From pigeons to rats - it's time we showed urban wildlife a bit of respect, says author

                                                                              

Florence Wilkinson - 'where we see a tower block, a peregrine sees a cliff'

STOP being horrible to feral pigeons!

That is one of the messages from author and film-maker Florence Wilkinson who thinks these birds are to be commended for adapting "especially well" to life in  our cities.

In her book, Wild City, she therefore laments "businesses which install mean-looking spikes to deter them, councils which put up nets in which they often become hopelessly entangled and people who allow their children and dogs to chase them".

The author, who lives in Camden, North London, is the latest author to explore how towns and cities provide habitats  which, in their own way, are sometimes as valuable to birds and other creatures as dense woodlands, rushing rivers, open seas, the Serengeti or the Arctic tundra.

"We use the phrase 'the natural world' as if it exists in a bubble divorced from our everyday lives,"she writes.

"The implication is that Nature only belongs in places that are 'natural'. Cities are man-made and therefore inherently 'unnatural".

"But Nature does not respect these imagined boundaries between the natural and the man-made.

"Where we see a tower block, a peregrine sees a cliff. What looks to us like an old canal tunnel could easily resemble a cave to a bat.

                                     

In the research for her book, Wilkinson interviewed numerous individuals who, in their various way, are doing their bit to safeguard nature in cities and to encourage a wider interest in urban wild creatures among the public.

Among these is Wembley-born David Lindo, the so-called Urban Birder, whom she credits with persuading the owners of Tower 42, an 183-metre high glass skyscraper close to London's Liverpool Street railway station, to allow birders on to the roof.

Over a decade, sometimes in pouring rain, they have recorded there such species as wood pigeons (sometimes in flocks of more than 40,000), both hen and marsh harriers, hobbies, rooks, kittiwakes and even a honey buzzard.

Notes the author: "David, whose mantra is 'Look Up!' has long had a fascination with rooftops."

This absorbing book concludes with an in-depth and more than sympathetic look at a particular species of rodent which has never been held in high esteem.

"Rats are the ultimate urban exploiters," says Wilkinson. "Perhaps it's time we showed them some respect."

Subtitled Encounters with Urban Wildlife, Wild City is published by Orion Spring, at £16.99, and available wherever books are sold.