Page 89 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #04

REVIEWS BROADCAST
Q&A
Joanne Ashman
What did you
learn that most
fascinated you?
For part three,
we filmed boxer
crabs that live in
the Red Sea.These little crabs Lavers scooping 241 pieces Attenborough and Sylvia Closer to home, if you’re
hold tiny anemones hostage
ontheir claws, using their toxic
tendrils for protection. If an glaring reminder that the focus of our attentionfor another video to its popular
individualloses one, it tears
the surviving anemone in half
andboth sides regenerate via
asexual reproduction. It’s an
ingenious strategy.
Were there any particularly
memorable filming moments?
Yes – coconut crabs on
Christmas Island. They are
known as ‘robber crabs’ as they fromaraftofexperts and which
are naturally inquisitive and
supposedly steal anything.We
thought they would be easy to
film if a few itemswere laid
out to pique their interest,
but to start with they weren't
bothered. After waiting for
hours, we finally broke for
lunch,whichhappened to
He mbuch/M nden/FLPA we sat downthan10ofthese
beaChinese.No sooner had
enormous creatures appeared
from nowhere and got stuck in.
Which are the most
Runke /A amy;Maya: Joe Mann ng; otter: Jaym memorable sequences? Big Cats about the House to the dramatic Appalachian st
The promiscuous female
prairie dogs are great – you
really root for them. There’s
also a lovely sequence of
hummingbirds in Ecuador.
These birds usually have long
beaks to drink nectar from
tubular flowers, pollinating
owhammer: Bart He rweg/M nden/FLPA; Haenyeo: M chae them in the process, but there’s lived with them for over 20 years. This three-parter – a thousands
stiff competition for the best
food sources. To sidestep this,
the wedge-billed hummingbird
uses its shorter beak to pierce
any flower it chooses and ‘rob’
its nectar without pollinating
it. It’s cheating, showing that
animals don’t always follow
JOANNE is producer-director of
Animals Behaving Badly.
Y e expected patterns.
April 2018
WILD bottlenose
dolphins,
mudskippers
STREAM raccoon dogs,
and the
THE LATEST ON iPLAYER, remarkable
NETFLIX AND BEYOND Haenyeo, or
‘sea women’ of
It can take just one image to Two Haenyeo Marado (left),
prepare for a dive.
change attitudes entirely, and who freedive to
the sight of scientist Jenny harvest shellfish.
of plastic from the stomach Earle. From sea to slope, keen to improve your birding
of a dead shearwater is a South Korea has been the skills, the BTO has added
stuff we mindlessly chuck the past month with the identification series. BTO
away is rapidly suffocating PyeongChang 2018 Bird ID: Farmland Bunting
our seas and everything Winter Olympics. (BTOvideo, YouTube) does
in them. To understand To discover the wild what it says on the
the global mega-issue that secrets of this little- tin, breaking down
is single-use plastic, try known land, tune into the diagnostic
the 2016 film A Plastic South Korea: Earth's features ofthe
Ocean (Netflix), written and Hidden Wilderness yellowhammer
directed by Craig Leeson (BBC iPlayer, until (left, male) as
and featuring contributions 19 March), Learn your well as cirl
buntings andcorn
scientists, including David features with the BTO. buntings.
COMING
TO AMERICA
America's Wild Heartlands
TV NAT GEO WILD Starts 20 March
Afive-part series showcasing
the wilderness of North
America, travelling deep into
the frontier landscapes of
this vast continent,from the
confluence of the Mississippi,
Missouri and Ohio Rivers
Maya, a black jaguar
cub who comes into
Mountains, and telling the
Giles's care.
stories of the wildlife – big and
survives
here
.
small – that
Ju
small
that survives here Just
CATS IN THE KITCHEN
some of the wild stars include
river otters (below), foxes,
timber wolves,
TV BBC Two Starts 21 March. See RT for details
great grey
Giles Clark is no stranger to big cats, having worked and
owlsand
follow-up to the 2015 BBC Two series Tigers about the House,
of snow
which documented Giles's then day-job as head of big cats
geese
that arrive
at Australia Zoo – follows the expert as he embarks on a
with winter.
new post at The Big Cat Sanctuary in Kent. Most of the
residents here have been rescued or belong to international
River otters
breeding programmes, and Giles hopes to introduce new
star in
ideas to improve their wellbeing in captivity.Away from the
episode one.
investigate the main threats facing felines in the wild, finding
out what needsto be done to protect them and upping the
profile of conservation projects across the globe.
enclosures, he travels to Asia, Africa and Central America to
BBC Wildlife 89