The diary of the making of a film. and an on going fascination with birds and their accompanying cast of human characters. By Ceri Levy. Read previous entries here.
Monday July 20th
Just off the phone to the RSPB. I am going to meet their investigations unit on Friday. They look into all sorts of nefarious activity to do with the bird world. I am going to speak to them about the murky world of egg collectors. Now some of you may think “what’s wrong with that, I did that as a kid.” Well from what I can gather it’s a huge problem as these people live to collect eggs from rare birds. A while ago they caught one of the main guys who had a collection of 8000 rare birds eggs. He was sent to jail, if only for several months, but at least now there is a prison sentence waiting for these people. In fact, in jail these egg collectors are supposedly given the same sort of treatment as paedophiles.
The RSPB also has a campaign to stop the killing of birds of prey and I urge you to sign their petition and pledge your support.
Thursday 23rd July
Yesterday I had a great day filming up at the Rutland Water Nature Reserve with Tim Appleton. As soon as I had got there we had to be off as there was going to be an impromptu unveiling of a carved wooden sculpture of ospreys by Andy Burton on the Oakham roundabout. Tim is always dashing somewhere for one meeting or another. Luckily he took me along with him yesterday and I managed to get some footage in the can. Tim was a really good interviewee, very engaging and came across very, very well. In another life I think he would make an excellent wildlife presenter. We went onto the reserve and saw one of the female ospreys feeding while we chatted about the project. If you have never seen an osprey I urge you to visit them at Rutland. They should be there until the end of August or so. Beautiful, beautiful creatures. (the Osprey project is here).
Tomorrow I am off to see Mark Thomas at the RSPB and chat about birds of prey and egg collectors. This will be the dark side of the bird effect.