Stephen Rutt is a naturalist and the award-winning author of five books. Despite falling into a river when he was two years old, he has never learned to swim. But water has fascinated him ever since. Birds have also been his life’s guiding passion since he was 14 and he can’t remember a time when he wasn’t an obsessive reader.

His books – The Seafarers: A Journey Among Birds (2019), Wintering: A Season with Geese (2019), The Eternal Season: Ghosts of Summers Past, Present and Future (2021), The Saltmarsh Library (2025) and The Waterlands (2026) – tell the story of our environment and the species we share it with. The Seafarers won the Saltire Society’s first book award, Wintering was listed by The Times as one of the best nature books of 2019 and The Eternal Season was shortlisted for the Saltire Society’s best non-fiction book award. He has also been shortlisted for the Anne Brown essay prize and won the Royal Literary Fund’s JB Priestley award. His writing has been published in The Guardian, The Scotsman, Granta.com and Caught by the River.

He lives in Dumfries, Scotland with his daughter and spends most of his time birdwatching in the rain.

He can be found on Instagram steve.rutt and at Bluesky @steverutt.

Books

The Waterlands, published by Elliott & Thompson, 26th March 2026.

The Saltmarsh Library, published by Solway Coast and Marine Project, 28th September 2025.

The Eternal Season: Ghosts of Summers Past, Present and Future, published by Elliott & Thompson, 1st July 2021.

Wintering: A Season with Geese, published by Elliott & Thompson, 26th September, 2019.

The Seafarers: A Journey Among Birds, published by Elliott & Thompson, 23rd May 2019.

‘Goldeneye’, in Into The Red, curated by Kit Jewitt and Mike Toms, published by the British Trust for Ornithology, 4th October, 2022.

Selected Articles and Interviews

‘Wild Galloway: book review’, British Birds, July 2025. https://www.britishbirds.co.uk/journal/article/wild-galloway

‘Bird School: book review’, British Birds, June 2025. https://www.britishbirds.co.uk/journal/article/bird-school-beginner-wood

‘The Cuckoo’s Lea: book review’, British Birds, June 2025. https://www.britishbirds.co.uk/journal/article/cuckoos-lea-forgotten-history-birds-and-place

‘Natterjack Toads’, Caught By The River, May 15th, 2024. https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2024/05/stephen-rutt-natterjack-toads/

‘Shadows and Reflections’, Caught By The River, December 2nd, 2022. https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2022/12/shadows-reflections-stephen-rutt/

‘What Feathers Know’, Granta.com, November 30th, 2022. https://granta.com/what-feathers-know/

‘The Birds of the Sun’, Caught By The River, October 29th, 2022. https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2022/10/stephen-rutt-bee-eaters/

‘Country Diary: This is surely my last dragonfly of the year’, The Guardian, September 14th, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/14/country-diary-this-is-surely-my-last-dragonfly-of-the-year

‘Never take a nightjar for granted’, The Scotsman, August 20th, 2022.

‘In Search of One Last Song: Book Review’, British Birds, May 2022. https://britishbirds.co.uk/journal/article/search-one-last-song

‘Country Diary: Seeing the beauty in this world for the first time’, The Guardian, March 14th, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/14/country-diary-seeing-the-beauty-in-this-world-for-the-first-time

‘Country Diary: Porcelain fungi light the dark like a splash of milk’, The Guardian, September 18th, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/18/country-diary-porcelain-fungi-light-the-dark-like-a-splash-of-milk

‘Beside the bog of time’ Gutter (Volume 24), August 2021.

‘Country Diary: A tale of two fritillaries’, The Guardian, July 19th, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/19/country-diary-a-tale-of-two-fritillaries

‘Country Diary: Ice that’s hair today, but gone in an instant’, The Guardian, December 12th, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/12/country-diary-ice-thats-hair-today-but-gone-in-an-instant

‘Country Diary: The Vanguard from Svalbard’, The Guardian, October 5th, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/05/country-diary-the-vanguard-from-svalbard

‘A thousand strong dawn chorus’, The Scotsman, November 28th, 2020.

‘How seven months on an isolated island changed my life’, The Scotsman, June 4th, 2020. https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/heritage/how-seven-months-isolated-scottish-island-changed-my-life-2873998

‘Six Questions: Stephen Rutt about Seabirds and Islands’, interviewed by Anna Iltnere for the Sea Library: https://beachbooks.blog/2019/07/24/6-questions-stephen-rutt-about-sea-birds/

‘A word about birds: author on how he fell for Britain’s beaky blinders’, The Honest Truth, The Sunday Post. May 26, 2019.

‘Taking Flight’, interview with Carol Hogarth, published in Dumfries & Galloway Life July 2019.

‘Into the White’: a review of Michael Engelhard’s Ice Bear for Minding Nature (Spring 2017). https://www.humansandnature.org/into-the-white

‘Essex, February 2017’, in Curlew Calling, published by Numenius Press (2017), edited by Karen Lloyd.

‘A Shingle Street Elegy’, in EarthLines magazine, issue 17, March 2017.

‘The Pickieterno‘, in Driftfish, published by Zoomorphic (2016), edited by Susan Richardson and James Roberts.

‘A Bird in the Hand’, in EarthLines magazine, issue 13, November 2015.