Kake's Reading List

But so not in the way people who diss on my lovely city of residence usually mean it.

From scorpions to peacocks: the species thriving in London’s hidden microclimates: An extraordinary mosaic of wildlife has made Britain’s urban jungle its home:

London is the only place in the UK where you can find scorpions, snakes, turtles, seals, peacocks, falcons all in one city – and not London zoo. Step outside and you will encounter a patchwork of writhing, buzzing, bubbling urban microclimates.
Sam Davenport, the director of nature recovery at the London Wildlife Trust, emphasises the sheer variation in habitats that you find in UK cities, which creates an amazing “mosaic” of wildlife.
“If you think of going out into the countryside where you have arable fields, it’s really homogeneous. But if you walk a mile in each direction of a city you’re going to get allotments, gardens, railway lines, bits of ancient woodland.”

More than 10,000 yellow-tailed scorpions (Tetratrichobothrius flavicaudis) are thought to live in the crevices of walls at Sheerness dockyard, Kent, and are believed to have spawned a second colony in the east London docklands. They arrived in the UK in the 1800s, nestled in shipments of Italian masonry.
Meanwhile, Regent’s Park provides perfect woodland conditions for the UK’s main population of Aesculapian snakes (Zamenis longissimus). One of Europe’s largest snake species, these olive-coloured constrictors are thought to be escapers from a former research facility, surviving in the wild by preying on rodents and birds.

Art-loving falcons: 'Swooping from the Barbican, the falcons often spend the day at Tate Modern, just across the river'. Doesn't that conjure up an image?

Bats! - 'Wildlife experts believe they navigate much like human commuters, using linear railway embankments as guides through the city.' Bless.

And FERAL PEACOCKS!!! 'Other birds are legacies of Britain’s aristocratic past. Peacocks, for example, are known to strut through the Kyoto Garden in Holland Park, feral descendants of birds once kept by the gentry'.

Mention of the pelicans in St James's Park as descendants of gifts to Charles II, but alas, no crocodiles from that era have survived.

Given this metropolitan seethingness of nature red in tooth and claw, do men really need to go on Rewilding Retreats in Cornwall? (there was a para about this in the travel section which I can't locate online) - particularly given the 'walks in ancient temperate rain forest', I felt this was folk horror movie waiting to happen - just me??