I took issue with this, the latest book from the prolific Stephen Moss, right from the start. He declares, with the intent I presume to generate just the reaction it got from me, that the swallow is the best-loved bird in the world. Surely that is the robin (the subject of another of his books)? If you accept the challenge, you will find yourself swiftly and confidently drawn into this avian world. But it’s also because he writes with such conviction, clarity, insight, depth and purpose. He understands better than anyone how times have changed. When talking about the “insect armageddon”, for example, he points out how raptor declines in the 1960s were found to be linked to the chemicals that were used in sheep dips and agriculture. Initially, the book looks to our collective history as a species and to our individual past as children to explore how we evolved the skills to walk and in turn to navigate. A more extensive perspective takes shape as it investigates differing reasons for walking, such as to aid thought and to protest. It also examines how certain environments impact upon the brain and wellbeing, including a fascinating chapter on walking in the city, of which city planners may wish to take note. Featuring a fresh new design, and supported by a touring exhibition, the book is both an essential reference tool and an irresistible gift, bringing every reader closer to the often unseen and always surprising world of British nature. In his lyrical history, Richard Morris takes us on an epic journey through England’s greatest county in search of Yorkshire’s identity. With a strong personal connection to the county, Morris weaves in stories of everyday Yorkshire folk alongside the more obvious names from history.

A close shave with poachers in the depths of West Africa is only mentioned because a night beside a canal behind Watford Gap Services has prompted the reminisce. Will has a great depth of knowledge but is also self-aware and happy to walk more carefully the paths down which he once ran. While politically radical and deeply insightful, this is not a dour book in any way. Hayes proves himself to be “brilliantly alive” – his forays across the imaginary lines that exclude us are described with a lightness of touch that brings humour into the darkest places. He covers the ground in 57 days (with six days off), fuelled by porridge, Mars Bars and a thousand conversations with strangers. He encounters plagues of poo bags and non-native Sitka spruce, develops an intense dislike of stiles, passes through glorious scenery, and, above all, learns to live in the moment. Though saddened by how rare is to meet anyone under 20 in the wilds, he is encouraged by the army of people battling to restore Britain’s natural riches. This illuminating book proves a worthy addition to a crowded genre as it focuses on the science behind what enables us to walk and why walking is, in turn, good for us. In the introduction, Shane O’Mara outlines the intriguing and novel concept that, along with language and using tools, our ability to ambulate is one of the key things that sets humans apart from other animals.

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I had come to think that wild histories seemed somehow indefinably linked with the spirit of a place,” he says. And it is only by seeking and experiencing these places first-hand can we “interpret the complex interactions of past lives within a certain space”. It’s thoughts like these that can turn any walk into a more memorable, meaningful adventure. Today, we know that insects are also being impacted by a new suite of chemicals, and yet there is little change. Are our nature conservation bodies less able to affect change, he wonders; are politicians more negligent or big business more powerful? “We need immediate change rather than more research,” he writes. “Governments and big business love research; it means they don’t have to do anything now.” I poured over the beautifully illustrated plan of what a complete and perfect walled garden might look like in part one of the book, but otherwise, horticultural information is scant. There are few named plants, either edible or ornamental, which felt like a missed opportunity. Over recent years, we have spent more and more time indoors, and for many of us, this has only increased with the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as a species, we're programmed to love the great outdoors. Even just looking at a green space reduces stress and improves psychological wellbeing. English exceptionalism is an ugly hangover of Empire, when many of the walls that keep us out were built. But the exceptional quality of England revealed here is the iniquity of land distribution and access, and the ease with which many of us seem to accept this fragmentation of our history and our nature. We do not have to look very far before we see far more enlightened attitudes to access.

Illustrated throughout with glorious photographs of landscapes and wildlife, this book should inspire you not merely to get out into the natural world but also to forge a lasting and mutually beneficial relationship with it. Published by the science-informed British Trust for Ornithology, these “love letters to our most vulnerable species [of birds]”, with remarkable original artwork, are a creative way to fundraise and boost the profile of endangered wildlife. Swallows are clearly amazing and I do thrill at their arrival and mourn their departure each year. To ensure this amazing bird continues to return as the harbinger of summer, Moss gives us a timely reminder that we need to share our land – we need to turn away from destruction and embrace a more ecocentric worldview. Beachcombing turns out to be a balm for body and mind, a restorative ritual that takes Huband around the Shetland archipelago and to Orkney, Fair Isle, the Faroes and Netherlands. She meets fellow beach-scourers, surveys the rich marine wildlife and falls in love with ‘sea post’, the ancient custom of casting messages adrift in bottles. He selects eight birds, from celebrated songsters such as nightingales and skylarks to species less renowned, such as shearwaters, and uses their songs as a way to explore their loves and lives. And for some, such as the nightingale, this works brilliantly, even though it’s hard to be sure exactly what a “sputnik-beep” is.

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In places, The Lost Spells is explicit about threats to the natural world, and here too is ‘Heartwood’, Macfarlane’s protest poem against the pointless felling of street trees. As the prologue says: “Loss is the tune of our age, hard to miss and hard to bear.” This is a good book to read about a few trees at a time, as each species is featured in nice bite-size chunks. The author has done a great job of bringing their heritage (fact and fiction), into a book that will broaden our knowledge of the magnificent trees that surround us. Orchids are the most beguiling plants in our flora. Some use sexual deception to lure pollinators, others forge underground partnerships with fungi and many have a tantalising tendency to appear in profusion in one year and vanish the next. By his own admission, Jon Dunn has fallen under their spell, with a bad case of orchid fever. It’s a compulsion that led him to leave his home in Shetland and spend a summer seeking every species in Britain, from the early purples of spring to the last of the autumn lady’s tresses. Much of the action takes place in the dark or half-light: we’re led at whisker-level over moors and streams into fields and woods as both hunters and hunted travel the landscape. The animal characters joke, grieve, love, form alliances and even have visions. Yet no other book has given me such a powerfully visceral sense of what it might be like to be a wild animal.