About
In 2019, in her late thirties, Melissa Lee left her old life and bought a house near the River Ouse on an acre of field and scrub. She and her husband Andrew have spent the years since turning the land over to the wildlife. The badgers came. Then the foxes. Owls, blackbirds, pheasants.
She named the magpie Fred, the pheasant Eddie, the squirrel Nutsy, and the resident blackbird Jack — after Jack White of The White Stripes, for the unusual thin white stripe on his wing. A stoat that recently moved into the wood pile is, simply, The Serial Killer.
A year ago she started Notes from Nature on Substack. Today it has 988 subscribers, sits at #16 Rising in Climate & Environment, and publishes weekly minimum — sometimes twice. The cadence is monthly 'Now That's What I Call Wildlife!' roundups, weekly Wildlife Spotlight species deep-dives, seasonal walks, multi-part habitat how-tos, and Wednesday trail-cam footage drops.
Her April 2026 issue is about a stoat that killed a blackbird and the female who rebuilt her nest in full view of Melissa's kitchen window. Predation, names, and the long quiet observation that comes with one acre and a trail cam.
Highlights
- Subscribers
- 988 (#16 Rising in Climate & Environment)
- Habitat
- 1 acre · field & scrub · River Ouse
- Launched
- April 2025
- Cadence
- Weekly minimum · daily Notes
- Top post
- Wildlife Spotlight: Wrens · 166 likes
Deeper Dive
The Wildlife Spotlight series is the spine of the publication. The Wrens post is her most-read at 166 likes; Ladybirds (her own obsession) hit 127; subsequent spotlights cover Foxes (a two-parter), Starlings, Magpies, Wood Pigeons, Badgers, and Sparrows. Each braids natural-history fact with a named-character narrative — pedagogy that doesn't read like pedagogy.
There's evidence of self-editing discipline you don't always see in solo Substacks. The monthly roundups used to drift long; she now caps them at five moments. In November 2025 she skipped the newsletter to co-write 'Fantastic Birds and Where to Find Them' with Leonard Neamtu of Reconnect — published on his side as a two-parter.
The structural how-tos are 'Why Is My Garden So Good For Wildlife?' Part 1 (March 21 2026) on planting, pollinators, and luck; Part 2 (April 11 2026) on hedges, hotels, ponds, and plants. February brought a subscriber chat, March a Nature Book Club currently voting on the spring read.
In Their Words
“These eyes were on my side of the fence, and they were staring right back at me. My skin prickled. I knew it had to be the fox. So why did I feel afraid?”