Simon Barnes

Freelance Journalist at Freelance

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Articles

Buffalo blood keeps me and the Serengeti alive: my week as a tsetse fly

1 week ago | observer.co.uk | Simon Barnes

Each week Simon Barnes hears what the last seven days has been like for a member of the animal kingdom I happen to think that maternal care – mother-love if you prefer – is the most important thing in the world. Being a loving mother myself, I also take a considerable pride in our greatest achievement. We tsetse flies have created one of greatest wonders on the entire planet. MondayA good day. A bloody good day as we tsetses say.
‘Life as a creative genius is no bed of roses’ – my week as a nightingale | The Observer

2 weeks ago | observer.co.uk | Simon Barnes

Each week, Simon Barnes hears what the last seven days has been like for a member of the animal kingdom Don’t get me started on critics. A true creative artist has no time for them. OK, we’ve been misunderstood and misrepresented for centuries: but for me what matters is the music. Only and ever the music. What else should matter to a nightingale? MondayI prefer to sing at night.
After years of flight, a young bird’s fancy turns to home: my week as a swift

3 weeks ago | observer.co.uk | Simon Barnes

Each week, Simon Barnes describes what the last seven days has been like for a member of the animal kingdom I’m seriously considering landing this year. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m beginning to feel that I’ve been up here too long. The sky is the loveliest place on earth, don’t get me wrong. But maybe there’s something to be said for a visit down below. I might even perch for a bit. MondayAfrica was great. I stayed there three months, but didn’t touch it once.
The power of the underdog

3 weeks ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Simon Barnes

Suddenly we’re all Canadians. And Greenlanders. And it’s not just their essential rightness that appeals to us: it’s the fact that they’re underdogs. They have both been picked on by the most powerful nation on earth, and they both told its leader to get stuffed. Huzzah!That gratifies us on a profound level. The underdog is a universal human archetype: perhaps the archetype. It’s the way we see ourselves and the way we understand the universe.
What Song Did The Swiss Guard March To After The Conclave?

1 month ago | grunge.com | Simon Barnes

On May 8, 2025, after fewer than two days of deliberation by cardinals assembled in Vatican City, over 1.4 billion Roman Catholics finally found out who would be their new pope. Amid the pomp and ceremony as Pope Leo XIV — the Chicago-born Robert Prevost — made his first public appearance at St. Peter's Basilica, there was a noticeable accompaniment: the famous and colorful Swiss Guard, led by a marching band.
Unique, alone and inimitable – my week as an aardvark | The Observer

1 month ago | observer.co.uk | Simon Barnes

Each week, Simon Barnes hears what the last seven days has been like for a member of the animal kingdom We’re all unique: that’s what being a species means. But some of us are more unique than others, if you see what I mean. There’s a certain species of bipedal ape that thinks it’s separate from everything else that lives. Well, we aardvarks aren’t the most vocal of creatures, but I can certainly summon up a snort of derision. MondayA pretty decent day. Night rather.
Humans? Only in an emergency - my week as a vampire bat

1 month ago | observer.co.uk | Simon Barnes

Each week, Simon Barnes hears what the last seven days has been like for a member of the animal kingdon Altruism. That’s how society works, isn’t it? Kindness, generosity, the ungrudging and never-counting swapping of favours. Be nice and everyone else is nice back. And if you don’t abide by those principles, you’re not fit to be a vampire bat. MondayA normal day in the colony. Or rather night. Just a few dozen of us in a big hollow tree.
‘Wait for the sun. Hope to survive’: my week as an Orange-tip butterfly

1 month ago | observer.co.uk | Simon Barnes

Each week, Simon Barnes hears what the last seven-days has been like for a member of the animal kingdom A week in the life? That’s a laugh. More like a life in the week. If I make it to four weeks I’ll be one of the luckiest orange-tip butterflies that ever took wing. Though I’m not inclined to measure success in number of days. Number of females more like. One would be good. MondayToday I completed my metamorphosis. I got through winter as pupa. I did the hatching and caterpillar thing last year.
James Bond: Secret agent and ornithologist? How Ian Fleming’s writing revealed himself and 007 to be covert naturalists

1 month ago | discoverwildlife.com | Simon Barnes

“Bond watched, fascinated. He guessed it was a boa of the Epicrates family, attracted by the smell of blood. It was perhaps five feet long and quite harmless to man.”This excerpt is from The Man With the Golden Gun, when James Bond is in the middle of a shoot-out in a swamp in Jamaica with a bad man called Pistols Scaramanga.
I stayed in Brazil's Pantanal, where you can see the world's biggest jaguars and largest flying parrots

1 month ago | dailymail.co.uk | Simon Barnes

Humans can do good things as well as bad – and good things are happening in Brazil's Pantanal. Both jaguars and hyacinth macaws are making a comeback and I have seen it with my own eyes. I stayed at Caiman, a lodge in the Pantanal where you find 81,000 square miles of wetland. The last guest who left without seeing a jaguar did so in 2020. This is because the lodge combines research into the life, behaviour and conservation of jaguars with tourism that helps to fund it.