You think he’s cute. Hethinks you’re lunch

THE SHARK AND THE ALBATROSS

by John Aitchison (Profile £17.99)

LIKE all wildlife cameramen, John Aitchison is often complemented on his extraordinary patience. As he points out in this compelling collection of his tales from the wild, filming polar bears is a good way to find out just how patient he really is.

Few other wild creatures are quite so hard to capture on camera — not only do they live in one of the world’s last great wildernesses; when a polar bear encounters a human being, it usually regards him as a potential meal.

Thus we see John learning how to track, shoot and kill a rampaging bear, using massive blowups of bear photographs as targets (not something he ever wants to do, he points out). The imminent danger of death is one of the things that makes this memoir such a gripping read.

The book begins with Aitchison filming on a tiny platform just offshore from a series of low islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. His mission is to record young albatrosses as they take their very first flight.

But there’s a catch. Many of the gawky youngsters initially take to the air and then, unable to stay aloft, crash-land on the surface of the sea.

Here, they are in mortal danger, for just beneath the vivid green waters lie predatory tiger sharks. Aitchison’s description of the attack that follows leaves you breathless: just as the shark strikes, a wave pushes the albatross to one side, and it manages to escape.

Aitchison gives us a unique glimpse into these creatures’ lives, and also into how he captures these for our entertainment — and occasionally our horror. His tales include tracking a pack of hungry wolves in pursuit of an elk in Yellowstone National Park. Against all the odds, the elk manages to hold the predators at bay by taking refuge in the icy waters of a river.

HE ALSO recounts how he donned a hard hat and harness to film peregrines from the very top of a bridge in New York City, as commuters passed unaware hundreds of feet below. in what must be the ultimate wildlife filming challenge, Aitchison travels to the alien landscape of Antarctica, to film the world’s toughest bird, the emperor penguin.

Placing his heavy camera on thin ice, which literally fizzes beneath his feet, he films the penguins as they explode out of a nearby ice-hole, oblivious to this intruder in their midst.

i must admit a special interest. As a producer of wildlife TV programmes, i worked with Aitchison in some of the planet’s most remote locations.

in Patagonia, i experienced my most memorable wildlife moment, as a killer whale grabbed a baby seal and then became accidentally beached on the shore, allowing the pup to miraculously escape. John confessed afterwards that he had to fight to slow his racing heartbeat: it was making the camera shake.

in the book’s conclusion, entitled Moving Pictures, he makes a timely plea for us not simply to read about his experiences, or enjoy his films, but to engage more closely with the natural world: ‘in the most important sense of the word, moving is exactly what our pictures ought to be, and if they are, perhaps more of us will choose to be on nature’s side.’

With people like Aitchison capturing so brilliantly the world’s wildlife on camera, we surely will.