• Search
  • About us
  • Jobs
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
  • Donate
  • Join Us
  • Wildlife
      • Local Wildlife
        • Wildlife Directory
      • Record Your Sighting
        • Nature Counts
      • Injured Animals & Emergencies
        • Local Wildlife Rescue Centres
        • Reporting Wildlife Crime
        • Wildfire safety advice
        • The Countryside Code
      • Image of Wildlife in Sheffield and Rotherham Reserve
        Wildlife in Sheffield and Rotherham

        Take a look, through some of the common species of wildlife that live in the South Yorkshire area around Sheffield and Rotherham.

  • Our Work
      • News
        • Conservation
        • Nature, Health & Wellbeing
        • Schools, Education & Outdoor Learning
        • Nature Reserves
        • Partnerships
        • Nature Recovery
        • Campaigning & Appeals
        • Events & Activities
        • Videos
      • Nature Recovery Programmes
        • Nature Based Solutions
        • Rotherham Rivers
      • Nature, Health & Wellbeing
        • Green and Blue Social Prescribing
        • Wild at Heart
        • Nextdoor Nature
      • Schools, Education & Outdoor Learning
        • Primary and Early Years
        • Secondary Schools
        • Further and Higher Education
        • Training and support
      • Evidence-led Conservation
        • What is Evidence-Led Conservation?
        • Working with Nature: Woodhouse Washlands
      • Partnerships
        • South Yorkshire Woodland Partnership
        • South Yorkshire Local Nature Partnership
        • Sheffield Street Tree Partnership
        • Sheffield Lakeland Partnership
      • Advice & Consultancy
        • Wildscapes
        • The BNG Hub
        • Land Management Advice Service
  • Nature Reserves
      • Nature Reserves in Sheffield
        • Blacka Moor
        • Carbrook Ravine
        • Carr House Meadows
        • Crabtree Ponds
        • Fox Hagg
        • Greno Woods
        • Moss Valley Woodlands
        • Salmon Pastures
        • Sunnybank
        • Wyming Brook
      • Nature Reserves in Rotherham
        • Woodhouse Washlands
        • Centenary Riverside
        • Kilnhurst Ings
      • Special Conservation Spaces
        • Agden Bog
        • Hammond’s Field
      • Nature Friendly Farming
        • Ughill Farm
      • Image of Fox Hagg Reserve
        Fox Hagg

        A recently extended patch of heathland and woodland, neighbouring Wyming Brook.

  • Events & Activities
      • What's On
        • Volunteer Work Days
        • Family Events
        • Guided Walks
        • Online Events
        • View All Events
      • Activities
        • 30 Days Wild
        • Activities for Children
        • Activities for Adults
        • Nature Detectives!
  • Get Involved
      • Nature Recovery
        • Nature Recovery Community Toolkit
        • Nature Recovery Sheffield
        • Nature Recovery Rotherham
        • Sheffield Swift City
        • New Government Priorities for Nature
      • Volunteering
        • Volunteer with us
      • Campaigning for Wildlife
        • # Defend Nature
        • Action for Insects
        • Badgers and bTB
        • Birds of Prey
        • Go peat free!
        • Our Moors
        • Wilder Future
      • Image of Badgers and bTB Reserve
        Badgers and bTB

        Help stop the badger cull coming to Sheffield and Rotherham!

  • Support us
      • Become a Member
        • Individual Membership
        • Joint Membership
        • Family Membership
        • Gift a Membership
        • Renew your Membership
      • Corporate Partnerships
        • Corporate Membership
        • Wild Work Days
        • Employee Wellbeing Packages
      • Make a Donation
      • Appeals
        • Taking Action for Nature Appeal
        • Acorn Fund
      • A Gift in Your Will
        • A Gift in their Memory
        • How Gifts Can Help us
      • Image of Kingfisher Magazine Reserve
        Kingfisher Magazine

        Unveil the hidden world of insects in Sheffield & Rotherham with the newest issue of Kingfisher magazine.

  • Join Us
  • Donate
  • Online Shop
  • About us
  • Jobs
  • Wildlife
    • Wildlife Directory
    • Nature Counts
    • Local Wildlife Rescue Centres
    • Reporting Wildlife Crime
    • Wildfire safety advice
    • The Countryside Code
  • Our Work
    • News
    • Nature, Health & Wellbeing
    • Evidence-led Conservation
    • Schools, Education & Outdoor Learning
    • South Yorkshire Woodland Partnership
    • South Yorkshire Local Nature Partnership
    • Sheffield Street Tree Partnership
    • Sheffield Lakeland Partnership
    • Wildscapes
  • Nature Reserves
    • Agden Bog
    • Blacka Moor
    • Carbrook Ravine
    • Carr House Meadows
    • Crabtree Ponds
    • Fox Hagg
    • Greno Woods
    • Hammond’s Field
    • Moss Valley Woodlands
    • Salmon Pastures
    • Sunnybank
    • Wyming Brook
    • Woodhouse Washlands
    • Centenary Riverside
    • Kilnhurst Ings
    • Ughill Farm
  • Events & Activities
    • What's On
    • 30 Days Wild
    • Activities for Children
    • Activities for Adults
    • Nature Detectives!
  • Get Involved
    • Volunteer with us
    • Nature Recovery Community Toolkit
    • Nature Recovery Sheffield
    • Nature Recovery Rotherham
    • Campaigning For Wildlife
  • Support us
    • Become a Member
      • Individual Membership
      • Family Membership
      • Joint Membership – Last chance!
      • Gift a Membership
    • Donate
  • Home
  • About us
  • News
  • Busy Bloggin’
  • Take a closer look

Take a closer look

Hannah Hudson-Lee is an author and artist inspired by nature. She shares how botanical illustration and some of its historical quirks inspire her.

© WraptorWBG
  • Ambition 1
  • Ambition 2
  • Ambition 3
  • Contact Us
  • News
    • Busy Bloggin’
  • What We Do
  • Who We Are
  • Work For Us
Hannah Hudson-Lee aka Idol Scribblings
© Hannah Hudson-Lee aka Idol Scribblings

Author and artist Hannah Hudson-Lee is inspired by nature. She uses her artistic talents to create detailed illustrations, including those we share with you as Christmas cards.

The phrase, “The Wisdom of Solomon,” does not immediately make me think of the Old Testament king. It makes me think about my middle school art teacher Miss Solomon, who, like her namesake, was also incredibly wise.

My favourite art project Miss Solomon set us involved studying the beautiful artwork in botany and ornithology books from 1660-1960 to produce our own illustration. At the time, most new wildlife identification books were starting to use photographs, and Miss Soloman thought this was a crying shame. She explained to us that, whilst photographs are fantastic for capturing the action of wildlife and the context of the surrounding habitat, they are not as useful as an illustration when you want to identify a species.

First, catch your jackdaw…

Say you are an artist setting out to create an illustration of a jackdaw for an ornithology book. Your first step is to observe as many examples of the species as you can. Jackdaws in the wild, photographs of jackdaws, and even old preserved specimens in museums. You need to REALLY observe. Does that feather lie over or under that one? How many toes? Which way do the eyes point? As Miss Solomon said, “In art, it is more important to know how to observe, than it is to know how to draw.” (I told you she was wise). Then the artist uses all their research to draw a perfect example of an average jackdaw. This jackdaw does not exist in real life. It is a distilled essence of jackdaw or, if you are a fan of the philosophy of Plato, the Perfect Form of Jackdaw.

In a photograph, the individual jackdaw that has been captured might have an injury or an unusual genetic variation. For example, there is a jackdaw with a crossed bill that visits my Mother-in-law’s bird table. If you were trying to use a photograph of that jackdaw to identify another jackdaw, you might be forgiven for incorrectly assuming that all jackdaws have crossed bills.  In contrast, a good scientific illustration removes these confusing variations. It can also highlight the key identifying features by posing the jackdaw in such a way that they are clearly visible. (It’s really hard to get a jackdaw to pose just-so for a photo. Though perhaps not completely impossible, jackdaws are pretty bright.)

Put another way, a photo of a jackdaw is like a Google Earth image. Capturing one moment in time. A scientific illustration of a jackdaw is the equivalent of Google Maps. Each have their uses, but frequently, the map is what you really need. The important information is much clearer.

Take a wild guess

Tupia Lobster ©The British Library Board
Tupia Lobster ©The British Library Board

I became absolutely fascinated by the examples of illustrations Miss Solomon showed us. Particularly Beatrix Potter’s Mycology drawings and the stunning ornithological illustrations of Arthur Singer. We were particularly charmed by the paintings by Tupia, a Ra’iatean who joined the Endeavor expedition in Tahiti. Tupia taught the crew and scientists aboard many things about navigation and the Pacific. He in turn tried his hand at learning painting in the European style. As people learning ourselves, it was great to see the work of another student, albeit one from over 200 years ago. The human figures he drew may have been a little awkward at first, but his lobster was spot on!

The Kongouro from New Holland (Kangaroo) 1772 by George Stubbs
The Kongouro from New Holland (Kangaroo) 1772 by George Stubbs

Best of all were the examples Miss Solomon showed us where the scientific illustrators didn’t have enough information to go on, and as a result got things hilariously wrong. Back in the 1700s an illustrator might never have seen the creature in question in the wild. They often worked from a single stuffed specimen and some field sketches made by scientists on their far-flung expeditions. Unfortunately, sometimes the taxidermist didn’t know what the animal looked like when it was alive either. They were essentially filling a feathery or furry skin bag and had to guess the correct shape. Perhaps the cutest example is a painting of a Kangaroo by George Stubbs. The artist’s model was a stuffed specimen bought back from James Cook’s controversial first Pacific voyage. It looks a lot more like that giant mouse that chases you in your nightmares than a kangaroo.

Getting there

Illustration of giraffe with a hump from Thomas Bewick’s A General History of Quadrupeds (1790) (c) Trustees of the British Museum
© Hump-Giraffe-Bewick-Quadrupeds

Cameleopard, Thomas Bewick ©Trustees of the British Museum

I am also very fond of the giraffe with a hump from Thomas Bewick’s A General History of Quadrupeds (1790). The hump happened because the taxidermist knew that the scientific name for a giraffe was “Cameleopardus” or camel-leopard, so he gave the specimen a hump! This was then replicated in the drawing.

© Skua-Hannah-age-12

Arctic Skua ©H. Hudson-Lee

When the time came to produce our own work, I chose the Arctic Skua to draw. Not the most colourful of birds, but they have intricate patterns in their plumage, and I took obsessive pleasure in detailing every feather. Miss Solomon had planted a seed in my fertile young mind, and I was very pleased with my end result.

I kept drawing, and by the time I was an undergraduate at university, friends were asking me to help illustrate their theses. I drew a lot of fossils and what felt like a metric load of squirrels.

Art for art’s sake, to create a fantasy, to beautify or to make a statement, is a joy to be sure. But art is also a powerful and vital tool, in the world of science. We use it to visualise data, to record observations, to teach and to explain. If you have a yen to study art, and someone trots out the old chestnut, “It’s not very useful for a “proper” career”, feel free to point out that, without the work of artists, they wouldn’t know what the solar system looks like, they wouldn’t be able to picture the structure of an atom in their mind’s eye, and they wouldn’t have been able to learn about the structure of a human heart at school without having to do a bit of extracurricular grave robbing and some messy dissections. As wise Miss Solomon helped us understand, art is very useful indeed.

A slightly warped look at wildlife

The cover of Hannah's book Second Bestiary, featuring a the Yarn Owl (a creature of the knit).
The cover of Hannah’s book Second Bestiary, featuring the Yarn Owl (a creature of the knit).

Today, my wildlife inspired work has taken a lighter turn, with the aim of using art and humour to help people engage with the natural world.

One of my projects “Second Bestiary” creates new creatures by changing one letter of their name. Examples have included, the Hengehog, the Wraptor, the Guffer Fish, the Ginnow (& tonic) and the Yarn Owl (a creature of the knit). My home in South Yorkshire is surrounded by fantastic wild spaces managed by Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust. I frequently go to the reserves at Kilnhurst Ings, Greno Woods and Centenary Riverside when I need to observe the natural world for research or ideas. Inspiration is never more than a walk in in the wild away, and I truly treasure that privilege. This is why it was an honour and a pleasure to create the Christmas cards for 2020 and 2021, and to be currently working on a design to thank you for supporting the Trust through 2022 and beyond. 

© Idol-Scribblings-logo

Hannah also creates weird beings and wonderful beasts of her own – visit idolscribblings.blog to discover more of her work.

All British Museum images are available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

About us

In This Section

  • Ambition 1
  • Ambition 2
  • Ambition 3
  • Contact Us
  • News
    • Busy Bloggin’
  • What We Do
  • Who We Are
  • Work For Us

Contact Us

Call us: 0114 263 4335

Find us: Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust, 37 Stafford Road, Sheffield S2 2SF

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • X
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube
    • Nature Reserves
      • Nature Recovery Sheffield
      • Nature Recovery Rotherham
      • Nature Recovery Community Toolkit
    • Wildlife
      • Local Wildlife
      • Local Wildlife Rescue Centres
      • Reporting Wildlife Crime
    • About us
      • Who We Are
      • What We Do
      • Contact Us
      • Events & Activities
      • News
      • Work For Us
      • Wildscapes
      • The BNG Hub
    • Support Us
      • Become a Member
      • Corporate Support
      • Make a Donation
      • A Gift in Your Will
      • Kingfisher Magazine
    • Get Involved
      • Volunteer with us
      • Campaigning For Wildlife
      • Nature Recovery Sheffield
    • Online Shop
      • Online Shop Size Guides
      • Online Shop Delivery Information
      • Online Shop Terms, Delivery & Returns
  • © 2025 Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust
  • Registered in England Number 2287928. Registered Charity Number 700638.
  • Privacy Notice
  • Design By Ink & Water
Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}