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Saturday 17 May 2008

Wild life

Living World (BBC Radio 4); World on the Move (BBC Radio 4)

Only this column would persuade me to get up at 6.30 on a Sunday morning. Six-thirty! In my other life I pore over the collected works of the 18th-century writer Dr Johnson, who constantly struggled to persuade himself out of bed before noon. He liked the idea of early rising, and each New Year resolved that he would get out of bed by eight, but the bustle of life needed to be in full swing before he could face up to that ‘consciousness of being’ which mornings bring and he would very soon succumb to his incurable laggardliness. The powers that be at Radio Four will have none of that and, no doubt believing that all true nature-lovers must be of the cheerful, up-at-dawn variety, insist on scheduling one of my favourite programmes, Living World, first thing on Sunday. So it was kettles at dawn in my foxy south-west suburb as the lemony-pink light of a February morning crept across the back garden.

There’s something wonderful about wildlife programmes on radio, which the camera just cannot capture. It’s just so much more inspiring to follow in your imagination the voice of a presenter like Lionel Kelleway as he ventures out on location with an expert wildlife-watcher rather than to sit back and be stunned by a series of devastatingly beautiful TV pictures in hyper-realistic technicolour. Even the amazing David Attenborough is guilty of micromanaging his wildlife escapades so that everything looks a bit like a Hollywood movie. I don’t know about you but I’m always left by such programmes feeling a twinge of discontent, knowing that realistically I’ll never in my life climb up into the Himalayas to see for myself a snow leopard stalking a mountain goat. Wildlife radio does not have to look for camera shots and unbeatable locations; it can linger in bad weather and look for interest in the muddiest marsh and most boring hinterland. I would much rather know what’s out there in my backyard, and to see, to really see, the flawed beauty that can be found in even the most ordinary of landscapes.

More articles from: Kate Chisholm | this section

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