Celebrating the story of manned flight, from the first fearless pioneers to the crowded skies of today, Reaching for the Sky makes four stopovers at the most important stages in the history of air travel. The series takes off in the shape of The Dream of Flight, which illustrates how the fantasy of flight eventually became reality.

Of the six animals featured in the Wildlife in our Sights series, the mallard is the only one that most of us are likely to see on a daily basis. As it is able to thrive in urban areas, the duck is a common sight in parks lakes, rivers and canals throughout Western Europe. But as the final coin in the series shows with brilliant clarity, the mallard’s ubiquity does not make it any less striking.