Wild Wings

Sir Peter Scott was a bit of a character. An environmentalist, a soldier, an artist, a regular on television, he helped found the World Wide Fund for Nature, he was even an Olympic medalist in sailing.

Peter Scott was also the son of explorer Captain Scott. You can see why I found him fascinating when he used to appear on television when I was a kid.

Wild Wings is an Oscar winning short documentary on the work of the Slimbridge Wildfowl Trust in Gloucestershire.

It is about the work the Trust does and the array of wildfowl they have. Again this was founded by Peter Scott also a keen ornithologist.

The documentary is certainly dry but it highlights the importance of their work. A lot of geese and ducks are shown here from all over the world.

Through its captive breeding programme, the Trust saved the Hawaiian goose from extinction in the 1950s. They sent them to other zoos in Europe and eventually re-introduced them in Hawaii.

It is worth watching for the wonderful birds on display.

This is a very absorbing documentary about wild birds, and the efforts of Sir Peter Scott and the Slimbridge Bird Sanctuary to preserve them; it even won an Oscar. It's not immediately obvious why it is so enjoyable, as birds are quite dull, especially for 35 minutes. The film becomes great fun once you realise that it is not really about birds at all, but rather a fond portrait of a load of wonderful and sincere English human eccentrics, including Sir Peter, his wife, Mrs Pilcher and many others, and especially the chap who chases the ducks into the decoy. The rocket-powered net trap for the geese is perhaps the highlight. If you ever want to understand where Peter Cook got the inspiration for his character Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, this film is a pretty good place to start.

A very lovely film for anyone who loves England, and its brand of ever-so-slightly-mad.

British Transport Films was an organisation set up in 1949 to make documentary films on the general subject of British transport, in the same way as the GPO Film Unit had been set up in the 1930s to make films about the work of the Post Office. "Wild Wings" is one of their productions, but unusually it has nothing to do with transport. The "wings" of the title belong to birds, not aircraft, and the film deals with the work of by The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust at its headquarters in Slimbridge, Gloucestershire.

The Trust had been founded in 1946 by the naturalist and artist Sir Peter Scott, the son of Scott of the Antarctic, who acts as narrator of this film. By 1965, when the film was made, the Trust had become the world's largest collection of wildfowl from all round the world, many of which are seen in the film. The Trust has, however, always been much more than a zoo for water birds, and the film also deals with its important conservation work. (The Trust was, for example, responsible for saving the endangered Hawaiian Goose from extinction).

As a keen ornithologist myself, I am certainly not going to agree with the reviewer who said that "birds are quite dull, especially for 35 minutes". (I could sit and watch them for a lot longer than that). Nor, as a supporter of the work of the WWT, can I agree with that reviewer's patronising dismissal of everyone involved in the film as an ever-so-slightly mad British eccentric. That rocket-powered goose trap might seem a bit odd, and I doubt if it is still in use today, but it was certainly effective. And no, I couldn't see any resemblance between Peter Scott and Peter Cook's comic character Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling. This is a first-rate documentary film and I am glad to say that it won an Oscar for Best Short Subject at the 39th Academy Awards.