Eagles: the latest photography assistants

IF YOU want to capture a flock of barnacle geese in flight, a telephoto lens is just so passé. It certainly wouldn't give the sort of views achieved on Earthflight, the BBC series currently halfway through its run.

The BBC has now published a book of photographs which, like the programme itself, were created over five years. Its final chapter describes the innovative methods used to capture birds in flight: such as strapping lightweight cameras to necks so that the creatures could film themselves and each other.

Certain eagles, such as the North American bald eagle, are powerful enough to carry mounted cameras and became “field biologists”.

Bird-shaped model gliders were developed to fly among flocks of white storks and capture their behaviour. Christian Moullec taught white-fronted geese, storks and other species to follow his microlight as he flew through the air, by training them from the hatching stage.

Birds, in fact, became not only photographic assistants but also programme researchers, instinctively leading the producers to key events in nature, such as a shark’s attack on a seal. A Griffon vulture in Kenya could spot a lion kill from six miles away.

It’s the most precise application yet of the phrase “bird’s-eye view”.

Earthflight

by John Downer is out now, published by BBC Books