Original subtitles

One hundred and fifty million years ago, as dinosaurs approached their golden age,

one group evolved along new and revolutionary lines.

Although they retained many of their reptilian

characteristics, they acquired extraordinary new ones.

Feathers.

Feathers helped with insolation and display.

But they offered something far more valuable.

Power of flight.

And for birds, that changed everything.

Birds have the freedom of the skies to travel further and faster than any other

group of animals and to seize opportunities in all corners of the planet.

But this freedom brings many survival challenges which

birds must tackle at pivotal moments in their lives.

Flying demands enormous skill and effort.

And nowhere is that more evident than here in the foothills of the Peruvian Andes.

This female hummingbird hovers with precision in her quest for nectar.

A wing and tail design allow her to fly in any direction.

But the male has a real problem flying.

And this is why.

He's weighed down with two super-long tail feathers.

And he's got a little bit of a problem with flying.

He's got a lot of hair up his shoulders, tipped with cumbersome discs.

This is the marvellous spatule-tail hummingbird.

And these are his flags with which to seduce a mate.

Waving them back and forth takes a lot of effort.

Even from the comfort of his perch.

But to win her heart, he's got to go up a gear.

He must show her how well he can fly.

But it's exhausting work.

It's so demanding, he can only stay airborne

for a matter of seconds before he needs a rest.

He's struggling to impress her, so one last try.

The extreme effort and energy needed to hover means

hummingbirds can only fly in short, sharp bursts.

But most birds need to stay airborne for considerably longer

and must find far more energy-efficient ways to get around.

Here, in the Simian Mountains of Ethiopia, at a breathtaking altitude of 15,000 feet,

lives a supreme aerial maestro.

This youngster glides on air currents rising from the mountain slopes below.

His nine-foot wingspan can carry him hundreds of miles a day in search of

animal carcasses with precious little effort.

He watches out for other airborne scavengers, like these griffon vultures.

They lead him to some commotion on the cliffs and maybe the chance to feed.

But this youngster is not the only lamb of God.

He's also the first lamb of God to spot the opportunity.

So too has this adult.

The vultures quickly strip the carcass clean.

It seems he's too late, but in fact, he's timed his arrival perfectly.

There's no meat left.

And that's exactly the moment that the lamb of God has been waiting for.

It's bones he's after.

The young lamb of God, too, homes in on the carcass.

Bones contain rich marrow fat.

But extracting it is not easy, especially when the

bone is a solid four kilos and too big to swallow.

But lamb of God have an extraordinary solution, thanks to their flying skills.

It's the bone of God.

Soaring up on thermal air currents and positioning the bone parallel to his body

to minimise drag, he soon reaches the perfect height.

From here, he glides to a place he knows where he can deal with the bone,

where there are giant rock slabs on the lip of an escarpment.

The bone is smashed.

The juices in his stomach are more corrosive than battery acid.

They dissolve the bone so that he can now digest the marrow.

Others come looking for leftovers.

But their timing isn't ideal, because now the young lamb of God has his turn.

They'd better mind their heads.

Proficient bone smashing takes energy, but it takes endless practice to find just

the right height, speed and moment of release.

Lamb of God have long, broad wings, ideal for

gliding great distances with maximum efficiency.

But on the island of Little Tobago in the Caribbean lives

a bird for whom aerial agility is of paramount importance.

LITTLE TOBAGO It's a wild-billed, tropic bird.

Short, pointed wings give it great manoeuvrability and speed.

During the breeding season, these flying skills are tested to the limit.

While one parent looks after the chick, the other must journey far offshore to

gather small fish and squid from the surface waters.

But the hardest part is getting food back to the

island, because they share this airspace with thieves.

Magnificent frigate birds, known as man o' war birds, patrol high above.

These pirates are not trying to kill the

tropic bird, but force it to give up its catch.

It's an aerial dogfight.

Tropic birds are quicker on the turn.

Frigates have exceptionally lightweight bodies, and

their extremely long wings give them great power.

Success.

I'VE BEEN PEDDLING.

A FAVOURITE ATTACK IS FROM BEHIND... AND AT HEIGHT.

This tropic bird, Chick, still awaits the return of its

parent, who has yet to run the gauntlet of the pirates.

Keeping close to the waves is his best chance.

Frigate birds have so little oil in their feathers, they can't risk ditching.

If he can just reach the cliffs, he'll be safe.

He's made it, with his crop still full of fish.

Red-billed tropic birds rely on extreme aerial

agility to overcome the many challenges of their life.

For others, survival demands endurance.

Every spring, red knots fly 10,000 miles from their wintering grounds in Argentina

to their nesting sites in Canada.

The only way they complete this marathon journey is by making a crucial fuel stop

here in Delaware Bay, on the east coast of America.

What is most extraordinary is that, as well as having to find their way to

this one location, they must also time their arrival and return to their home.

They

have a rendezvous with prehistoric creatures emerging from the deep,

which have hardly changed in 250 million years.

They come ashore in greatest numbers on the highest spring tides.

Horseshoe crabs.

The crabs are here to lay their eggs.

That's a little bit of a surprise.

That's what the knots are after.

Most eggs are buried out of reach, but some are accidentally dug up by other crabs.

Most of the West Atlantic red knot population join this feeding frenzy.

In a matter of weeks, the knots need to rebuild

their fat reserves and double in weight.

To achieve this, each knot must eat as many as 400,000 eggs, a tall order given

the skill and effort needed to swallow just one.

Head down, feeding non-stop means it's hard to be alert to predators.

A peregrine falcon.

With egg-laying complete, the horseshoe crabs now leave

these shores, while the knots are still in the air.

The knots gather every last egg they can find.

It's time for the birds to move on.

The knots still have a further 2,000-mile non-stop

flight to reach their breeding grounds in Canada.

Flight gives birds many advantages, but there's a period

in their lives when they're forced back down to Earth.

The nesting season.

This is the time when they are at most risk,

so they must find the safest possible location.

Few go to greater extremes than lesser flamingos.

They nest in the remotest corners of Africa's caustic soda lakes.

Like their reptilian ancestors, birds lay waterproof eggs.

Despite this, flamingos still protect theirs on special

mud-stacked nests as the lake is prone to flooding.

It's also just a little cooler up here.

Temperatures at ground level can reach a blistering 50 degrees centigrade.

Once a chick hatches, it spends the first six days in the nest.

This is when it's at its most vulnerable, totally reliant on its parents.

The caustic mud deters predators.

But the adult flamingos can cope in this quagmire because of their long, scaly legs.

Any chick that slips from the nest, however,

is treading on very dangerous ground.

This parent encourages her chick to climb back to safety.

Raising chicks requires huge parental investment in both time and labour,

wherever you are.

Few places are tougher than the Antarctic.

Chinstrap penguins.

Every day, they travel up to 50 miles out at sea, hunting for krill.

But the hard part is getting this food back to the colony.

Because it sits on the ice-free rim at the

top of this giant volcano, Deception Island.

For the returning fishing party, the first challenge is getting ashore.

The beach is steep with a powerful undertone.

This female lands safely, but she now begins a long journey on foot.

For a flightless bird, getting to the top of the volcano means a gruelling climb.

Especially when glaciers covered with muddy volcanic ash stand in your way.

It's like a game of snakes and ladders.

A combination of beak, wingtip and feet.

And she wins through.

Now she joins Penguin Rush Hour.

Almost home.

She's reached the crater rim, but her trials are still not over.

She must now try and find her family among more than 150,000 birds.

Her hearing is so acute, she can identify the

individual cry of her own chick in the dim.

She's made it, and the family welcomes her return.

The result of all this parental effort, a mouthful of krill.

Now it's her partner's turn.

Her chicks' demands are endless.

Sometimes they can push parents to desperate lengths.

But birds are masters of improvisation.

Dassen Island is a beautiful place to be.

The island off the coast of South Africa is home

to a nesting colony of great white pelicans.

There are chicks of all ages, all with a hefty appetite.

The parents have a formidable task.

These pelicans are among the heaviest flying

birds in the world, weighing up to 10 kilos.

A V formation is the most energy-efficient means of flying.

It significantly reduces drag for the bird behind.

Pelicans normally fish along the coast, but a shortage

of food supplies has forced them to look elsewhere.

Cape gannets plunge deep, hunting fish beyond the reach of the pelicans.

But the pelicans aren't after fish.

Their sights are set on a bigger catch.

Malgas Island is the nesting ground for some 60,000 cape gannets.

Normally, one gannet parent goes off fishing

while the other looks after the chick.

But declining fish stocks means both parents are often away

hunting at the same time, leaving their chicks unguarded.

Something which hasn't gone unnoticed by the pelicans.

Only chicks with parents at their side, or those too large to swallow,

have a chance.

Back at the pelican colony, the parents regurgitate

partially digested gannet chicks for their brood.

Although most seabird colonies on the African Cape are in decline, the

population of white pelicans nesting on Dassin is growing.

When birds come together to breed, and before they commit to one another,

they will often perform the most remarkable displays.

One of the most enchanting happens here on the lakes of Oregon.

CLARKS OF OREGON Six grebes mate for life.

But the female must test her partner's continuing commitment, and she does this

by inviting him to join her in a ritualized dance.

To strengthen their bond, he offers her a gift.

Now,

with eyes only for one another, the faithful pair reach the climax.

A dance of their dance.

Other birds don't form pairs.

Instead, a male tries to mate with as many females as he can.

Male sage-grouse gather in the grasslands of Wyoming to advertise their virility

with a finery of feathers and proud posturing.

Females are much drabber-looking, but extremely choosy.

Females are much drabber-looking, but extremely choosy.

They will only mate with the most impressive male, and

they judge a male's worthiness by the sounds he makes.

Birds of the welcome den are an excellent way to be a couple.

Birds go to great lengths to impress their partners.

Birds of paradise.

In the forests of New Guinea, they famously use

colorful feathers and song to maximum effect.

Birds of paradise.

Birds of paradise.

Birds of paradise.

On the other side of the island, these flamboyant birds share the forests

with a rather unassuming-looking character, the Vogelkop bowerbird.

He might lack the plumage, but he's got an extraordinary repertoire of song.

And he's a wonderful mimic.

Those are pigeon wingbeats.

That's a modest tiger parrot.

And that, a sulphur-crested cockatoo.

Even more surprising, he's an avid collector,

with a very appreciative eye for colour.

This male favours red and orange flowers.

And he's very fond of fungus.

And

he's very fond of flowers.

Not everything he collects stays where it should.

He puts these treasures on display within and around

a construction that has taken him years to build.

A giant bower, woven around a central sapling, carpeted with moss.

This grand design is no nest.

It's the ultimate seduction parlour.

But he's not alone on this hillside.

He's got six rivals within earshot.

This one prefers darker colours, decorating his bower with deer dung...

and charcoal.

Visual effect is of crucial importance.

Clearly, he hadn't planned on all this sprouting fungus.

He and his nearest rival live a stone's throw apart.

Competition is intense.

It's the dung-ball bower that is the first to catch the female's attention.

He withdraws while she inspects his workmanship.

She's back again and seems impressed.

But on closer inspection, she's less convinced.

Perhaps it was that sprouting fungus.

Back at the flower bower, the male performs a dress rehearsal.

He senses she's watching.

This is the moment he's been working towards.

His bower channels his song in her direction.

A final check.

All

is to her liking.

Few birds devote such craft, effort and

ingenuity to achieve this life-defining moment.

But here, on Kenya's Lake Bogoria, these massive pink slicks signal the start

of perhaps the grandest courtship event in nature.

In certain years, when the lake is at its richest, more

than a million lesser flamingos congregate to feed.

It's now, when they're in their prime, that they must find their preferred partner.

To do that, they perform a remarkable promenade.

With heads held high and neck feathers ruffled, making them look as pink as

possible, more and more birds join in the courtship march.

And pairs begin to bond.

Small groups merge with larger ones until

almost a thousand flamingos are on the move.

From the equator to the poles, birds have found the most

ingenious ways of overcoming the many challenges of life.

And everything revolves around their unique attribute...

feathers.

For the past three years, the life team has filmed

birds in every part of the world imaginable.

Nowhere was the filming trickier than in the jungles of West Papua.

Here is found, for me, one of the greatest wonders of the

bird world, the display arena of the Vogelkop Powerbird.

Thirteen years ago, I was lucky enough to witness these spectacular builders.

But filming the timid female and courtship behaviour was a different matter.

And this was what the life team set out to film.

Barry Britton was the principal cameraman for this programme.

With over 20 years in the business, not only is he an accomplished

photographer, but he has developed a deep

understanding of and empathy for his subjects.

Although each one posed its own unique challenges, Barry did seem to spend an

inordinate amount of time cooped up in his trusty old hide.

I think I may have misjudged the hide position,

because the sea is coming in the bottom of the hide.

That was 11 hours in my little box.

Barry saved his most ambitious trip of the series until last.

It took a team of 40 people three days of tough,

uphill trekking to get to the filming camp.

I could complain about leeches, biting insects, the tough going,

but I really don't want to.

This is great.

I seem to have lost everyone else.

I hope I'm going the right way.

Ah, made it.

Completely shattered.

The hard work had only just begun.

Tomorrow, with the help of their guides, the crew

would go looking for the best flowers to film.

But not before a cautionary tale from the local chief.

So when he first was shown the bower by his father, there were flowers there,

and as a 12-year-old child, he wanted to grab them.

But his father immediately stopped him and said that he

could not touch anything or take anything away from him.

I'm going to take this from the bower, because

otherwise it would start raining very heavily.

It's ten to five, Barry.

With the chief's warning fresh in their minds, Barry

and the team make an early start and head for the hide.

Well, we've reached the hide just at sunrise, so

we're just going to get set up as quickly as we can.

With knowledgeable guides, finding the bowers wasn't the problem.

And who could miss such obvious structures?

It was now a waiting game for Barry, heavily concealed in his camouflaged hide.

OK, it's 6.30, so I'm just waiting for the bird to come, hoping that it doesn't

suspect anything is here and that we can get some natural behaviour.

I've just heard the bower bird call just to the right of the hide.

I can hear the bird outside.

It's plucking on the fabric of the hide.

I've just noticed that the bird has pulled a sneaker's wrapper

out of the bottom of the hide and has added it to its display.

It was a very strange decoration, which I had to remove at the end of the day.

Had Barry tempted fate by removing the wrapper and ignoring the chief's warning?

Or was this just rain forest living up to its name?

When it pours like this, filming becomes virtually impossible.

Soon the weather improved and Barry returned once more to the hide.

This time his lunchbox was firmly sealed.

The bird is very keen on these little tiny metallic ladybirds and they're a bit put

out, being put there in this bower, so they start crawling off.

They're very slowly making their way over the moss

and they just about get to the edge of the display.

And then the bowerbird notices it goes and collects them and puts them back again.

So they're kind of in this endless cycle of trying to escape from the bower.

They just, they can never quite get away.

However, for the male bowerbird and Barry, the female was still proving a problem.

The female did come down, but she was quite nervous near the

entrance to the bower, so we didn't get very much of that.

This was a real concern, because the courtship behaviour was key to our story.

He's just done a ten-hour stint.

It's been a really nice day, so we're just hoping it's gone well.

Another day is filming over and still little to show for it.

Ten hours to fly.

Unfortunately, filming is over for the day.

We're just going to go and collect Barry again.

Did you see a mating?

No, no, no mating.

Everything else is going well, but we haven't got the mating.

The fact I was getting such good footage of the

male meant he'd obviously got used to the hide.

But the visiting females were still wary of it.

The females did seem a bit nervous, so I took the decision to push the hide

back, just to get more distance from the birds.

The other thing I've done is recess the lens.

We've put this vegetation all around it, so I'm

hoping that's going to provide more female behaviour.

There were few filming days left.

It was crucial Barry's adjustments paid off.

The male has just run into the bower and started calling,

so I think that means there might be a female coming.

WHISTLE BLOWS WHISTLE BLOWS WHISTLE BLOWS WHISTLE BLOWS WHISTLE BLOWS It struck me.

Here we both were, waiting in the darkness.

The male trying to attract the female, and I

was just hoping that I'd got it right this time.

And it was more than just a fleeting visit.

Working in a hide involves hours of prolonged inactivity,

punctuated by the most intense moments of action.

This was the crucial moment the whole team had worked towards.

Everything was falling into place for Barry.

The behaviour unfolding.

Right, that's good.

I think we're in action.

21 days in a hide.

Astonishing patience and perseverance.

This has never been filmed before.

Such effort and endeavour for a crucial piece

of behaviour that's over in a matter of seconds.

I shit my hand, Steven.

What does that mean?

We've got the mating.

You've got the mating?

Yeah, we've got the mating.

Oh, wow!

Yeah, it's a really good day.

Brilliant day.

Yeah, but just amazing.

I must have...

Wow, what is it?

So many weeks I've spent sitting in this hide.

And I just didn't think we'd ever get it.

Because we're running out of days.

Only a few left now.

So to get that this week is just incredible.

And it was really, really good behaviour.

So I'm delighted.

Success.

This was Barry's last filming trip for the birds episode.

And what a befitting end.

Right.

See you all at the next one.

See you later.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye bye.