Living a Wilder Life

By Eva Neill
November 2023

A few weeks ago, while walking home rather merry from having drinks with friends, under the dim yellow lights of Kinnessburn Road I spotted a chunky oval silhouette pottering to my side of the road.  With an inkling of what it may be, I slowed down and widened my berth, so as not to spook the nocturnal creature.  Closer proximity confirmed my suspicions – frozen, as if to disappear from my sight, was a hedgehog!  A charismatic little ball of spikes that had unknowingly turned my merriness to ecstasy.  I watched in delight as Hoggy toddled away in the direction of the bowling green, then continued my walk home, texting the VIP group chat so everyone could share in the excitement.

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Early this semester, we read a paper for the VIP about factors which influence the natural history knowledge (NHK) of Biology undergraduates.  Unsurprisingly, growing up in rural areas and with nature literate relatives correlated with individuals demonstrating better NHK.  More broadly, the paper then linked an individual’s level of NHK to the strength of their nature salience – that is, the prominence of nature in that individual’s life and their feelings of connectedness to it.  As a final year Biology and Geography undergraduate, this provoked something of a mini-crisis for me.  Admittedly, until recently, my nature literacy was quite poor.  But if the findings of this paper were entirely true, then surely my own nature salience would not be so strong?  In search of resolve, I have found myself returning to the question: how do we come to care about nature?

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In my case, my first thoughts were of family holidays I’d been on growing up: to the Highlands; the Western Isles; and the Orkney Islands.  Staying in a cottage all but off-grid, we’d spend a week hiking and trying to spot wildlife as a bonus.  One year we visited Papa Westray for a day specifically to see a colony of puffins – these ‘clowns of the sea’ waddled about quite unbothered by us, and straight into my heart at the same time.  On Sanday, our beach walks were often followed by seals swimming surreptitiously offshore.  And on the journey home from a holiday near Pitlochry, I remember stopping at the Loch of the Lowes visitor centre to try to spot some ospreys.  Whilst I have become more adept at using binoculars since joining the VIP, I can still remember the ruffled feathers of juveniles poking above the nest as the parent flew over the loch looking for dinner.

Figure 1: Puffin (left) and Osprey (right).  Photos by John Anderson.

Perhaps these ‘high value’ encounters with wildlife in its natural habitat are responsible for nature’s importance to me. If so, maybe this disproves the theory that low NHK means weak nature salience.  Yet since such instances happened only once or twice a year, there must be something to be said for more regular, everyday interactions?

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Again, in my case, having grown up in a former industrial town in Scotland’s central belt, the ‘wild’-life I typically encountered at home was, unfortunately, stereotyped for raiding bins and stealing fish suppers. As a result, I often turned a blind eye to whatever flew overhead.  The only exceptions were the pigeons at Edinburgh Waverly station which always captured my young imagination and the starlings that began nesting in the gutter above my bedroom window around seven years ago.  Rather, it was trips to local country parks that provided routine escapes to connect with nature.  Once I spotted otters playing in the river and stood frozen to the spot, entranced by their antics – until then, I’d never even known that there were otters in the area.  In fact, the early role of my local country park in nurturing my nature salience may be defined by the memory of a Primary 1 literacy exercise: ‘Write about your favourite place’.  My five-year-old self elaborately described a ‘hidden’ grassy area with a stream rumbling alongside that I had ‘discovered’ behind the trees that surrounded the park’s playground. 

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What was missing from the Tolkien-esque memoir, however, was any wildlife.  Whilst I’m sure there was a mention of the trees talking to one another, there was no mention of a squirrel, or a butterfly, or even a bird perched in the trees, adding its song to their whispers.  Reflecting on this now, it seems almost sad that as a child I only seemed to hold wildlife in high regard when it felt truly wild.

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Yet over the last six months, especially since joining the Biodiversity Literacy VIP, I’ve found myself so frequently recognising and connecting with nature that it has quickly become embedded in the fabric of my day-to-day life.  Living in St Andrews offers the unique experience of having the coast on your doorstep to spot some seabirds and the Lade Braes bisecting town which you can walk along to see tits, grey herons, or even bats if you’re looking.  Since becoming more conscious of just how great the St Andrews biodiversity is, my whole world here has become so much livelier. 

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So, returning to the question of how we come to care about nature, for me growing up, it was the sum of all the parts.  ‘High value’ encounters with seasonal visitors - such as ospreys and puffins – are great standout moments to demonstrate how far and wide life on this planet roams.  But the importance of regularly connecting with nature, such as on trips to local country parks, cannot be matched by ‘high value’ encounters, as it promotes a sense of pastoral care for what lies just beyond our doorstep.  Additionally, having access to familiar, wilder spaces allows us to quite literally sense our place in nature; a sentiment too quickly being lost in the digital age. 

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And as for NHK?  Well, having pondered this and my prior nature salience over the course of my time on the VIP, I must agree with the paper’s findings that NHK does combat the feeling of distance between an individual and the biodiversity around them.  Spotting a long-tailed tit in the garden or a buzzard on a forest walk feels all the more exciting because I know what I am smiling at.  And, as if the missing piece in my toolkit, now armed with my growing NHK, I can take delight in sharing this with others – pointing out what a coal tit is to whomever is in my company at the time, as if introducing them to a new friend.