Survival

Available for over a year

Musician, broadcaster and birdwatcher Tom McKinney reads Survival, his opening essay on bird migration and its fascination for bird lovers. Why do birds migrate? Why are some birds sedentary, moving only tiny distances throughout their entire life, and others willing to embark on such long journeys that involve enormously high levels of risk? In this series Tom considers the ways in which he has been affected by the sounds of birds and their astonishing annual migratory journeys. In his first essay, Tom describes 'fall-out' - the mass arrival of tiny songbirds each year on the Texan Gulf coast. One of the most spectacular places to witness this phenomenon each April is at High Island near Galveston. Good habitat for food and shelter is sparse and in a bad year, hundreds of thousands of birds can die from exhaustion and dehydration. Written and performed by Tom McKinney Producer: Melanie Harris of Sparklab Productions Photographer: Nick Appleton.