National Geographic and me              My book Ten Million Aliens was published in the United States last week, and at the weekend, National Geographic ran an interview with me on the Booktalk part of their website. You can see it here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/02/150222-book-talk-barnes-darwin-slugs-wilson-hunting-wasps-world-land-trust/ So to celebrate, here’s another chapter from the book…. [Read More]

A couple of weeks ago I was in Norwich at a shopping centre and it’s been bothering me ever since. Because as we walked through the car-park there was a murmuration.        Not a big one as these things go: a couple of thousand starlings, doing all their wonderful circling and spiralling and shape-shifting… [Read More]

I was walking down the road to my house when I heard an oystercatcher. They nest on the marshland here and in a few weeks they’ll be making their usual cheery racket. Never very calm birds, always piping away in the great excitement of being alive. This oystercatcher was piping from the top of a… [Read More]

This is the time of contradiction. Almost of paradox. Winter has still got its teeth in the country: and so it’s time to celebrate spring. Not spring as glorious detonation of sunlight and joy: not yet. We’re not yet at the day when the world abandons overcoats, women walk the streets a layer or so… [Read More]

I was in a small boat surrounded by vastly vaster whales. They rose to breath and then dived, they paced the boat, they approached the boat for pats and hugs and kisses. The horizon was filled with them. It was then I observed a behaviour I had never seen before, and I began to suspect… [Read More]