Go Wild
Your guide to getting closer to nature this month
TV HIGHLIGHT OF THE MONTH
Going out with a bang
Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough
Catch up on BBC iPlayer
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH PRESENTS THIS landmark documentary that brings the last day of the dinosaurs to life in detail. The 90-minute film reveals what happened when an asteroid the size of Mount Everest hit the planet 66 million years ago.
The story is centred not on the impact site, the Chicxulub crater in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, but instead on a little-known spot in the Hell Creek Formation in North Dakota. It’s there that palaeontologist Robert DePalma and his team made a remarkable discovery in a prehistoric graveyard named Tanis.
What they found were astonishingly well-preserved fossilised creatures, buried in a mysterious crumbly layer of rock.
It is full of ejected material formed by the asteroid’s impact at Chicxulub and provides a snapshot of the moment after the asteroid hit Earth.
With exclusive access to the dig site, BBC cameras follow Robert and his team as they hunt for evidence that can shed light on the dinosaurs’ demise.
Throughout the programme, state-of-theart special effects transport David back in time to the Late Cretaceous period so we can witness the creatures who lived at Tanis, before re-creating, in extraordinary detail, the events of the very last day of the dinosaurs.
You can stream the new landmark documentary on BBC iPlayer
MEET THE PRESENTER AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
David Attenborough and Helen Thomas
We find out how the last day of the dinosaurs was brought to life in the new BBC documentary
What was it like for you filming in a virtual studio?
David: I’ve done quite a bit in studios one way or another over the past few years, so I’m accustomed to doing that sort of thing. But we’ve gone far beyond the old days and green screens of the cinema.
When I walked into the studio the images were all already there – the back end of the studio was a forest on fire, and it was very, very impressive too. It’s quite unsettling suddenly to go in and see fire leaking through the frames of a forest that aren’t in the studio, but that’s what it looks like.
Helen: It’s a very new technique this virtual studio, pioneered on the Disney+ series The Mandalorian. And the differences between a green screen and this is that here you’ve basically got a single camera that has a tracking device in it, so when you move or the camera moves, the background moves as well. But obviously we had to create a big set in front of that. So we had David, who is so patient, waiting while we were moving trees and plants around him. We were experimenting as it’s very much cuttingedge technology, and I know David, you love new technology, so you were joyously fascinated by this, which was brilliant.
How did the programme go about accurately depicting the appearance and behaviour of the dinosaurs?
Helen: We’ve obviously used a lot of CGI and visual effects to bring the creatures to life. We wanted to make them as accurate as we possibly could, and so we consulted a lot of scientists at each stage as we were creating the CGI. We based the creatures’ behaviour on fossil evidence as far as we could. Two independent scientific experts then watched the final film to make sure that we were as accurate as we could be.
There have been a lot of dinosaur films made over the years. What’s different about this one, and why did you decide to make it now?
David: We couldn’t have made it any other time. My breath was taken away when I first heard about the project. To anybody with any imagination at all, the notion that you could actually see fish that died at the same time as the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs is very, very romantic.
DOCUMENTARY HIGHLIGHT
The Velvet Queen
In cinemas from 29th April
Get a glimpse into the world of wildlife photography and the Tibetan highlands in this award-winning documentary. It’s a slow burn, following the photographer Vincent Munier and writer Sylvain Tesson as they head up into the mountains in search of snow leopards. Territorial, wild male yaks grunt at each other and stare at the men in distrust, a pack of wolves trot nonchalantly past, and the calls of birds echo against the rocks. The two men discuss wildlife, landscape and life.
CHILDREN’S BOOK OF THE MONTH
Around the World in 80 Trees
NOW MORE THAN EVER ARE WE understanding the enormous value trees – they provide vital green spaces in towns and cities, homes for a wealth of wildlife, and the lungs of our planet in the fight against climate change.
This rich, colourful hardback literally opens up the incredible world of trees, taking you around the globe to discover 80 extraordinary species – some familiar, some less so. We learn which trees grow where, the tallest (a coast redwood called Hyperion) and oldest (a bristlecone pine named Methuselah), as well as their lifecycles, leaves and means of communication.
There’s also plenty of mindboggling trivia to surprise and delight at every turn.
African mopane trees, for instance, send a bitter substance to their leaves when being browsed by elephants; the candelnut tree is so-called because its oily nuts emit light when burned; and a Montezuma cypress in the Mexican town of Santa María del Tule has a trunk so thick that it takes 40 handholding children to encircle it. A wonderful, vibrant introduction to the fascinating world of trees.
BOOKS ROUND UP
Endless Forms
Discover the beauty of the wasp in this book by entomologist Seirian Sumner about the muchmaligned and often-feared insect. The ancestor of bees, it is both a pest controller and a vital predator, and deserving of our admiration – rather than the underside of a shoe.
Platypus Matters
Australia’s mammals are a bit odd. But wonderfully so, as discussed in Jack Ashby’s new book. From the egg-laying and venom producing platypus to the wombat, which poos cubes, Ashby reveals marvellous creatures, and the mysteries and myths surrounding them.
Why Sharks Matter
Award-winning marine biologist David Shiffman discusses sharks – one of the most misunderstood and feared animals – and shows why they are actually more in danger from us than we are from them. There’s science, anecdotes and humour in this accessible read.
Rewilding Africa
Conservationist Grant Fowlds teams up with journalist Graham Spence to showcase his own frontline work to protect wildlife in a number of African countries, and reveal the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on conservation efforts.
ID GUIDE
Dainty dancing
There’s nothing quite like the sight of a cloud of male banded demoiselles dancing at the edge of a river on a sunny day. We’re celebrating three blue damselflies that you can seek out.
More ID guides are on our website: discoverwildlife.com/identify-wildlife
BANDED DEMOISELLE
Males are blue with banded wings. Seen around ponds, lakes and slow-moving rivers.
BLUE-TAILED DAMSELFLY
The male has a striking blue band at the end of its tail, and is known to visit garden ponds.
COMMON BLUE DAMSELFLY
One of our most widespread and common species of damselfly, it regularly visits garden ponds.
TV SERIES HIGHLIGHT
Our Great National Parks
Watch on Netflix
BARACK OBAMA MAKES HIS FIRST FORAY into presenting and narrating natural history with this new five-part Netflix series on our world’s national parks. The project is a collabroation between the streaming giant and Higher Ground, a production company created by the former US president and his wife, the former first lady Michelle Obama.
If you’ve listened to any of Barack Obama’s speeches, it will come as no surprise that his voice is well-suited to narration. He introduces us to the series from Hanauma Bay in Hawaii, close to where he was born, and then it’s a whirlwind ride in the first episode as we visit a multitude of national parks and meet some of their inhabitants.
There are mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, wave-surfing hippos in Loango National Park in Gabon and a sleepy sloth in Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica.
Each of the following episodes focuses on a specific national park: Tsavo (Kenya), Gunung Leuser (Indonesia), Patagonia (Chile) and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (USA).
MEET THE VOLUNTEER
“I’m up in the early hours on all of my free days”
GCSE student Izzy Fry juggles volunteering on wildlife surveys with studying for her exams
IN BETWEEN HER VOLUNTEERING WORK WITH the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), Izzy Fry is currently studying for her GCSEs and eventually hopes to study wildlife conservation and ecology at university.
Last year, she was the winner of the Young Person’s Award in the National Biodiversity Network Awards for Wildlife Recording.
Who do you volunteer for?
I spend all of my free time volunteering for various places and organisations, such as the BTO, helping to conserve and protect local wildlife and nature. This includes bird ringing; undertaking water vole, butterfly and farmland bird surveys; and helping out with small mammal trapping.
That’s a lot! Which activity takes up most of your time – and how does it help wildlife?
The main volunteering area I put my time into is bird ringing for the BTO.
The trust ‘hatched’ the ringing scheme in 1909 to generate information on the survival, productivity and movements of British birds, helping us to understand why populations are changing. I’m up in the early hours on all of my free days to traipse out into local reserves or other sites with suitable habitat. As well as ringing the birds, we can determine the age and sex of many species, and take measurements such as wing length and weight, which give an indication of their health.
The ringing group I’m part of operates over a range of different sites and habitats, from ancient woodland and farmland to scrub in chalk grassland across Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset. We ring different species at each site, such as marsh tits and treecreepers in ancient woodland, and redstarts, yellowhammers and stonechats in scrub areas.
What has been the best thing to have come out of your volunteering work?
One aspect I find incredible about bird ringing is being able to see birds such as redstarts, nightingales, sparrowhawks and barn owls up close in the hand. But importantly, my volunteering experience has given me a real insight into what I would like to do in the future regarding a career. I have also increased my knowledge of ornithology and the bird world!
5 things we love
1. Wildlife beer, £24 for 12 cans, faunabrewing.com
2. Parrot necklace, £110, tattydevine.com
3. Wildlife socks, £22 for three pairs, wildsocks.co.uk
4. Forest Ferns embroidery kit, £21.95, hawthornhandmade.com
5. Whale jigsaw puzzle, £14.99, cloudberries.co.uk