A new six-part series from the BBC takes viewers on a tour of the world's wildlife and natural wonders through the eyes of migrating birds

Started the 29th of December.



For the peeps with access to BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... h_America/

I was hoping it was.

I need to get a hold of this, somewhere.

The shots where we're flying alongside the birds are fiddled aren't they ? I remember some documentary a few years ago that pioneered that technique - they did it by training birds to fly alongside a car, filming it out of the window, then greenscreening the background. I wonder if they do the same here ?

Anyway however they did it, I enjoyed it immensely.

Someone put out the two first episodes as whole.

twistor59 wrote:The shots where we're flying alongside the birds are fiddled aren't they ? I remember some documentary a few years ago that pioneered that technique - they did it by training birds to fly alongside a car, filming it out of the window, then greenscreening the background. I wonder if they do the same here ?

Anyway however they did it, I enjoyed it immensely.

I think you'll find that organisations such as Oxford Scientific Films have moved on a bit since then. Not least because some of the birds featured would be difficult to train in such a manner.

Reasonable quality digital video cameras can now be made so small, you can fit one to a large butterfly without impeding its flight. It's fairly expensive to make one that small, but then the likes of Oxford Scientific Films have the budget. After all, if a video camera this size is available for less than £80, imagine what you can get your hands on when you can blow the sort of money required for a custom one-off on a single chip. For example, here is something from a company specialising in medical imaging technology, which they presumably use as a digital camera in an endoscope. Another medical imaging company has this little product list for you to peruse at leisure, including a fully functional CMOS digital video camera that is just 1.2mm in diameter, which makes it small enough to tape to a hummingbird, or a Caligo atreus butterfly.

So, you could arrange for your camera to be fitted to one member of a flock of birds, and film the rest of the flock from the vantage point of that bird.

I really enjoyed that program Earthflight. Thanks guys. Wish that was on American television, but seeing it on YouTube is OK. Another program I enjoy is the Planet earth series.

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/planet-earth/

twistor59 wrote:The shots where we're flying alongside the birds are fiddled aren't they ? I remember some documentary a few years ago that pioneered that technique - they did it by training birds to fly alongside a car, filming it out of the window, then greenscreening the background. I wonder if they do the same here ?

Anyway however they did it, I enjoyed it immensely.

I think the cameraman was a microlight pilot. Did he not train them up as you said, first with a car after hand rearing them, then "migrating" with the flock south. I seem to remember they where Canada Geese.