Wings Over The World

Birds, Marvellous Birds or Birds, Wonderful Birds is the title of a new book by the Canadian astronomer Hubert Reeves

Birds, Marvellous Birds or Birds, Wonderful Birds is the title of a new book by the Canadian astronomer Hubert Reeves. It is, in fact, in French and a woman who has read a bit about its contents, though not the text, says she would translate the title rather as Birds, Miraculous birds. A striking title. All we know about it to date is an interview between Reeves and a Swiss journalist, Serge Bimpage. Says Reeves: "What fascinates me in watching birds is that we can only understand their prowess thanks to physics. Up to 500 years ago it was impossible. We didn't know what a magnetic field was. So we couldn't understand about the migrations of the pigeons. These had, in fact, a sort of magnet in the head. They found their way due to a magnetic field. We didn't know about ultra-sound and so we knew nothing about the way bats hunt. In short, as we went on discovering new facets of nature, we realised that animals used intuitively - and had been doing so for millions of years - laws of physics of an extraordinary complexity."

And he gives as an example geese, which to find their way, use both the position of the planets and magnetic fields. More, they correct their flight-paths in relation to the position of the sun. Salmon, to distinguish one stream of water from another, use their olfactory senses like radar. But we are far from knowing everything. And how does the swallow find her nest exactly when she comes back from Africa? He goes on to declare that physics confirms the fact that we inhabit a universe which cannot be the product of chance. "When people ask me if I am a believer, I answer that I am a believer, but I don't know in what."

He goes on to the question of life on other planets, but the heading over the interview and his photograph is that he listens to the universe in a swishing of wings. The title is in French, it's published by Seuil. And a friend just back from Winnipeg experienced the migration of geese from the Arctic to the American south. They fly in out of the sunset in huge V-shaped clusters. They may already have flown thousands of miles and circle, honking, flapping their wings, feet extended like an aeroplane undercarriage. At dark, there may be 100,000 geese within the 3,600 hectares of wetland. But once fed and rested, they are off again to the warmth of US southern states and Central America.

But there's wonder in the small birds in your garden. There's wonder in the corncrake young, with their parents gone before them to Africa, finding their way - wonder, even in the song of the robin. Many will await Reeves's book in English ... birds, marvellous birds.