For the BBC's Earthflight (2011), John Downer's team built a full-size model vulture with a radio-controlled pan and tilt camera on board, and flew it into a wild flock, sending pictures as it flew among the real birds. Downer called it a vulture cam: "a model of a flying vulture, which could film from inside the flock."

Beside them, camera operators on paragliders, piloted by biologists, rode the same rising air. Other shots came from tiny cameras on the backs of trained birds, like a bald eagle over the Grand Canyon; every bird learned to wear its harness before a camera went on. Four years, more than forty countries.

Our bird-back camera here is bolted on, so when the bird banks, the whole world tips. The birds, the model, the paraglider and the canyon are our own models, built and lit in code.

Did you find the camera?

Sources: John Downer Productions, Earthflight; WNET/PBS press release (2013); John Downer to PBS Nature (2013).
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