By Jo SteeleIt's a good thing this white-tailed fish eagle is not camera shy.
For she will be the star - and the force behind the lens - of a new project to give TV viewers a bird's eye view of the world.
Evie the eagle has been fitted with small cameras so BBC film-makers can capture what she sees and eats.
They hope to film her 2.4m (8ft) wingspan above the water and see how her giant talons hook fish.
'She flies with a camera on her back and we also mount a camera underneath her so we catch her getting prey,' said handler Georger Hedges. The falconer, from Ivybridge, Devon, also plans to take paraglider lessons so they can ride the thermals together.
'To see how she grips will be exciting to see but we also hope to find out exactly how far she can see and what speed she does,' he said.
Usually white-tailed fish eagles are quite aggressive but Evie was bred in captivity which made it possible to fit her with the cameras. The four-year-old became an internet hit last year when footage of her playing with a tennis ball was posted on YouTube.
By filning her in the wild, Mr Hedges said he hoped the public could see 'these magnificent birds' in full flight.
The species became extinct in Britain in the early 1900s but a few have been re-introduced in Scotland.
metro.co.uk, Thursday 16/07/09, p3
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!