Footprints in the Woods is John Lister-Kaye's account of a year spent observing the comings and goings of otters, badgers, weasels and pine martens. This family - Mustelidae - all live in the wild at Aigas, the conservation and field study centre that has been John's home for more than forty-five years.
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.
Review
From pine martens to weasels, John Lister-Kaye's mesmerising new book reveals the true savagery of mustelids . . . Lister-Kaye's many expert, wide-eyed descriptions of their hunts - gleaned from thousands of hours of painstaking, superhumanly silent observation - bear both the unsentimentality of a lifelong naturalist and the eloquent punch of a superior thriller-writer. [He is] not only a marvellously lucid writer but also an unusually poetic one - Telegraph
Spellbinding . . . Footprints In The Woods is a wonderfully beguiling read, much like a rapt, highly observant and yet leisurely wander through some wild woodland, with no particular aim in mind but so forgetful of your small, limited self, so happily lost in the wide world of nature, that you hear and see everything. As an evocation of the author's beloved Highlands it is second to none, and it does what all great nature writing should do: it makes you want to get out there yourself - Mail on Sunday
This book conjures otters, badgers, pine martens and weasels right onto the page, in language that is deft, vivid and alive -- JAY GRIFFITHS
Lister-Kaye is the real thing: a peerless observer who is just as much part of the land as his beloved badgers. This, unusually, is nature writing that is actually about nature rather than the writer, and so it has the power and wisdom of the hills and forest. Marvellous -- CHARLES FOSTER, author of CRY OF THE WILD
Sir John Lister-Kaye, a leading naturalist and conservationist, has a fine eye for detail and a poetic turn of phrase. [ . . . ] Mesmerising - Simple Things
A love letter to the otters, badgers, weasels and pine martens . . . 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 - Yorkshire Reporter
Praise for John Lister Kaye: Utterly charming and captivating - Sunday Times
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 - The Times
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
Book Description
The elusive lives of otters, badgers, weasels and more are rendered in John Lister-Kaye's enchanting lyrical style
About the Author
Sir John Lister-Kaye is one of Britain's best-known naturalists and conservationists. He is the author of eleven books on wildlife and the environment, including The Dun Cow Rib, shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize, and Gods of the Morning, winner of the Richard Jefferies Award for Nature Writing. John has lectured on the natural environment 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 and in 2016 he was awarded the Royal Scottish Geographical Society's Geddes Environment Medal. He lives with his wife and family among the mountains of the Scottish Highlands, where he runs the world-famous Aigas Field Centre.
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