Nature writing celebrated

Winners of youth nature writing competition announced, reports BBC Wildlife magazine

From 220 entries, three winners have been revealed from the Nature on your Doorstep writing competition: Danielle Amouzou-Akue (14) from Essex, Anna Stone (10) from Norfolk and Benji Janes (6) from Sussex.

All three winning stories will be published in an upcoming issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine.

“Stories are at the core of everything we do on BBC Wildlife Magazine, so we were thrilled to be able to support this competition and offer the next generation of wildlife writers the chance to see their work appear in the country’s longest-running natural history magazine,” says Paul McGuinness, editor of BBC Wildlife.

Launched in April by nature writer and storyteller Lucy McRobert – a friend of this blog – the competition aimed to connect children and young adults with the nature right outside their homes – up in the sky, on their streets, in their gardens, from their windows – during the coronavirus pandemic.

Extracts from the winning stories:

The Homecoming, by Danielle Amouzou-Akue (14):

The lovely nightingale was flying home this year and yet he didn’t see as many planes as usual. No one was around. The towns and cities and even countries he saw were covered by a blanket of deathly silence. And he wondered – had humans really stopped? They didn’t usually go home. Didn’t migrate. Nor stop doing. Although some called them human beings, in his experience they rarely had time to be.

The Apple Tree, Anna Stone (10):

Emily wandered over, and a knobby branch came out. On it was a brown paper parcel. On the way to the New House, Emily opened the package. She smiled when a handful of brown apple seeds tumbled out. She did not have to leave the tree, she realised. In fact, she had it in her hands.

The Story of Flutter and Flims, Benji Janes (6):

The first time I saw Flutter and Flims they were still in their eggs. When they became chicks, I found out that they weren’t just brought up by sparrows, but by other garden birds, too! Robbins, blackbirds, blootits, a great tit, doves, magpies, a crow and a pigeon all helped to raise them.

The competition was judged by a team of wildlife writers, champions and publishers: