Superflight

In far South Africa a barn swallow dreams of long light days at the top of Glenshane Pass in Ireland, of abundant insects and a nest full of healthy fledglings under the eaves of the Ponderosa Bar. The time of the gathering of swallows for the long migration north is approaching. Feeding on the wing, sometimes skimming the surface, sometimes soaring, they will accompany storks along the Great Rift Valley; but, while the long-legged ones cross the Eastern Mediterranean into Turkey, swallows fly over the Sahara quenching their thirst at oases along the way. I have seen them swooping to drink from a swimming pool in Casablanca.

These days we are rarely tempted to watch television, but the series, "Earthflight", being broadcast by the BBC is a feast for the eyes leaving many memorable images. Migrating grey cranes arrive in the Camargue only to have their peace shattered by a troupe of wild white horses. After feeding, rest and recuperation the birds continue to their breeding grounds where a male begins his strange athletic courtship dance. A female joins him in a pas-de-deux and soon all the colony's males are leaping into the air.

In the skies over Rome a huge flock of starlings appears as a superorganism, darkly shape shifting like a jinn. A maurauding hawk overhead is confused by the ceaseless movement and leaves empty taloned . Starlings, we are told, migrate to Siberia.

In Finland an osprey spreads its magnificent wings before plucking a fish from water, and a hungry bear cub scales the trunk of the tree near whose top the bird perches eating its catch. Seeing the osprey reminded me of a radio programme last year where a female osprey called Logie was tracked from West Africa to her nesting site in Scotland. For all its breathtaking photography, television rarely produces the sense of involvement in a creature's fate that a radio programme or even a website can generate.