More Rapid Than Eagles His Coursers They Came...

It’s become a Christmas tradition to track Santa and his sleigh as he flies around the world – and now a Norfolk expert in migrating birds is adding festive sparkle to his science

- Rowan Mantell

IT’S NOT just Santa circling the globe this Christmas – lots of birds and animals make epic journeys too.

Santa and his reindeer are tracked, chimney by chimney, through cities, counties, countries and continents by the surveillance experts of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad), as they dash around the world on Christmas Eve. For more than 60 years Norad has been sharing this magical information with children, first by telephone, and now via an online map too.

Here in Norfolk, Santa’s amazing journey is just one which will be featured in the Children’s Christmas Lectures at the University of East Anglia.

Animal Tracks and Treasure Maps will feature Dr Simon Butler talking about birds, mammals (and Santa), and Prof Claire Jowitt on pirate ‘mythsploding.’ Plank-walking pirates with peg-legs, parrots on their shoulders and pieces of eight will be examined in her fun talk which journeys back to Tudor times.