BBC Countryfile’s best nature and wildlife books for 2023
Britain is teeming with wildlife, often in the most unexpected places. There are stone mines where bats hang out with pot-smoking teenagers and water voles thrive without water in Glaswegian parklands. Our coastlines are laden with seals. That’s the good news. The bad news is that a quarter of British mammals are at imminent risk of extinction.
Tim Kendall and Fiona Mathews, author of the government’s official census of British mammals, take us on a safari unlike any other. Armed with binoculars, a Thermos and, regrettably, an inexhaustible supply of puns, they travel from Scotland to the Isles of Scilly in search of their elusive subjects.
You’ll find answers to questions you never thought to ask: do pine marten droppings really smell like Parma Violets? Should we give squirrels access to family planning? And what do wild boar have in common with a certain royal? Black Ops and Beaver Bombing is a celebration of Britain’s marvellous mammals, and a rallying cry to save them.
Fiona Mathews is a professor at the University of Sussex, founding chair of Mammal Conservation Europe, and author of the government’s official census of British mammals. Tim Kendall has been an obsessive mammal spotter all his life and teaches poetry to ill-fated undergraduates. When they’re not co-writing a book, Fiona and Tim put their marriage to the test by hurtling up and down the country on wild mammal chases.