Wild Isles

自然

S1 E3 Grasslands

本集简介

David Attenborough explores Britain and Ireland's grasslands, revealing the creatures that create them and the extraordinary stories they hide. From the coastal flower meadows in the Scottish Outer Hebrides to the rich open landscapes in the mountains of southern Ireland, we enter surprising and dramatic worlds.

In southern England, we meet an extraordinary bee that lives in chalk grassland, one of our rarest habitats, laying her eggs in empty snail shells. Meanwhile, in the colourful machair of the Hebrides, ringed plovers and lapwings strive to rear their families of tiny fluffy chicks and to save them for marauding gulls.

We travel back in time to explore the vast wild grasslands once found throughout our isles, before meeting herds of semi-wild horses, where males battle fiercely for the females. Today, they are helping to turn some of this land back to wilderness. And in our precious remaining pockets of flower-rich meadow, a remarkable conservation success story plays out. Once extinct in our isles, England now has the largest known populations of large blue butterflies. Their survival relies on a game of deception with red ants, which are tricked into adopting the butterfly's unassuming but predatory caterpillars.

Our story then journeys to the mountains. Each morning in early spring, feisty male black grouse battle for prime position on their frozen breeding grounds. Their sole mission is to impress a female. Meanwhile, on south-facing scree slopes, dozens of adders emerge from hibernation to perform a surprisingly delicate courtship routine.

The episode concludes with a mighty battle in the wild mountains of County Kerry. This is the scene of an epic and spectacular rut between the largest land mammals in Britain and Ireland, red deer.

The grasslands of Britain and Ireland are under threat. We have lost 97% of our species-rich meadows in the last century, as modern agriculture replaces these precious habitats. This episode shows just how important different types of grassland are to the species which call these islands home.

上一集

2023/03/19 S1 E2

Woodland

The woodlands of the British Isles are magical and mystical places, but as one of the least-forested countries in Europe, they are also under threat. Sir David Attenborough follows our woodlands through the seasons, revealing a host of spectacular animals and the hidden dramas that rule their lives.

下一集

2023/04/02 S1 E4

Freshwater

From highland burns in the Scottish Cairngorms to vast mudflats in Norfolk, David Attenborough takes us on a journey from source to sea, following the course of our fresh water as it journeys through our landscapes. Along the way we meet a host of wildlife that lives in, on and around our rivers, lakes, and lochs.

Determined Atlantic salmon battle their way upstream in one of the greatest migrations on the planet - fighting against the flow and the odds to get back to their breeding grounds in the uplands. Beavers slow the flow down with their dam building, in the process creating habitat for creatures such as raft spiders that thrive in these slow-moving watercourses.

Our chalk streams are some of the rarest and most precious types of freshwater system in the world, and above them millions of mayflies hatch, dance and mate for just a few days each summer. On the riverbank, a secretive small mammal, the water shrew, lives life in the fast lane. Its high metabolism drives a constant, frenetic search for food, both above and below the surface

At night our rivers come alive too, providing hunting territories for Daubenton's bats that skim their prey from on and above the surface. It's easy to see how they have earned their common name of ‘water bats'. Darkness is also when our toads migrate, moving en masse to their traditional breeding grounds every spring. A few months later, the resulting toadlets must make their way out of the ponds and back to their woodland home - the most dangerous journey of their young lives.

As our rivers slow, they spread out, and huge areas of reedbed form. Hobbies, small agile birds of prey, swoop low and fast to catch dragonflies acrobatically in the summer sun, and in early spring great crested grebes pair up in one of the most complex and beautiful courtship ceremonies in the natural world.

Where our freshwater reaches the sea, vast mudflats can form, full of rich earth carried down by the river. These habitats are a magnet to hundreds of thousands of overwintering wading birds, migrants that come to fuel up on the hidden food below the mud. But they attract their own predators too. Peregrine falcons visit our coasts every year, and these migrants are on their menu.

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Wild Isles