Reading the Air (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Flight of the Ospreys (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
The Paddlefish Caviar Heist (Imperative/Vespucci) | apple.com
Book of the Week (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Two very sweet birdwatching programmes on Radio 4 last week: one about hen harriers, the other, ospreys. Reading the Air, presented by naturalist Chris Yates, was a delight, packed with sound (tinkling water, crunching footsteps, tea pouring from a metal container, ash trees bashing into each other as the wind rose), plus the babbling brook of Yates’s fluid, evocative chat. Producers Dan Shepherd and Phil Smith mic-ed Yates up so intimately it was as though we had a direct line into his clever brain; his descriptions of harriers were nothing less than poetry. “It’s almost like smoke, the way it flies,” he said. The first time he saw a male harrier “it appeared like vapour, the very vivid silver of the underside… the wingtips like black mittens”.
