 25. You don’t have to respond at anything like this length. Just make sure your voice is heard, and the consultation is not dominated by landowners demanding business as usual: a disaster for ecosystems and our own wellbeing. consult.defra.gov.uk/land-use-fra... 2/3

Very excited to be taking part in this Bristol event @smallcitybookshop.bsky.social w/ @sophiepavs.bsky.social & @hedgehoghugh.bsky.social, chaired by Marianna Dudley! www.thesmallcitybookshop.co.uk/event-detail...

This is brilliant from Rich Grenyer on the Dire Wolf hype: "It’s like claiming to have brought Napoleon back from the dead by asking a short French man to wear his hat"

Book 1 subject trying to distract me from Book 2 subject

"If you torture one animal, you’re arrested and considered a psychopath. But if you abuse millions of animals in a systematic, industrial process, you’re hailed for your business acumen." Nicholas Kristof is 100% (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/04/12/o...

If you visit Portugal do not miss the chance to take the train from Porto to Pocinho along the Douro River

in case you're wondering, "what's the harm in claiming an extinct species has been brought back from the dead" when it most certainly has not, our interior secretary is already using it to justify taking animals off the endangered species list

Reboot of Dragonheart, but with wild boar.

Thanks so much Juliet! New review for Groundbreakers here 👇

Marry a man who can build his own bat boxes (That’s precisely what I’ll be doing next summer ❤️)