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The elusive lives of otters, beavers, badgers, weasels and more are rendered in John Lister-Kaye's enchanting lyrical style
Footprints in the Woods is John Lister-Kaye's account of a year spent observing the comings and goings of otters, beavers, badgers, weasels and pine martens. This family - Mustelidae - all live in the wild at Aigas, the conservation and field study centre John calls home.
With the patient and meticulous care of a true naturalist, John observes and records the lives, habits and habitats of these elusive animals. Hours of careful waiting and watching in the woods and loch, the river, fields and moorland is rewarded with insight into how these animals live when unhindered by human interference; sometimes red in tooth and claw, but often playful, familial, curious and surprising.
As a boy, badgers and weasels were John's first encounter with wild animals, now he has spent fifty years living side-by side with them in the Highlands and come to know much of their ways. Footprints in the Woods is the culmination of that long association with the Mustelidae family, a love letter to the otters, beavers, badgers, weasels and pine martens that also call Aigas home, and a reminder of the fragility of habitat and the beauty and variety we have to lose if we don't choose to actively protect it.
"If only we could all be as attentive to the life around us as John Lister-Kaye. No one writes as movingly, or with such transporting poetic skills, about encounters with wild creatures"
— HELEN MACDONALD, author of H IS FOR HAWK
"Scotland's high priest of nature writing; it's charming and moving to wander along with him"
"With an untameable enthusiasm and generosity of spirit, Lister-Kaye translates [ . . . ] into a kind of inter-species friendship"
— JAY GRIFFITHS, author of WILD: AN ELEMENTAL JOURNEY
"John Lister-Kaye is one of the most joyful, inspirational naturalists I know"
— KATE HUMBLE
"A great naturalist"
— CHRIS PACKHAM
"Renowned conservationist John Lister-Kaye finds as much drama in the creatures of his garden in the Highlands as watching polar bears cross frozen ice packs near the North Pole . . . He has fallen in love with these moments of everyday adventure"
"I am addicted to the writings of John Lister-Kaye"
— JOANNA LUMLEY
Sir John Lister-Kaye is one of Britain's best-known naturalists and conservationists. He is the author of nine books on wildlife and the environment, including The Dun Cow Rib, and has lectured all over the world. He has served prominently in the RSPB, the Nature Conservancy Council, Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Wildlife Trust. In 2003 he was awarded an OBE for services to nature conservation. He lives with his wife and family among the mountains of the Scottish Highlands, where he runs the world-famous Aigas Field Centre.
lister-kaye.co.uk | aigas.co.uk