Fields, Forests and a Fun Guy

Gary Buckles was hauled up a tree in a car tyre behind a Mini, aged 12, to rescue a trapped kestrel.Gary Buckles runs Stockley Birds of Prey at Arley Hall in Cheshire and has flown birds of prey since he was a boy. He brings Twiggy, an imprinted tawny owl, and Twiggy makes her feelings known before the first question is asked.What follows is falconry told as it actually happened. A kestrel stuck at the top of a tree with its leather jesses wrapped round a branch. An augur buzzard bought from boys at

A tree kangaroo that smells so distinctive you'll never forget it, logging deals worth millions, and a conservationist who has spent more than 20 years trying to stop one of the world's rarest animals disappearing.Jim Thomas is CEO of the Tenkile Conservation Alliance and has worked in Papua New Guinea's Torricelli Mountains since 2003. The Tenkile, or Scott's tree kangaroo, was down to an estimated 100 animals when the project began. Today, TCA says that figure has risen to around

A Cheshire barber kept Princess Anne's helicopter waiting because he would not stop talking about bees.Dave Curbishley has cut hair in Northwich for 57 years and kept honeybees for about 30, and was one of the first in Cheshire to sit the British Beekeepers Association basic assessment.Tom Holland gives him an unhurried hour: how a haircut turned into a beehive inside a week, why a thousand pound weekend course does not make you a beekeeper, what happened when a Wirral beekeeper was accused of

A Cheshire birdkeeper who has watched the same fields for a lifetime explains what has gone.Tom Holland's first guest is his father, Mike Holland, a birdkeeper, falconer and former meat trade worker from Barnton in Cheshire who has bred Scottish crossbills since 1982.They walk through one patch of countryside: the orchards that became housing, the song thrushes that stopped singing in the village, the insects that stopped hitting the windscreen, and the forty acres of lime beds outside Northwich