Deep in the Yorkshire Wolds, in northern England, Robert E. Fuller, like most of us have been for the past year, is glued to a screen. But not to the latest Netflix series or a pirated feed of Oprah Winfrey’s Harry and Meghan interview. He is watching a pair of wild tawny owls, Luna and Bomber, flying back and forth from the woods to their nest, caring for their two precious eggs, laid a few weeks earlier. Neither owlet from the two eggs will survive, perhaps because they come early and cannot endure the sub-zero temperatures. One chick will die from exhaustion and be eaten by Luna. We know this because Fuller goes on to observe it. An artist who specialises in painting wildlife, Fuller began filming creatures in and around his garden a few years ago, gradually introducing more hidden cameras and monitors so as not to miss a thing. He shares his best video captures on YouTube, and last summer began live streaming some of the action. Perhaps having exhausted their stockpiles of Netflix dramas during the pandemic, increasing numbers of viewers across the globe have been tuning into the highs and lows of nature in Fuller’s rural world. He now has 100 cameras strategically placed in and around his garden to provide ever more material for his voracious audience. “People were crying out for what they were missing,” he says, “or what they didn’t even know about.” Last year, as Britain surged in and out of Covid-19 lockdowns, the number of visitors to Fuller’s art gallery plummeted. At the same time, he realised there was growing interest in his social media output, and although a large number of the artist’s fans were in the United States, Asia was increasingly tuning in. Lately about 10 per cent of Fuller’s monthly YouTube views have been in India, with more than 125,000 a month in Vietnam. He also has viewers in Indonesia, Cambodia and Hong Kong. China though, with the potential to be Fuller’s biggest audience of all, was absent, trapped behind a paranoid firewall. But on March 1, thanks to British-based firm Bridge Digital Media, set up by a young Chinese woman, Xie Yi, who approached him last year after seeing his YouTube channel, some of Fuller’s wildlife videos started appearing – with subtitles – on the Chinese video-streaming site Bilibili. A launch on another platform, Xigua, followed on March 11. While initially Chinese viewers could see only edited content, the first two Bilibili videos of Fuller’s guides to stoats and owls were viewed more than 600,000 times in less than a week, and total views via the site now stand at more than 1.68 million. In February 2020, Fuller’s YouTube channel had 36,800 subscribers. Now, thanks in large part to the live streams introduced last summer, which sent things “bonkers”, subscriptions sit at 180,000, with 60 million total views. Fuller’s popularity on Facebook has soared, too, with 277,000 followers, up from 46,000 a year ago. Viewers near and far have written to Fuller, telling him how his films have given them comfort during a difficult period, and the live streams were, he says, partly in response to the many requests he received to share live footage. A 69-year-old viewer in Los Angeles wrote: “I can’t drive until I get cataract surgery and I live in the middle of a crime-filled city in the middle of a pandemic. Your videos don’t just educate, entertain and relieve stress, they’re healing.” Born in 1972, Fuller is the son of Richard Fuller, manager of a beef farm, who took, unusually for that time, a conservationist approach to farming. Fuller Snr often dug ponds and planted hedges, winning awards for his work protecting wildlife, and even wrote a book about it. He was a major influence on his son, showing him nesting sites, otter tracks and badger setts. Young Robert would shine a torch so his father could take photographs, or they would sit for hours in a rudimentary hide of hay bales, watching barn owls soar past. The family lived on a farm not far from Fuller’s current home and he grew up roaming the countryside, fascinated by nature. “The garden was littered with aviaries, coops, fox runs and hutches,” he says. One of his favourite characters was Gizmo, an orphaned little owl that rode on the handlebars of his bike. “And he’d land on my shoulder and pull at my ears, he had a sense of humour. I’d try and get him off but he’d run down my back and hook his beak on my jumper and chitter and call. When I stopped trying to get him off he’d run back up and start tugging on my ear again”. But while he loved his home life, Fuller didn’t like school, where he was grappling with dyslexia. “Even in my 30s, I struggled. I couldn’t read a bedtime story to my two-year-old daughter so I’d sing the alphabet. She didn’t know I was learning it, too.” One way he improved his reading and writing as an adult was through spending time in hides and making notes. “I spent a week watching foxes, noting everything that happened. I’d then start writing longer sentences.” Now the father of two talks and writes eloquently about nature. But during his 1970s childhood, his school lessons were a torment. Fortunately, he discovered he not only enjoyed art, but excelled at it. It wasn’t long before Fuller’s art and the wildlife he loved became beautifully intertwined. After giving up French in favour of extra art tuition, each art project became one related to wildlife. Having left school at age 15, Fuller studied art for several years, including a wildlife illustration course in Wales. There, he began using a camera to capture his subjects on film before drawing or painting them. A summer stint at a zoo sealed his career path; in his spare time he sketched the animals and, still a teenager, sold more than £1,000 worth of paintings to staff. After a sell-out exhibition in Yorkshire, Fuller exhibited in Paris aged just 20. His work appeared alongside pictures by Rodger McPhail, who drew the iconic image on the Famous Grouse Scotch whisky label. In 1998, Fuller and his wife, Victoria, moved into their farmhouse home, about 32km from the city of York. Their renovation work included planting a 1.2-hectare garden to attract wildlife, and converting outbuildings into an art gallery and studio. This is where the artist works, surrounded by hundreds of photographs of animals and birds, paintings at various stages of creation, eye-catching palettes and pots of brushes. Visitors and customers have come in their droves and over the years, Fuller’s staff, led by Victoria, have sold paintings to hundreds of shops across Britain and overseas. But it is not just Yorkshire’s wildlife that Fuller is obsessed with. Bears in Alaska, hippos in Zimbabwe, penguins in Antarctica and sharks in the Galapagos Islands have all captivated him. He has travelled to see them and many other animals, visiting every continent, his photos later allowing him to create fantastically detailed action-filled art, some of it selling for thousands of pounds. Apart from the travel restrictions, Fuller’s life has changed less than most during the pandemic. Before it hit Britain, he would often be alone, whether painting, with views of his garden, or busy outside. He often hangs out with badgers. “They can be 400 metres away and I shine my torch, they’ll come running to my feet like dogs,” he says of a particular group he has been visiting for more than a decade. “I have walked alongside badgers as they forage, I have laid down almost next to them when they’re sucking up earthworms.” Fuller might be found adding new nest boxes; he has put up hundreds over the years, recently climbing several metres up a tree with scaffolding to install a buzzard’s nest. He also builds hides. He has several dotted around, including an underground one he enters on a trolley that rolls down a seven-metre-long tunnel running from his back door into an area popular with stoats. An animal-lover in Britain recently described Fuller’s films as a “breath of sanity in a crazy world”. One person, thought to be in South Korea, wrote: “One minute you are relaxed and calm while the wildlife sleep, the next you are laughing at their silly antics, the next you are on the edge of your seat.” Another viewer simply said: “Overwhelming jealousy.” After watching Fuller’s first owl video posted in China, featuring several young birds, a 40-year-old Chinese woman in Shanghai said the more she watched, the calmer she felt. “I used to watch birds nesting and feeding their babies in my hometown so it’s nice to refresh my memories. People are always happy welcoming a new life into the world.” As well as his paintings, the Fullers market other products such as mugs, tea towels and calendars, and hope to sell them in China, too. The couple have been talking to Britain’s Department for International Trade and the China-Britain Business Council. Business aside, Fuller takes pleasure in knowing people around the globe are being brought together by his films. He cites a group of online moderators from different backgrounds and religions, living in countries such as Nepal and Bahrain, who chat on WhatsApp after speaking during his YouTube live streams. “They send hundreds of messages to one another and share their own videos of their homes, their dogs,” Fuller says. “They’ve become friends.” Fuller has not yet been to China, and knows his appearance there comes at a time of deteriorating relations between Beijing and London, with ongoing diplomatic rows over alleged Uygur oppression in Xinjiang and political repression in Hong Kong. But the British artist says he has no desire to get involved in politics. He simply wants “to show the beauty of Yorkshire wildlife. It’s like watching a soap opera, but better”. He finds seeing stoats and weasels catching their prey as fascinating as cheetahs and leopards stalking theirs. “Film crews go to far-flung countries, but British wildlife is challenging to film, too. I want to make our wildlife seen as equally special.” Originally from Zhejiang province, Bridge Digital Media’s Xie Yi, 29, did a master’s in filmmaking in York before moving to England’s south coast, and used to work for Chinese state-run broadcaster CCTV, making documentaries and reality shows. Xie believes Fuller’s videos will entertain and inform people in China, as they have from Yorkshire to New Zealand. “The animals are like families, there are mothers and babies, they bond and connect,” she says. “People can learn more about how these creatures live and how to respect them and how the animals can feel happy, feel fear, feel nervous.” One of her favourite Fuller videos features a sudden clap of thunder, she says. “I could see the owl’s facial expression; he was shocked. It was very special.” Having lived in Beijing for a decade before moving to Britain, Xie can also relate to China’s hundreds of millions of urban residents. “We need nature, to connect with grass and trees and animals. We love to see the coun•tryside and feel relaxed when we connect with animals. This is why Robert’s content is unique and touching.” There are other examples of popular English-language content on Chinese video platforms, including the Lion Whisperer, who works with big cats in South Africa, and English with Lucy, featuring a young woman teaching language skills. Some foreign content creators become more popular online in China than they are on YouTube, such as Yonina, a singing Israeli-American couple. Being a foreign influencer online in China has become a lucrative business, and Fuller is just the latest in a broader movement. While his new Chinese followers are clearly enjoying his work, Fuller’s own connection with the animal world does not always bring him pleasure. He recalls crying when he saw a rhino in the Serengeti, wondering what might become of the endangered species. “Wherever I’ve travelled, it’s difficult to watch people struggling,” he says. “But it’s more difficult to watch wildlife struggle.” Fuller is involved with several wildlife charities, but is at pains to point out he does not want to preach or offend anyone. And if his wildlife videos and paintings help people around the world to feel better during what for many has been the worst year on record, he says, “Well, that’s fine by me.”