Nature has notes. Apparently, she delivers them in person.

This week, Pia explores the "invisible" communication gap between human architecture and the natural world. From a stunned Kingfisher on her porch tiles to the critically endangered Swift Parrot fighting an extinction spiral in our cities, the stakes of our glass-heavy design choices have never been higher.

How do we speak a language birds can actually read?

From the "system reboot" behaviour of concussed birds to a 100-million-year-old secret hanging in your garden, this episode dives into the origins of ORNILUX. It’s the story of how a German manufacturer looked at the UV-reflective patterns in spider webs—an ancient defence mechanism—and finally engineered a modern solution to the 100-million-bird-strike problem.

It’s about communication design, locally attuned signals, and what happens when we finally ask what the receiver can actually see, instead of assuming they see what we see.

Love the show? Help Pia feed the algorithm. If Feral by Design has changed how you look at the world (or your windows), please consider leaving a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible or wherever you get your pods.

"If you've ever heard that thud at your own window, or found a better way to speak 'bird', I'd love to hear your story in the reviews." — Pia

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

This episode came from noticing a place biomimicry could quietly change the way I work, thanks to a wombat called Chardonnay.

I've treated wombats with mange in the wild. Every few days, we hike in, pour medicine on the animal, hike back out. Weeks of this. And sometimes months later, the mange is back. And the cycle begins again.

Because the mites don't just live on the wombat. They survive in the burrow.

Treat the host, ignore the habitat, and reinfection undoes everything.

One day, driving home from the mountains, it hit me: I'd been doing the exact same thing with my clients. Training teams, watching them transform, coming back months later to find old behaviours back in place. Not because the training failed. Because the conditions pulled them back.

This episode is about recognising your own reinfection cycles, the places where we keep scratching the wrong itch.

This isn’t motivation or mindset. It’s a design problem.

Feral by Design. Where nature shows how systems actually work.

Please share with someone you think might be scratching the wrong itch.

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Note on the wombat work:
The fieldwork described in this episode is done with the Blue Mountains Wombat Conservation Group, a volunteer-run organisation treating sarcoptic mange in wild wombats.

If you’d like to learn more about the work, the group has a Facebook page - Blue Mountains Wombat Conservation Group.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.

A swim that went wrong.
A lifesaver’s eyes locked on mine.
And a question I couldn’t shake.

Most safety systems are built for calm moments, but danger rarely shows up when we’re calm. At the beach, water reorganises itself minute by minute, yet the signals we rely on stay exactly the same.

This episode explores what happens when static signals try to manage moving risk - and what nature does differently. From surf flags to cuttlefish, it’s about sensing change, signalling state, and what happens when things that don’t move are designed to manage those that do. It’s a biomimicry-led look at beach safety, risk under stress, and state-based signalling in dynamic environments.

It’s not about sharks.
It’s not about following rules.

It’s about what it would feel like if our beach flags and safety signals could change state, the way cuttlefish do.

🎧 feralbydesign.com | @feralbydesignpod |
Created and hosted by Pia Williams
Subscribe and listen. Clever by Nature. Feral by Design.