Bird’s-Eye View
How the world looks from inside the flock.
- By The Editors
- AirSpaceMag.com, March 07, 2012
Michael W. Richards
In 1980, BBC director John Downer set out to film the world from a bird's perspective for his documentary In-Flight Movie. His plan was to have a green-winged teal imprint on a willing cameraman as soon as it hatched. But as Downer was driving to deliver the egg to the cameraman, the duck hatched prematurely in his lap. By the time he reached the cameraman’s house, the duckling had firmly imprinted on Downer, and for the next six months, the director was the bird’s surrogate mother. “Wherever I went and whatever I did, the duck kept me company,” he writes in his new book, Earthflight. “In the car, she would sit beside me in the passenger seat. In the office, she would sit on my head while I tried to make telephone calls. In the evening, as I relaxed in front of the television, she would snuggle up to my feet. We would even go out to dinner parties together.”
Downer was not qualified to fly an ultralight, so he used a “parascender.” “The basic idea was simple but utterly terrifying,” he writes. “A parachute would be strapped to my back and I would be towed into the air by a vehicle travelling along the ground at high speed.” On the pair’s maiden flight, Downer placed the duck in a shoebox and held on as the car accelerated. When he was 200 feet in the air, Downer released the duck, and captured her first flight on film, just inches away. He was hooked.
Twenty-five years later, Downer began working on Earthflight, a six-part BBC series (see a clip below). In the photograph above, taken from the companion volume published by Firefly Books, northern gannets (Bass Rock in Scotland) return from the open sea in January to nest on the rocks. In October, young birds may fly as far away as West Africa for the winter.
See the gallery above for more photos from Downer's book.
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Comments (1)
I use these with my English language learner students to practice vocabulary development. My students range from K-12. It's amazing how they are able to use descriptive words due to the excitment these photos bring out!
Posted by Michelle Lewis Myers Davis on March 23,2012 | 10:17 AM