For wildlife television presenter Simon King, growing up in Sea Mills instilled in him a deep love for our native wildlife.

As a youngster, he would rise early every morning to enjoy a walk around Blaise Woods before going to school.

"I cut my natural history teeth at Blaise," Simon recalls fondly.

"When I was about 10 years old, I used to get up at 4am so I could have a good three hours walking around the woods, exploring the wildlife on my doorstep, before I had to sit in a school classroom for the rest of the day.

"Blaise Woods were mine at that time of the morning.

"I had them completely to myself – my own little kingdom – and I was always rather resentful when the first few early-morning dog walkers started to appear.

"I knew every patch of those woods. I had climbed almost every tree, and would keep incredibly precise, rather precocious diaries, in which I monitored the wildlife.

"I found them recently, and I was amazed to see how detailed they were.

"I even drew little maps, and if an area of the woods didn't have a name, I'd just make one up.

"That's also where I started taking my first still photographs of wildlife – though the early ones tended to be rubbish.

"I've got hundreds of pictures of water voles, though they're tiny grey specks in a grey river so it's difficult to see them."

Simon has come a long way since his early dabbling into recording the natural world in Bristol.

The 42-year-old, who now lives in Frome, has a CV that reads like a list of the Bristol-based BBC Natural History Unit's greatest hits.

From Planet Earth to Trials of Life, Life of Mammals to Blue Planet, Simon's stunning camerawork runs beautifully through some of the most iconic series of the last three decades.

But in recent years Simon has become best known as a personality in front of the camera, presenting outside broadcasts from remote parts of the British Isles in the hit Springwatch and Autumnwatch series, and tracking Africa's most fearsome felines in Big Cat Diaries.

He is currently on a considerably tamer tour – travelling to book signings around the country to promote his new autobiography, Wild Life.

"I'm very lucky to have travelled the world filming some of nature's most remarkable sights," he says.

"So I wasn't short of things to write about. When I sat down in front of my computer, the stories just started to flow without any problems.

"Once I start writing about the natural world, I can't help but be passionate.

"Every two-year-old is naturally fascinated by a beetle. But what I find hard to believe is for some people that fascination goes away as they grow up.

"It certainly never left me."

Born in Kenya, Simon's family moved to Bristol when he was two years old – living briefly in Cotham, before settling in Sea Mills.

"My parents separated when I was about nine. I lived with my mother, Eve and my sister Debbie, but always saw plenty of my father, John.

"My parents were a great influence on me realising that I could actually make a living out of my passion for the natural world.

"My father was a TV producer. He headed up the BBC features department in Bristol back in the 1970s. That's how I came to appear in a number of period costume dramas as a child actor.

"I also appeared alongside naturalist Mike Kendall in a 1976 series produced by my father. It was called Man and Boy, and involved us travelling around the country, exploring various wildlife havens.

"My long-suffering mother was well used to my fascination with wildlife.

"Any fresh, or not so fresh, carcass in Blaise Woods was a potential addition to my 'museum' – a drawer in my bedroom that housed plaster casts of wild animal footprints, broken birds' eggs and a host of other exhibits.

"On more than one occasion, my mother returned home to find me boiling a badger's head on the stove, in order to preserve the skull.

"For my 14th birthday my parents found me an easier way of capturing the local wildlife – they bought me a Super 8mm cine-camera, and I was away – filming everything that moved in the woods, or the waders down in the Avon Gorge."

But Simon's passion for wildlife was somewhat overlooked at school.

"It wasn't actively discouraged, but it certainly wasn't encouraged," he says. "I was happy enough at Henbury, but I don't remember being taught natural history.

"I was talking to a teacher recently and she told me that natural history is still lacking in the national curriculum.

"It strikes me as such a shame that this vital part of the story of our world is missing from children's education."

These days Simon spends much of the year on filming assignments around the world. Marrying a fellow wildlife film maker, second wife Marguerite Smits Van Oyen, with whom he often works, helps of course.

He has four children, three of them from his first marriage.

"I get lost in the subject while I'm filming," he says. "People say I must be able to do a lot of writing while I'm waiting for animals to appear.

"But if you're sitting in front of a camera waiting for a lion, then all your focus goes on looking for the lion."

But it's not always an idyllic existence. In the course of his work, Simon has been charged by enraged elephants and tossed by mountainous seas in the South Atlantic.

The scariest moment came when he was attacked by a rabid cheetah while filming in Kenya in 2006.

"The actual attack wasn't that scary," he says. "It was afterwards when we realised that the animal was carrying rabies that I really began to worry. I knew that if I'd contracted the disease, there is no cure, and it almost certainly would have killed me.

"You can imagine how relieved I was when tests showed that the bite hadn't passed the virus on to me or to my colleague who was also involved.

"To be honest I've had more painful bites from hand-reared badgers while filming shows like Springwatch."

Simon says he has been delighted by the continued popularity of the annual Springwatch and Autumnwatch series.

"They're great shows, because they encourage people to look out of their own windows and see the wildlife right there in their back gardens," he says. "You don't have to travel to Africa to enjoy the natural world."

● Wild Life is out now, published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £13.99.