Welcome to my little side project.
I’m curious about people, their lives and stories and through the years I’ve come across lots of folk doing a whole host of interesting things in their world of work and extra curricular activities. So I came up with an idea to delve deeper into who they are and what they do.
I chose five people, did some research and posed them a set of questions. Mostly this little project is fulfilling my nosiness and maybe yours too ;-)
I hope that little threads of interconnectedness will weave between the interviews and the love for their craft and careers is shared here for you to discover. If you’ve enjoyed reading them, please feel free to leave a comment and pass the stories on to someone else who might like to read them.
INTERVIEW NO.2
In the second interview of this series I’m very pleased to share some insights into the world of writer Stephen Rutt.
Hello Stephen. Please give us a brief introduction - who you are, where you are and what you do?
Hi Kate! I’m Stephen Rutt, a naturalist and writer, living by the banks of the River Nith in Dumfries, Scotland. I mostly write about birds, other wildlife and natural history, though this is not the total of my interests. I am a father, a keen reader of fiction, football fan, baker, walker, and whatever else I can fit into a day (I am very tired).
Photo by Stephen Rutt
Could you describe the journey which brought you to writing your first book? Have words and recording always been your friends?
It’s hard to know exactly where to begin with answering that. Words have always been in my life, there hasn’t been a time when I haven’t read obsessively (I was very pleased as a child to announce that I had read Fantastic Mr. Fox fourteen times to my baffled parents). But I wouldn’t say that they were always my friends. As a mumbling introvert teenager, I had a need to communicate this weird compulsion I had to be outside looking at birds. Obviously actually talking didn’t appeal. So I began with keeping a blog, initially as a way of showing off the pictures I had taken but then I began to enjoy the writing around them more than I did showing off my mediocre photographs. When I was 16 I spent my paper-round money on a copy of Mark Cocker’s Crow Country and fell in love with this type of nature writing, one that combined beautiful writing and ornithological accuracy. Up to that point, the bird books I’d been reading had been a bit… dull. At school I felt I was being pulled apart by my interests in science and literature. I knew from reading Crow Country that this is what I wanted to do, that these interests didn’t have to be separate things. This was, I guess, the point of germination. I am 32 now and the things I still value, in my own work and that of others: a pretty phrase, accuracy, honesty and immediacy, are still the same as they were then. I am still an obsessive photographer of things (if I used film I would be bankrupt) but words have become more like a family member – a familiar, fraught, flakey family member – having spent half my life working with them, or trying to work with them. I love words but they’re not always easy.
You have very strong feelings about migratory birds. What is it that draws you to them?
Yes! I’m not a great traveler. But here are these tiny things making journeys that seem impossible. Take the goldcrest. Five grams in weight, five-centimetre-long wings, and capable of crossing the North Sea in a gale and toughing out our winters. On the purely factual level that is an astonishing thing to happen. Also on that level, they are proof that we are still on a rock, spinning through space: reminders and messengers of the season, visible change. On the emotional level they mean even more to me. The world right now is not the bright, hopeful thing I thought I was growing up in, even though we are one species on one planet, with the same needs as every other human here. We have lost sight of narratives of unity that transcend petty politicking and the boundaries that we draw on earth. Migratory birds for me are a way of uniting the disparate corners of the earth: those swallows you see on the edge of town in May were swooping over the Veld of South Africa only a few weeks ago. The Arctic tern bounding over the breaking waves along your nearest shoreline is chasing the daylight from the Arctic to the Antarctic. The whitethroats in your May hedgerow have only made it back because of the rains in the Sahel – rains they don’t see as they happen while they’re here. So there’s also that aspect to: drought in the Sahel is bad news for people in a volatile region of the world; it is birds that can be our messengers for that news.
Photos by Stephen Rutt
I know you have been to many places where at certain times of the year, migratory birds are falling from the sky. Can you tell us a bit about why this is and your most memorable experience in one of these locations?
Migration is a massive gamble when you weigh five grams. Put yourself in their wings – you wait for the perfect day to fly (which obviously sometimes never comes and you have to push through regardless). Clear skies, tail wind. But weather is weather and, especially in the northern isles of Scotland, it changes. So suddenly you are confronted with a headwind and rain. You see an island and you seek shelter on it. Other birds, of your species and not, from the same location you left and some from further afield, are all in the same weather, seeking the same shelter. Now imagine you are a birdwatcher on that island: suddenly sharing your shelter with potentially anything that was migrating that day. So I remember pied flycatchers on stone walls, crossbills clinging to sycamores (that only grow behind the shelter of walls), Lapland buntings scrabbling around roads. The most exciting time was one August day, east winds and rain and North Ronaldsay was alive with a vast amount of birds. In the end we didn’t see anything particularly rare – a wryneck and barred warblers were our excitement – but it is one of those moments where you see the workings of the world, when most migration happens fairly seamlessly, out of sight. It was memorable for common birds as well: I remember vast flocks of redwings one day that weren’t there before or after; same with skylarks and meadow pipits, the day we had a massive movement of swifts. These processes happen all over the British coast but on an island they are particularly concentrated and visible.
In your book ‘The Seafarers - A Journey Among Birds’ you write about leaving London for North Ronaldsay in the Orkney Islands. I wondered whether you found a way to seek out birds in the city and if there is anything you miss about the wildlife in urban environments?
If I miss anything at all, then it’s the certain surrealism you get from seeing things unexpectedly, in places far removed from where you are used to seeing them: I once twitched a yellow-browed warbler in Regent’s Park, the other day I saw a picture of a woodcock on Threadneedle Street. The parks are good for close encounters with common ducks and herons, the WWT reserve at Barnes is good as well. But those moments are few and far between. One thing I haven’t seen since my time in London is a Jersey tiger moth. When I lived there they were just beginning to boom in population. A really smart moth. Big with a black background cut by cream lines that have the vividness of lightning strikes. Their underwings are orange-red, they can be seen in the day and love buddleia. It was a really hard time for me but seeing them that summer was a little shot of happiness: especially the one that managed to fly in through the office window. Though to be completely honest, the main thing I miss about London is the food.
Your second book is all about geese, can you tell us a bit about the area in which you live and why it is so good for geese?
Dumfries is in the southwest of Scotland, a few miles north of the merse (the Scots word for saltmarsh) and mudflats of the Solway Firth and it is an excellent place for grass to grow. Which means that if you are a pink-footed goose you are surrounded by this all you can eat buffet in the fields, not far from a safe place to sleep at night. The Nith runs through the heart of Dumfries and it works like a waymarker for them, guiding them between the less suitable land either side of the valley. This autumn in particular as they were flying over the town I was noticing them the following the meanders of the river. And that’s the same for whooper swans too. Barnacle geese also love the Solway Firth – the entirety of the Svalbard breeding population spend the winter here, split over the border, between the English and Scottish sides, but they are strictly coastal. I’ve seen them a mile or so below town on the banks of the Nith where it begins to feel estuarine but never any closer. On a clear day by the Solway you see huge flocks of these smart monochrome geese and behind them the Solway sparkling, the Cumbrian fells a jagged and dramatic interruption to the horizon. It really is spectacular.
Photos by Stephen Rutt
Peregrines are high up the list for me of favourite birds. I know you have watched them in your local town. For those who need converting, what is it about the Peregrine that is so captivating?
I’ve seen peregrines everywhere. Troll-like under the Orwell Bridge, while growing up in Suffolk; on the old cooling towers of the Tate Modern, skimming ridge lines in Ochils of central Scotland, hanging in the white skies of Orkney, and in Dumfries where they interrupt my food shop, punctuated my daughter’s pram naps, dash through my idle daydreaming when I’m looking out of a window. Yeah I love them. And this is something that everyone can see: they’re a global species, they don’t require effort or specialist knowledge to see anymore, not particularly difficult to identify. So they’re quite democratic. And then there is the thrill of birds of prey, the way they go from still to a million miles an hour in the flick of a switch, the fast twitch of a wing. Ultimately that might be it: one of things we generally appreciate with birds is their ability to fly, to do what we can’t: peregrines are one of the consummate fliers, they are aerial thrillers. Which I appreciate makes them sound like a carbon-neutral version of the Red Arrows but it is true. Unfortunately so if you are a pigeon. (My daughter has a cuddly peregrine toy, it is one of her most treasured possessions.)
You say ‘being outside is a luxury I can’t always afford, when I do get outside I feel a pressure to make it profitable’ and go on to talk about ‘thinking about big thoughts instead of being present’ - the benefits we can reap from being present when outdoors and birding are so great but it can be hard to shut out the impact of the attention economy and pressured lives.
As a parent and freelance person these feeling can be intensified. Have you found a way to reconcile with these feelings or unlocked a way to be more mindful when you get out?
That’s a massive question. Sorry for using the word profitable, which I hate and find triggering.
In the spirit of honesty I don’t really have an answer to it, I don’t think there’s a single, easy answer to it. In an ideal world, I’d leave my phone behind but I can’t (nursery could ring at any moment). In an ideal world I’d be able to go out enough times to separate ‘thinking outside time’ from ‘being outside time’. But I can’t. Some days there are good days where I’m totally in the zone, completely tuned into my surroundings. Some days there aren’t. What do you think?
Kate: ‘I just know that the going outside is what feeds everything else so I shouldn’t sideline it or see it as an indulgence (which I do). And if there are answers, that’s usually where I find them’
Yeah I agree with seeing it as an indulgence – I guess for some people it is but for me and you (and I guess the readers of this!) it is more vital than that. The older I get, the busier life gets, the more I guess I have made peace with feeling guilty about going outside instead of being inside, doing my tax return, hoovering, all the boring stuff. The older I get, the more I feel ok with not needing to kick against the complexity of the world as I did when I was in my twenties. One thing I have been dealing with is my self-deprecation: I have it like a kind of ego-pruning reflex. I am very self-critical. If I have a bad day outside – distracted, disappointed, whatever – I used to kick myself about it. Now I just try and roll with it and not let it derail me by loading all the pressure onto the next time I go outside.
Ok I’m just going to ask it… favourite bird? Sorry, if you can’t answer that then what is your favourite bird this week?
Can I give you a top five? Arctic tern, fulmar, hen harrier, bullfinch, pink-footed goose. With apologies to the woodcock, bittern, snipe, black grouse and wood warbler who round out then top ten. With apologies to the nightingale, pied flycatcher, bluethroat, redstart, raven, jackdaw, any species of shrike, swift, sorry this is too difficult. I just love birds. (I feel indifferent to shelducks and linnets though.)
Photo by Stephen Rutt
I can’t imagine what it is like to write a book, what approach do you take and do you have any rituals or routines you apply to your writing?
I am not a mystic about it, I just sit down and do it and I don’t think there’s any replacement or short cut or anything that helps more than just sitting down and doing it. I am bloody-minded and stubborn and if I commit, I complete, so I’m happy to sit down at my laptop and do it for two years or however long the project takes. It also helps that I’m very happy in my own head thinking about the same thing for that period of time. If the words don’t come I move where I’m sitting, try writing on my phone, or a notebook if it’s a really disastrous day (or I just do some research reading, there is always something that can be done). Because of my circumstances, juggling writing with part-time work, childcare, etc, I’ve always had to have this attitude that I just get the work done whenever I can. I’ve also never had the space to have my own desk, so I also just get it done where I can. If I waited for the perfect moment, the perfect electric charge of inspiration, nothing would ever get done. So I am supremely flexible with where I can work. I am very productive on trains. I guess only two things are essential to me: headphones (loud rock music has always helped me focus and block out the world around me, very useful in cafes) and black coffee. Caffeine has its hook in me. Wetherspoons does free coffee refills and that has also been one of the productive places for me to work.
Can you share your favourite book about birds? And the best field guide please?
The best field guide is a much easier question to answer: the Collins Bird Guide by Svensson, Mullarney and Zetterström. It is a substantial book, covers the entire Western Palearctic (which is Europe plus adjacent bits, because birds don’t obey borders well). But the illustrations are the best in the business. You want a field guide with illustrations, they are much more useful than photographs: it seems paradoxical but the brain intuitively understands that an illustration is a guide, where a photograph is seen as the incontrovertible truth, which is misleading. Artists bring their knowledge to make the perfect illustration, a photograph is just a moment in time of one specific individual. And no two individuals of the same species ever look exactly the same.
Favourite book about birds? Similar answer to my favourite bird. J. A. Baker’s The Peregrine? Tim Dee’s Landfill? Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk? Kyo Maclear’s Birds Art Life Death? I think that’s a modern classic but I’m not sure if it is as well-known as it should be. I am keen on finding non-British/American nature writing too: The Birds They Sang by Stanisław Łubieński is a great cultural history of birds from a Polish perspective. Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac is not strictly about birds but it is my favourite book about nature.
I like to ask people about their most treasured tools, what’s the one bit of kit you really couldn’t part with?
Sorry to be incredibly disappointing but I can birdwatch without binoculars, my telescope has been broken for a year or so and my handwriting is illegible even to me, so nice notebooks and fancy pens are out. Which leaves me with my laptop: couldn’t part with it because I literally wouldn’t be able to read what I wrote otherwise. It is not an emotional connection.
Finally, what are you working on at the moment?
For once, absolutely nothing – but only because I’ve just submitted the manuscript for my next book, which will be out next year. I’ll tell everyone about it when I’m ready, which isn’t quite yet.
Thanks again Stephen, where can we find out a bit more about you and buy your books?
You can find my website at stephenrutt.com, follow me on Bluesky @steverutt and Instagram (where I kill most of my time) @steve.rutt.
My books should be available in all bookshops – if not on the shelves then they should be able to order them. If you have a bookshop in your town, please use it! The same goes for your local library – authors do get a small financial contribution from Public Lending Right if their books get borrowed. If you have none of the above, they’re on the Waterstones website here.
