Add
Private Notes
Cameraman and presenter Gordon Buchanan takes us on a tour of breathtaking scenery and picturesque places in search of Scottish wildlife. In the first of this series, Gordon leaves his home town of Tobermory on the Island of Mull to explore some neighbouring islands - Lunga, Staffa and Coll. Puffins and Seals are the highlight of this film but on the way we get to visit spectacular Fingals Cave.
Series in which Gordon Buchanan goes in search of Scottish wildlife. He explores the island of Rum, famous for its red deer, seeking out some particularly clever crows.
Series in which Gordon Buchanan goes in search of Scottish wildlife. A look at ospreys, which travel thousands of miles from Africa to nest in the forests and hills of Scotland, fishing with their talons for trout in lochs. Plus pine martens, nocturnal hunters that are rarely seen.
Gordon Buchanan is up on the moors. He is hoping to film some of the animals that this landscape is managed for - grouse, hares and stags. Grouse blend in perfectly with the heather of the moor, seeing them is never easy. Being larger, the hares are easier to spot. At this time of year, mid summer, they appear a greyish shade of blue; hence their name - blue hares. Finally, red deer stags; large bachelor herds roam the moors, a truly spectacular site.
Documentary following hundreds of hungry Canadian polar bears as they make their annual journey across Hudson Bay towards the town of Churchill in search of food. It is a natural phenomenon that attracts around 15,000 snap-happy tourists, eager for a close encounter with the creatures and it is up to 'bear sheriff' Wayde Roberts to keep bears and humans well apart.
Infrared lights and cameras step into the night-time world of the badger.
Two-part documentary following cameraman Mike Holding and his team tracking wild dogs in Botswana. Apart from finding the dogs, they face such problems as car maintenance and equipment failure.
Documentary following cameraman Mike Holding and his team as they track wild dogs in Botswana.
David Kennard talks about his life as a shepherd and his relationship with faithful working companions Gale and Greg, as they farm nearly a thousand sheep along the coast at Morte Point, north Devon.
A look at the exploits of a young female stoat trying to raise a family in the grounds of Kedleston Hall, one of Derbyshire's finest stately homes.
Her grand surroundings appear to provide her with all she needs - good shelter, a playground for her young and plenty of rats and rabbits to prey on, meaning the 'Stately Stoats' certainly seem to be enjoying the good life!
Bill Oddie looks at one of the last remaining strongholds in the country for red squirrels. How Formby in Merseyside has remained a home for Britain's native squirrel, which has steadily become outnumbered by greys.
Short documentary about a family of tawny owls in the Forest of Dean, with rarely seen footage from inside the nest.
A leisurely trip down the River Dart, through moor and heath into ancient oak woodland and back out onto open pasture. Dippers, herons, kingfishers, mallards and many other water birds can all be found on its water, along its banks live badgers and foxes, and above it soar buzzards and peregrine falcons.
Bill Oddie takes a journey into the wild world behind his favourite book - The Wind in the Willows. Where did Kenneth Grahame get the inspiration for the river bank and those four famous characters Ratty, Moley, Badger and Toad?
Documentary about an inseparable mother and daughter otter living on the idyllic west coast of Scotland. With the young cub never more than a few feet from her mum, a very special relationship is intimately observed as the cub grows up, learning how to fish and fend for herself.
As the cub faces the dangers of her first Scottish winter, mum has to work hard to make sure that both survive.
Bill Oddie finds out what's been happening to the remarkable wild barn owl family first introduced on Springwatch in 2005. With unique filming access to the Devon nest site, the whole story of the family's year is revealed, from nesting through to fledging.
The New Forest is one of the few places in Britain where you can find all six of the UK's reptile species living together - but the leader of the pack has to be the infamous adder.
This film offers a rare insight into the life of the adder, following them and the other reptiles through a typical season. The male adders emerge early in the year in this stunning setting. They soon shed their dull winter coat, reveal their bright spring colours, and then they are ready to find a mate through one of the most amazing and rarely seen wildlife spectacles...the adders' dance.
Pam Ferris narrates this documentary about the largest great seal colony in England, on the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast. Early November is the busiest time for the colony with mothers giving birth to pups, females bickering over the limited space, and huge males watching over their females in case another male tries to intrude.
Short documentary taking a look at a devoted pair of little owls who set up home in an old orchard in rural Herefordshire. From spring blossom to autumn apples, it follows a year in the life of the parent birds, their baby owls and the old fruit trees.
Documentary about the community of wild red squirrels on the island of Brownsea in Poole harbour, one of the few places left in the UK in which they still thrive. The squirrels share their island with breeding colonies of birds, timid sika deer and migrants which stop off at the island to refuel.
Release date: 30 November 2005
In the Belize Barrier Reef, the world's second largest, world freediving champion Tanya Streeter comes face-to-face with a manatee.
Documentary presenting an intimate portrait of one of Britain's most charming wild animals, following a family of water voles living on a canal in Derbyshire though a typical year.
The picturesque Cromford canal used to serve the regions cotton mills. Now, having been deserted, it serves as a perfect water vole paradise. For these hyperactive little mammals, a year is nearly a lifetime. They spend their lives in a frenzy of activity, swimming, feeding and breeding - the latter most neccessary, since water voles are becoming a rarity these days.
Documentary about the annual autumn red deer rut in the New Forest, a wildlife spectacle that can end in epic battles between the largest males.
As the weather cools, herds of females are joined by the stags, pumped full of male hormones and ready to fight for mating rights. Their roars are meant to intimidate, but if this doesn't work, the sound of antlers clashing echoes through the forest as the rut reaches its peak.
More than 50,000 geese fly out of stormy Atlantic skies to spend winter on the beautiful Scottish island of Islay, making for one of Britain's most impressive and least known winter wildlife spectacles - thousands of handsome barnacle geese and angel-like families of swans set against magnificent mountain and wild ocean backdrops.
Some say the haunting calls of the geese flying at night led to ancient Celtic legends of the hounds of hell yelping as they ran through the skies during very wild storms. The real story is just as remarkable - most of these birds have flown more than 2,000 miles all the way from Greenland.
Why should so many birds gather on one small island for winter? And what impact do they have when they all arrive?
Documentary about the eider ducklings of Inner Farne, which each year undertake a great trek across the island. On their way they pass puffins being mugged by black-headed gulls and terns brooding their fluffy chicks. The eider families gather together in creches for safety as the predatory gulls wheel overhead, but will they reach their ultimate and rather unlikely destination?
Bill Oddie attempts to retrace the journey of the world-famous rabbits from the novel Watership Down as he tries to find out how much fact there is behind the fiction. The story is based on real places such as Newtown Common just outside Newbury, and Bill's journey across river, road and hillside reveals all.
Devoted beekeeper Gerald Fisher tells the fascinating story of honey bees as they go about collecting and refining nectar into one of nature's most valued substances - honey. To get it there is a daily tale of theft, murder and a life or death struggle for every honey bee.
Kedleston Hall is a grand stately home nestled in the Derbyshire countryside. In its grounds lives one of the most elusive of British mammals, the stoat. On the estate at the end of winter, we catch a rare glimpse of a stoat in ermine. A visiting shrike, or butcher bird, is another unusual sight.
The stately stoats have resided in Kedleston for many years, and each spring an old walled garden is where they choose to raise their young. The kits give a new meaning to the word hyperactive, and their mum is kept busy catching rabbits to feed them. Eventually the stoat family start to explore their estate, where more surprises are in store.
The true nature of the much-maligned raven is almost as remarkable as the story of its recent recovery. These surprisingly intelligent birds mate for life, so their choice of partner is all the more important. In a unique forest on the edge of the stunning west coast of Anglesey in north Wales, the ravens gather each year to play the dating game. Newborough forest is home to one of the biggest raven roosts in Europe. Built to stabilise huge shifting sand dunes, this man-made habitat has proved a hit with the ravens. Onshore breezes rise up over the dunes, providing the perfect conditions for aerial acrobatics. The young ravens soon show that there is a fun side to their character as well.
Documentary telling the unlikely story of a banished flock of stoic sheep. Two hundred years ago they were turned out of their meadows on North Ronaldsay, the most northerly of the Orkney Islands. They were forced to eke out a living on the island's rocky windswept beach, a home they still share today with seals and seabirds. But, deprived of grass, how on earth have they managed to survive?
Nature documentary. An underwater journey to see the wildlife treasures that lie beneath the waves of the Channel Islands. Here, at the southern most tip of the British Isles, the waters are home to a rich variety of marine life from curious cuckoo wrasse, to soft corals and cuttlefish. Underwater film-maker Sue Daly gives a personal insight into her aquatic backyard as she dives amongst the kelp, colour and secret anemone caves.
A seasonal tale of how the Garden of Eden really was invaded not by a bad snake, but by one of the nation's favourite little birds. The Eden Project is an architectural wonder, a world of different habitats created in a single Cornish quarry, and probably the unlikeliest place to find the robin. So why have they set up home in one of our top tourist attractions?
How thousands of strange nocturnal birds make their home on the tiny island of Bardsey in north Wales, and an exploration of the rich history of the island itself.
The story of the white-tailed sea eagle is one of the great successes of British conservation. When wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan grew up on Mull there were no sea eagles at all, but now they are back and thriving. A third of all Britain's sea eagles now live on the island. Gordon returns to Mull to find out what makes this place such a paradise for the magnificent birds.
There are estimated to be 30,000 wild parakeets in Britain. Why are they thriving?
