EarthFlight
By John Downer
Hardcover 240 pages ($49.95)
The print companion to award-winning wildlife filmmaker John Downer’s latest up-in-the-air BBC project, this eye-popping collection of photos offers a truly bird’s-eye view of what birds in flight actually see. Utilizing a pioneering arsenal of high-tech spy cams, gliders, mini-helicopters and bird-mounted cameras, Downer and his team documented the miracle of flight from the participants’ perspective in a trip around the world, with pelicans off the coast of Mexico, vultures over the plains of Kenya, geese heading to Norway, swallows swooping to collect mud for their nests in England, snow geese winging their way past the Statue of Liberty, bald eagles soaring over the Grand Canyon, Siberian swans taking a dip in the hot springs of Japan, and dozens of other spectacular sightings. A final chapter details how the photographers devised and implemented the equipment to “fly with the birds.”
