Wild Isles

Episode
Ep3 - Grassland
Broadcast Info
2023 (58 mins)
Description
David Attenborough explores some of Britain and Ireland’s most beautiful places, our grasslands and reveals how they work, 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. Less than an inch long, a female mason bee lays her eggs in empty snail shells. She then collects small pieces of dried grass to hide her nests, appearing to fly like a witch, across the hillside on a tiny broomstick. Across our farmed grasslands, wild brown hares perform their exuberant, spring boxing courtship routines, as a golden eagle, our most powerful predator, waits for an opportunity to hunt them down. 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. A thriving example of nature-friendly farming, supporting these threatened creatures. 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 return some of this land back to wilderness. Deep within a thick, tussocky rough grassland we uncover a female field vole and her tiny babies. She works at high speed to feed herself and keep her youngsters warm. But a sharp hearing short-eared owl flies above ready to snatch her from the grass. Using a military-grade thermal imaging camera, we reveal how rabbits work together in the dead of night, to evade the hunting efforts of a family of red foxes. 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 a red ant, that is tricked into adopting the butterfly’s unassuming but predatory caterpillars. Our story then journeys to the mountains. In early spring, each morning feisty male black grouse battle like karate kids for prime position on their frozen breeding grounds. Their sole mission is to impress a female. On south-facing scree slopes, dozens of adders emerge from hibernation to perform a surprisingly delicate courtship routine. As they mate, we reveal their extraordinary male anatomy. 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 mammal in Britain and Ireland, red deer that can fight to the death. 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 our different types of grassland are to the species which call these islands home.
Genre
Natural History

How to cite this record

The Open University, "Wild Isles". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/244695 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)