Wild Enthusiasm: A Very British Safari

by Steve Wright

Overview

No need to travel halfway round the globe to spot iconic wildlife - it's right here on our doorstep in the UK and Steve Wright, keen amateur naturalist, travels from the Isle of Man to Norfolk, to the Orkneys and everywhere in-between on his various short holiday expeditions, clutching his specific wildlife wish-list for each trip.

The result is an inspiring and engaging diary of his personal encounters with white-tailed eagles, otters, bottlenose dolphins, fulmars, puffins, osprey, sand lizards, even red-necked wallabies. And the characters he meets on the way. He hears snipe drumming, watches a shrew in Wales, admires pilot whales off Lewis.

Steve's wildlife travel diaries give excellent practical tips, such as bird-hide etiquette, how to identify birds on the wing, how to consult local wildlife rangers about what might be spotted on each outing and where to find that species.

But most importantly his highly-readable wildlife travels are a call to others to book themselves in to pubs and small hotels the length and breadth of Britain and follow his example, for a series of fun British wildlife safaris.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781913159498
Publisher:	Merlin Unwin Books
Publication date:	11/15/2022
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Steve Wright has a first-class honours history degree,and extensive wildlife knowledge from being a part-time professional tour guide and filmmaker. He worked in the fianance sector for 25 years but he now lives on the Isle of Man and works as the Tynwald Seneschal in the local parliament.

He has travelled across many countries including Iceland, Japan, Australia and crossed the length of the USA by greyhound.

Read an Excerpt

The first wildlife seen were lined along a low steep headland – over a hundred nesting guillemots. Their shrill calls always evoke a feeling of early summer, it’s always saddening at the end of July when the guillemots depart their nests and swim offshore with their young, and the cliffs fall silent. Shelves of rocks jutted from the base of the headland and we drifted past harbour seals lazing in the morning sun, they glared intently at us as we passed. So far so good – suddenly it got even better. I saw my very first great skua. It drifted up behind and was only spotted once above my head. It lacked the graceful shape of an Arctic skua, in fact, I thought it looked a bit dumpy (I realise me saying that is like a hippopotamus calling a pig ‘Fatty’). Great skuas have brown plumage with white patches on their wings, and these flapped gently as it glided. I was excited about seeing my primary great skua and announced it to couple beside me – they were both blasé. I suspect it wasn’t their first encounter. The guy sneered in the bird’s direction - perhaps he’d recently been beaten up by one and was still resentful of the incident.
The boat pursued the great skua around the headland and as we turned, we accessed a huge cove resembling the inside of an enormous amphitheatre. It was like entering The Colosseum packed to the rafters with birds in superlative numbers. Sight was the first overwhelming sense, then the warmth of the sun’s heat captured within the cove, followed by smell. The temperature and odour were comparable to sticking your nose into an oven filled with fish and camembert. I managed to hold onto my breakfast and after a couple of minutes, acclimatised to the aroma.
Thousands of gannets greeted us, mostly on the cliffs with others spiralling above. The boat’s skipper maintained a running commentary on his speaker system, he explained that Bressay and Noss were home to as many as 25,000 gannets. I think most of them were there in front of me. Some of the cliffs resembled white marble, but it was sandstone rock and the whiteness was caused by gannet poo. The towering cliffs were stratified with smelly white bands and crowded with birds; it was like being beneath a block of flats with dodgy plumbing. The headland echoed with the reverberating sound of ‘Carrr carrr carrr carrrr.’ It was continuous and repetitive - reminiscent of the laughter of The Count on Sesame Street.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Norfolk 11

Chapter 2 Mull 25

Chapter 3 Cairngorms National Park 39

Chapter 4 Lake District and Isle of Man 54

Chapter 5 Shetland - Lerwick and Brae 68

Chapter 6 Shetland - Unst and Sumburgh 82

Chapter 7 Galloway, Northumbria and Yorkshire 96

Chapter 8 Skye, Harris and Lewis 112

Chapter 9 Orkney - West Mainland 127

Chapter 10 Orkney - South Ronaldsay and East Mainland 142

Chapter 11 Dorset - Poole 155

Chapter 12 Dorset - Weymouth 167

Chapter 13 Wales - Powys, Gwynedd and Ceredigion 179

Chapter 14 Wales - Pembrokeshire 193

Chapter 15 Northern Ireland 207

Chapter 16 Isle of Man 223

Summary 239

Glossary 243

Acknowledgements 246

Editorial Reviews

Review copies to appropriate press

From the Publisher