Hello! I’m a zoologist-turned-author living in Oxford, and I write about animal behaviour, nature and the human-animal relationship. I have a DPhil on crow problem-solving from Oxford University, which involved setting puzzles to tool-using New Caledonian crows.

My first (co-authored) book was the award-winning history of ornithology, Ten Thousand Birds: Ornithology Since Darwin (Princeton University Press, 2014). My popular science debut was Aesop’s Animals: The Science of Aesop’s Fables (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2021), and my latest is Beauty of the Beasts: Rethinking Nature’s Least Loved Animals (Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2026). I’ve also had freelance commissions published in BBC Wildlife, Science Focus, the i newspaper, and more.

I also take an inordinately large number of mediocre nature photos, usually while stomping around my local patch in Oxford.