I'm John Bapser with Stephen Moss, the author and producer.

His new book is The Ten Birds to Change the World.

We come to a myth that I grew up with, everybody else grew up with, and the BBC reinforced

in 1979, 1978 with some spectacular presentations.

I watched as a younger person. I remember the 20th

century. Stephen Moss is with me, the author of the new book, Ten books, Ten Birds that Changed

the World. This changed my life and now he's changed it back again. It has to do with the

Galapagos Islands where I've never been, but my daughter happily went there and tells me the

finches are doing fine. However, those finches and the myth of Darwin, well I'll tell it quickly

because Stephen's going to correct the record. The story I had was that Darwin, on the voyage

of the Beagle, arrived to the Galapagos and observed taking

notes of all the different birds on the different Galapagos islands and how they were different.

The bills were bigger or smaller. The colors were different. And came up with the idea that the

reason they're different is because they evolve to fit the circumstances,

the weather, the food patterns, and they're isolated. They can't easily travel to the mainland.

That was what I grew up with, and now, Stephen, the facts are astonishing.

I think Darwin mentioned Finches once, curious Finches. That's about it, right? So how did we get the story?

That's right in the origin of species. Well, of course, as you say, it is absolutely true that a bird from the mainland, probably from South America, we think, arrived on the Galapagos.

There were all these, there weren't very many other small birds.

There were lots of different micro-habitats, niches, ecological niches.

And that bird did evolve into these very different-looking birds.

As you say, different-sized bills, different way they feed.

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