Oxonian folkpoppers Stornoway love the birds. Their singer, Brian Briggs, is an ornithologist who still keeps his hand in, and their new album, Bonxie, features the birdsong of more than 20 different species. The title itself is the name of a Hebridean seabird.
For the video for their new single, Get Low, the band recruited some unusual co-stars – five greylag geese, flying alongside the band as they drive. It’s not a CGI effect – the geese are “imprinted”. That, we learn, is a form of bird brainwashing. We’ll let you know what we’ve been told rather than trying to busk it: “When a duckling or gosling hatches, it imprints itself onto the first thing it sees or hears - usually its mother and will follow wherever the ‘mother’ leads. In the case of the Greylag geese used by David Attenborough in his programme 60 Years on Air and Stornoway for Get Low, the birds have been imprinted on Rose Buck. She and her husband Lloyd, are bird handlers who work with natural history film makers to provide birds for film sequences who are trained but still exhibit all their natural and wild behaviours.”
Have a look and let us know what you think.
