Osprey by John Lister-Kaye

Ospreys nested across Britain for thousands of years, returning each spring from West Africa to breed widely across the country. In the nineteenth century, the systematic persecution of all birds of prey on sporting estates drove them to extinction. Since the 1950s, their return has been slow and fragile. A single pair nested in the Highlands, and gradually others followed, each new nest across Scotland’s lochs and rivers was a milestone in the restoration of a species lost for generations.

In 2019, alongside a small loch at the Aigas Field Centre, John Lister-Kaye and a team of young naturalist-rangers raised an old telegraph pole and wove a nest of sticks on a platform, offering ospreys an invitation, a totem of hope.

Over the following few years, John Lister-Kaye watched and waited, returning to the loch in quiet anticipation. Days and months blur. Seasons come and go. Years pass. Patience is tested. Frustrations brew. But in these long hours, waiting for the osprey, watching them fish, nest, and leave again, the loch is never still. There are otters, red squirrels, pine martens and beavers. Grey wagtails, grebes and golden eagles. Tiger beetles and slow worms, frogs and elvers. In the woods and on the shore, this tapestry of life is part of the osprey’s return story. They are signs that a seismic shift has taken place: that we are no longer a culture that kills wildlife for ‘sport’, but one that is capable of care and the restoration of wilder places.

In his eightieth year, John Lister-Kaye brings a lifetime of experience and stories to Osprey, giving us an entertaining, honest and beautiful observation of landscapes slowly healing, and of a life lived in hope that the wild may return.

Osprey is number 13 in our acclaimed Monograph series.

Hardback, £18.