Iolo Williams on the Merlin

Available for over a year

A new series of Tweet of the Day for Sunday morning revealing personal and fascinating stories from some fresh voices who have been inspired by birds, their calls and encounters. For Springwatch presenter Iolo Williams the male merlin is a beautiful missile of a bird. Once it locks onto its prey, there is no escape. Iolo's love of this bird heads back to a spring evening as he watched a skylark dance and pirouette to avoid the merlin's attack, a bird of prey no bigger than a song thrush. The conclusion of this chase was lost in the moorland, but that encounter ignited a lifelong love affair with our smallest and rarest falcon. Producer : Andrew Dawes for BBC Audio, Bristol Studio engineer : Ilse Lademann