I’m always trying to look for flagship
species talismans to represent whole
ecosystems
if you want to photograph the Arctic you
photograph polar bears if you want to
photograph Africa you photograph lions
well you can have a wildlife experience
in a city in the urban jungle that is
just as wild just as crazy as anywhere
else so my job is basically to dress up
like this I guess some of you are
probably sitting there wondering why on
earth National Geographic has got some
young whippersnapper who can barely grow
facial hair to come give you a talk and
that is a perfectly valid question the
state of my facial hair is quite frankly
embarrassing so I guess I’ll start from
the beginning to kind of set things into
context um this is me when I was two
with my older brother Tom and as you can
see I wasn’t always interested in
wildlife tom is holding an alligator in
his hand and I just wasn’t that fast my
mum used to make me and my three
brothers wear matching outfits on days
out the outfits did get much better ten
years after this picture was taken I was
still up to no good the only difference
was now I had a camera in my hand and
everyone at high school thought I was a
total freak because in any moment of
spare time I’d run down away from from
class or sports practice or whatever to
jump in the little river that ran past
my school and take pictures of the the
friendly swans or they’re not so
friendly pike
now they’re they’re you know awesome
animals in this whole time I was
teaching myself by trial and error how
to get close to these animals once I
thought I’d mastered getting close to
one animal I’d apply that to a new one I
was just totally obsessed now I got my
first break when I was 17 I was selected
to be part of this project the 20/20
vision project now put simply this
project brought together the UK’s top 20
wildlife photographers and 20 young
photographers I was lucky enough to get
selected as one of those those young
guys and our job was basically to go
around the UK and prove that British
wildlife is not
that was our job now I thought I’d drawn
the short straw because while some of my
colleagues were um well they were
getting to dive with seals off off the
coast of Devon this is Alex and us that
he was actually my mentor on the project
or Andy rouse was getting to sneak up on
wild boar in the forest of dean pecans
was getting to photograph Ospreys diving
into the locks of the Highlands of
Scotland why I was tasked with urban
wildlife so I thought I was stuck with
pigeons and rats but I was wrong I found
out that you can have a wildlife
experience in a city in the urban jungle
that is just as wild just as crazy as
anywhere else and I found that the
closer you look the more you see so
everything down to the small stuff this
is a great tip you can see that green
thing in its mouth that’s a caterpillar
well in that little hole it has three
chicks inside a nest
you know the closer you look the more
you find and you know I’m always trying
to look for flagship species talismans
to represent whole ecosystems if you
want to photograph the Arctic well you
photograph polar bears if you want to
photograph you know Africa represent
Africa you photograph lions well in a
city you just have to look a little
closer if you get close enough to the
grace girl you find that it’s got
buckets full of charisma but it’s not
just the small stuff it’s the big stuff
too now these are two rutting red deer
similar to your North American elk and
every year in October during the annual
rut they basically fight each other for
breeding rights is this crazy wild thing
and you know you might think that red
deer you only see them fight you know in
the wildest corner of the UK or and the
wilder parts of Europe well these two
are rutting three miles from the very
center of London it’s pretty crazy so
where are we okay we’re going to zoom in
this is London now I was in Richmond
Park for that that rutting episode down
in the bottom left and just like I would
with a Wilder place I built up a map of
all the different places that I could
find and photograph wildlife and there’s
just wildlife absolutely everywhere it
was it was really really cool now I’m
particularly grateful for this project
because I discovered what is now my
favorite animal the peregrine falcon now
there’s a few reasons why peregrine
my favorite animal firstly they’re the
fastest animal on earth that’s pretty
cool they can dive at speeds of up to
180 miles per hour but that’s nothing
what really gets me is that they are a
pigeon killing machine
it’s just epic to watch so here you can
see an adult female with a pigeon that
is just nailed and then that’s a the
brown a bird is a juvenile they start
off brown and then get the adult plumage
after a year or so peregrines are a real
good news story in the UK because when I
was born in in 1993 seeing a peregrine
was a really rare event you know a
fleeting glimpse at a nest tree and you
know Devon or something was about as
good as it got
whereas now they’re doing really well
all across the the UK particularly in
cities now the reason they do well in
cities is because firstly there’s lots
of food as you all know cities are
packed full of pigeons so this is a
female having a good stretch of her tail
feathers and before she goes off and
smashes another pigeon just limbering up
now the other reason that they they do
really well in cities is because the
ledges and novels particularly if the
older buildings are very similar to
their natural cliff homes so these two
chicks are in a nest 25 stories up a
really on – looking concrete tower block
again right in the centre of London
these aren’t migrants they’re not
temporary visitors they are resident
they are urban birds now Kanin saw some
of the pictures that I was taking on
this project and very kindly lent me
some some gear so I was getting to play
with some some big boys toys now it’s
amazing the amount of trouble you can
get in walking around a city with a lens
like that I had 100 episode that there
wasn’t my finest moment I had this
position where this location where I’d
stand on a main road on the pavement on
the sidewalk to photograph this nest the
Peregrine nest and miles in the distance
in the background was this huge tower
block it was an apartment block and on
one day this this this woman in a car
came screeching up stop next to me got
out of her car marched over to me and
said can you please stop taking pictures
of me getting changed through my bedroom
window
now how do you react to that back then
you know I wasn’t very good at dealing
with these awkward situations so I’m I
said don’t flatter yourself
just a teenage kid trying to photograph
some Peregrine’s leave me alone
as you can imagine that didn’t go down
particularly well so I followed one
particular pair of Peregrine’s that live
in Bristol which is a city in the
southwest of England and I’m not
normally one to name wild animals but
when something like this happens it’s
quite difficult not to so this is the
chick on the right the brown a bird he’s
called Sam and this is the female on the
left and you can see the female is about
1/3 bigger than Sam and that’s not
because she’s an adult and he’s a chick
is because she’s a female and he’s a
male female Peregrine’s about third
bigger than the males now things were
looking really good for Sam because his
parents were awesome hunters they were
catching pigeons you know like there was
no tomorrow they’d bring him in he’d
then wolf it down and screech hit them
to go and get another one
he was also exercising and stretching
his wings ready for his maiden voyage
his first flight he’s you know his
voyage into the sky now this is where
things went a little bit pear-shaped
this is where the fairy tale ends I’m
afraid so Sam took his first flight he
jumped off that building and some gulls
saw him and they mobbed him down into
the river which ran below the nest
building now this was a city if it had
been in a normal river in a Wilder place
peregrines actually quite good swimmers
they can kind of flap their wings and
get them over to the edge but this was a
city so the the either Bank was a six
foot high vertical concrete bank so
there was absolutely no way he was going
to get out the river he’d also being a
wild animal chosen the one day in an
entire month when I wasn’t standing on
the main road on the bridge there and to
you know to see him fortunately though
spending all that time on the bridge had
attracted quite a lot of attention
particularly from two builders who
worked on a building site next door to
the nest building and they saw Sam get
mobbed down into the river and they
grabbed an umbrella and they
ran over to help and they climbed down
on the ladder on the concrete riverbank
and leant off the ladder into the river
and tried to scoop Sam up out the river
with an umbrella
unfortunately Sam was a little bit too
far away so one of the builders had the
idea of taking bricks you know it’s a
building site lots of bricks and they
threw them over the top of Sam’s head to
create a wave a splash that would wash
Sam back towards him now when they told
me this story afterwards I was like guys
I don’t know if this is genius
or crazy you threw bricks over a
protected species but it worked
they got Sam out yeah but no um by the
time they got Sam out it wasn’t looking
good he was pretty much dead he wasn’t
moving and the Bristol Peregrine expert
Edie drew it was called to the scene and
he decided the best plan of action would
be to dry Sam off take him home and just
you know see what happened both Edie and
I thought that Sam wasn’t gonna survive
the night but Sam is no ordinary
Peregrine oh no oh no in the morning he
was fighting fit and we decided to
release him
um now on that that month I had on that
road had also attracted attention from a
couple of lawyers they had an office
building really close to the nest
building and they said that we could
release Sam on their roof so you know
walking into an office you know a
lawyer’s office
you know full of suited and booted
lawyers with a bird of prey and a towel
in your hands does get you some funny
looks but it had to be done we got Sam
up onto the roof and you can see that
blue band and the metal silver band on
his ankle we put them on so that we can
track his movements what scientists are
finding is that these urban Peregrine’s
aren’t tied to the city the chicks you
know dispersed all over the place and
and vice versa if a chick is born in a
Wilder place like on the coast they can
come back into the city it shows how
adaptable they are it’s not you know
genetic it’s it’s a behavioral thing
which is really cool they can adapt um
three minutes later he took flight and
bearing in mind how his first flight had
gone our hearts for an hour mouths what
was going to happen but he made it back
to the nest building with you and just
two days after this near-drowning
experience I saw him flying high
alongside
I’d hear the the adult female who again
has got a pigeon now this is how the
adults teach the youngsters to hunt
they’ll kill or disable a pigeon and
then let the youngster come up from
underneath take it off of them so they
can practice flying with her with weight
any problem while Sam was just rubbish
at flying with pigeons it’s like come on
dude up your game now just after I took
this picture Sam dropped the pigeon
cause he did an idiot now the problem
with dropping a pigeon in a city is that
it tends to land on someone’s head and
of all the places he could have dropped
that pigeon he dropped it in between two
tables in the outside restaurant of the
Marriott Hotel so you can imagine the
look on these people’s faces when
they’re halfway through their main
course and his blood-covered beheaded
pigeon lands next to them this was a
really cool wildlife experience but the
thing that I love most about it was how
it brought together so many people from
you know so many different backgrounds
we had the builders the suited and
booted lawyers and all these passes by
that would walk on this main road that
you know showed such a keen interest in
these Peregrine’s perhaps most promising
was that parents who’d they themselves
admitted to having little interest in
nature were bringing their kids down to
watch Sam and his and his mum and dad in
action and I think that’s the power of
urban wildlife you know most of us will
never see a polar bear we’ll never see a
line Monday society is so disconnected
from nature you know urban wildlife you
know provides a bit of a bridge to that
gap so please get out and see what
wildlife you can find if if you live in
a city we’re just about to go to sleep
and Bekah heard some crashing and said
you hear that bear
species talismans to represent whole
ecosystems
if you want to photograph the Arctic you
photograph polar bears if you want to
photograph Africa you photograph lions
well you can have a wildlife experience
in a city in the urban jungle that is
just as wild just as crazy as anywhere
else so my job is basically to dress up
like this I guess some of you are
probably sitting there wondering why on
earth National Geographic has got some
young whippersnapper who can barely grow
facial hair to come give you a talk and
that is a perfectly valid question the
state of my facial hair is quite frankly
embarrassing so I guess I’ll start from
the beginning to kind of set things into
context um this is me when I was two
with my older brother Tom and as you can
see I wasn’t always interested in
wildlife tom is holding an alligator in
his hand and I just wasn’t that fast my
mum used to make me and my three
brothers wear matching outfits on days
out the outfits did get much better ten
years after this picture was taken I was
still up to no good the only difference
was now I had a camera in my hand and
everyone at high school thought I was a
total freak because in any moment of
spare time I’d run down away from from
class or sports practice or whatever to
jump in the little river that ran past
my school and take pictures of the the
friendly swans or they’re not so
friendly pike
now they’re they’re you know awesome
animals in this whole time I was
teaching myself by trial and error how
to get close to these animals once I
thought I’d mastered getting close to
one animal I’d apply that to a new one I
was just totally obsessed now I got my
first break when I was 17 I was selected
to be part of this project the 20/20
vision project now put simply this
project brought together the UK’s top 20
wildlife photographers and 20 young
photographers I was lucky enough to get
selected as one of those those young
guys and our job was basically to go
around the UK and prove that British
wildlife is not
that was our job now I thought I’d drawn
the short straw because while some of my
colleagues were um well they were
getting to dive with seals off off the
coast of Devon this is Alex and us that
he was actually my mentor on the project
or Andy rouse was getting to sneak up on
wild boar in the forest of dean pecans
was getting to photograph Ospreys diving
into the locks of the Highlands of
Scotland why I was tasked with urban
wildlife so I thought I was stuck with
pigeons and rats but I was wrong I found
out that you can have a wildlife
experience in a city in the urban jungle
that is just as wild just as crazy as
anywhere else and I found that the
closer you look the more you see so
everything down to the small stuff this
is a great tip you can see that green
thing in its mouth that’s a caterpillar
well in that little hole it has three
chicks inside a nest
you know the closer you look the more
you find and you know I’m always trying
to look for flagship species talismans
to represent whole ecosystems if you
want to photograph the Arctic well you
photograph polar bears if you want to
photograph you know Africa represent
Africa you photograph lions well in a
city you just have to look a little
closer if you get close enough to the
grace girl you find that it’s got
buckets full of charisma but it’s not
just the small stuff it’s the big stuff
too now these are two rutting red deer
similar to your North American elk and
every year in October during the annual
rut they basically fight each other for
breeding rights is this crazy wild thing
and you know you might think that red
deer you only see them fight you know in
the wildest corner of the UK or and the
wilder parts of Europe well these two
are rutting three miles from the very
center of London it’s pretty crazy so
where are we okay we’re going to zoom in
this is London now I was in Richmond
Park for that that rutting episode down
in the bottom left and just like I would
with a Wilder place I built up a map of
all the different places that I could
find and photograph wildlife and there’s
just wildlife absolutely everywhere it
was it was really really cool now I’m
particularly grateful for this project
because I discovered what is now my
favorite animal the peregrine falcon now
there’s a few reasons why peregrine
my favorite animal firstly they’re the
fastest animal on earth that’s pretty
cool they can dive at speeds of up to
180 miles per hour but that’s nothing
what really gets me is that they are a
pigeon killing machine
it’s just epic to watch so here you can
see an adult female with a pigeon that
is just nailed and then that’s a the
brown a bird is a juvenile they start
off brown and then get the adult plumage
after a year or so peregrines are a real
good news story in the UK because when I
was born in in 1993 seeing a peregrine
was a really rare event you know a
fleeting glimpse at a nest tree and you
know Devon or something was about as
good as it got
whereas now they’re doing really well
all across the the UK particularly in
cities now the reason they do well in
cities is because firstly there’s lots
of food as you all know cities are
packed full of pigeons so this is a
female having a good stretch of her tail
feathers and before she goes off and
smashes another pigeon just limbering up
now the other reason that they they do
really well in cities is because the
ledges and novels particularly if the
older buildings are very similar to
their natural cliff homes so these two
chicks are in a nest 25 stories up a
really on – looking concrete tower block
again right in the centre of London
these aren’t migrants they’re not
temporary visitors they are resident
they are urban birds now Kanin saw some
of the pictures that I was taking on
this project and very kindly lent me
some some gear so I was getting to play
with some some big boys toys now it’s
amazing the amount of trouble you can
get in walking around a city with a lens
like that I had 100 episode that there
wasn’t my finest moment I had this
position where this location where I’d
stand on a main road on the pavement on
the sidewalk to photograph this nest the
Peregrine nest and miles in the distance
in the background was this huge tower
block it was an apartment block and on
one day this this this woman in a car
came screeching up stop next to me got
out of her car marched over to me and
said can you please stop taking pictures
of me getting changed through my bedroom
window
now how do you react to that back then
you know I wasn’t very good at dealing
with these awkward situations so I’m I
said don’t flatter yourself
just a teenage kid trying to photograph
some Peregrine’s leave me alone
as you can imagine that didn’t go down
particularly well so I followed one
particular pair of Peregrine’s that live
in Bristol which is a city in the
southwest of England and I’m not
normally one to name wild animals but
when something like this happens it’s
quite difficult not to so this is the
chick on the right the brown a bird he’s
called Sam and this is the female on the
left and you can see the female is about
1/3 bigger than Sam and that’s not
because she’s an adult and he’s a chick
is because she’s a female and he’s a
male female Peregrine’s about third
bigger than the males now things were
looking really good for Sam because his
parents were awesome hunters they were
catching pigeons you know like there was
no tomorrow they’d bring him in he’d
then wolf it down and screech hit them
to go and get another one
he was also exercising and stretching
his wings ready for his maiden voyage
his first flight he’s you know his
voyage into the sky now this is where
things went a little bit pear-shaped
this is where the fairy tale ends I’m
afraid so Sam took his first flight he
jumped off that building and some gulls
saw him and they mobbed him down into
the river which ran below the nest
building now this was a city if it had
been in a normal river in a Wilder place
peregrines actually quite good swimmers
they can kind of flap their wings and
get them over to the edge but this was a
city so the the either Bank was a six
foot high vertical concrete bank so
there was absolutely no way he was going
to get out the river he’d also being a
wild animal chosen the one day in an
entire month when I wasn’t standing on
the main road on the bridge there and to
you know to see him fortunately though
spending all that time on the bridge had
attracted quite a lot of attention
particularly from two builders who
worked on a building site next door to
the nest building and they saw Sam get
mobbed down into the river and they
grabbed an umbrella and they
ran over to help and they climbed down
on the ladder on the concrete riverbank
and leant off the ladder into the river
and tried to scoop Sam up out the river
with an umbrella
unfortunately Sam was a little bit too
far away so one of the builders had the
idea of taking bricks you know it’s a
building site lots of bricks and they
threw them over the top of Sam’s head to
create a wave a splash that would wash
Sam back towards him now when they told
me this story afterwards I was like guys
I don’t know if this is genius
or crazy you threw bricks over a
protected species but it worked
they got Sam out yeah but no um by the
time they got Sam out it wasn’t looking
good he was pretty much dead he wasn’t
moving and the Bristol Peregrine expert
Edie drew it was called to the scene and
he decided the best plan of action would
be to dry Sam off take him home and just
you know see what happened both Edie and
I thought that Sam wasn’t gonna survive
the night but Sam is no ordinary
Peregrine oh no oh no in the morning he
was fighting fit and we decided to
release him
um now on that that month I had on that
road had also attracted attention from a
couple of lawyers they had an office
building really close to the nest
building and they said that we could
release Sam on their roof so you know
walking into an office you know a
lawyer’s office
you know full of suited and booted
lawyers with a bird of prey and a towel
in your hands does get you some funny
looks but it had to be done we got Sam
up onto the roof and you can see that
blue band and the metal silver band on
his ankle we put them on so that we can
track his movements what scientists are
finding is that these urban Peregrine’s
aren’t tied to the city the chicks you
know dispersed all over the place and
and vice versa if a chick is born in a
Wilder place like on the coast they can
come back into the city it shows how
adaptable they are it’s not you know
genetic it’s it’s a behavioral thing
which is really cool they can adapt um
three minutes later he took flight and
bearing in mind how his first flight had
gone our hearts for an hour mouths what
was going to happen but he made it back
to the nest building with you and just
two days after this near-drowning
experience I saw him flying high
alongside
I’d hear the the adult female who again
has got a pigeon now this is how the
adults teach the youngsters to hunt
they’ll kill or disable a pigeon and
then let the youngster come up from
underneath take it off of them so they
can practice flying with her with weight
any problem while Sam was just rubbish
at flying with pigeons it’s like come on
dude up your game now just after I took
this picture Sam dropped the pigeon
cause he did an idiot now the problem
with dropping a pigeon in a city is that
it tends to land on someone’s head and
of all the places he could have dropped
that pigeon he dropped it in between two
tables in the outside restaurant of the
Marriott Hotel so you can imagine the
look on these people’s faces when
they’re halfway through their main
course and his blood-covered beheaded
pigeon lands next to them this was a
really cool wildlife experience but the
thing that I love most about it was how
it brought together so many people from
you know so many different backgrounds
we had the builders the suited and
booted lawyers and all these passes by
that would walk on this main road that
you know showed such a keen interest in
these Peregrine’s perhaps most promising
was that parents who’d they themselves
admitted to having little interest in
nature were bringing their kids down to
watch Sam and his and his mum and dad in
action and I think that’s the power of
urban wildlife you know most of us will
never see a polar bear we’ll never see a
line Monday society is so disconnected
from nature you know urban wildlife you
know provides a bit of a bridge to that
gap so please get out and see what
wildlife you can find if if you live in
a city we’re just about to go to sleep
and Bekah heard some crashing and said
you hear that bear
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