Koepcke wanted to withdraw completely after the crash, and her office is so tucked away that you can’t even hear the busy road to Stuttgart outside. She is still surrounded by wildlife – but now it’s vivid plastic. A garland of birds hangs from the ceiling over her desk: macaw, cockatoo, budgerigar, hummingbird. Pictures of toucans decorate coffee cups and A4 files. They are all birthday and Christmas presents from her colleagues – a homage to her mother, Maria, a leading ornithologist – and their volume is evidence of the decades she has worked here. Koepcke was recruited part-time in the mid-1980s while studying for a PhD on bats at the University of Munich, and has stayed ever since. She even met her husband here; they married in 1989. Erich Diller, now 74, an expert on parasitic wasps, works upstairs.