Author Archives: Cal Flyn
A dazzling and disconcerting tour of our migratory world
From Syrian refugees to migrating seabirds
The joys of birdwatching under lockdown
Admire our avian neighbours, by all means—but don’t envy them; they, too, have been dealing with a difficult period of confinement
Island lockdown—isolating in an isolated place
Our containment on an island is a source of comfort and claustrophobia
In search of fossils from the future
How will we all be remembered?
Want to talk to your dog? Science is finding a way
A few promising—if somewhat salacious—experiments with apes and dolphins in the 60's didn't amount to much. Recent breakthroughs using machine learning, however, offer us fresh prospects of decoding animal languages
What the storms blew in
Siberian blue robins and red-winged blackbirds have been blown off course—and they're not the only ones feeling adrift
"My mind was a mess"—how an afternoon spent rockpooling taught me to slow down
The world will come to life around you if you let it
Insomnia and the joy of night-walking
Charles Dickens was right—the boundaries between real and unreal feel insubstantial under starlight
We moved to a remote island—when will it feel like home?
We came with the right attitude, and the right kind of energy. But it’s hard to let go of the familiar
What starlings have to teach us about the wisdom of crowds
If you, like me, have been throwing up your hands in frustration at the current political morass, you might find solace in the study of birds
A land of my own—what I learned about loneliness when I spent a night on an abandoned island
I had wanted isolation but when I found it, it had frightened me.
Riding the Colorado Trail, I began to see the point of living an ultralight life
It’s on my mind again as we are packing our belongings for our move to Orkney