#563: Secret Garden

A new BBC series which started this evening focusses on the wildlife that can be found in people's gardens, although frankly the first episode featured a completely unrealistic garden...

There's an interactive tool as well, made with the Open University, which you can use to uncover the secret wildlife in your own garden.

#231: The power of Natural History films

An interesting research paper from the British Ecological Society.

This highlights the importance of natural history films in highlighting the impacts of our activities on the natural world, and encuraging us to be aware of this.

#173: Habitat Explorer

This is connected with the new series Planet Earth III - which will not be so new by the time the new specification gets off the ground.

It's an interactive called Habitat Explorer.

Habitat Explorer lets you bring amazing animal habitats into your own living room. When you've scanned the QR code just choose the habitat you want to explore and point your camera at a flat, horizontal surface. Tap where you want it to appear and start exploring!

You can zoom in, spin it around or even move around the space and get up close to the animals in their environment.

Don't forget to create your own pledge cards and share on social with #OUHabitatExplorer.

#144: Thought for the Day

 

#136: David Attenborough on Planet Earth III

Planet Earth III starts on Sunday the 22nd of October, and will be available to view on BBC Sounds.

It's an eight part series, featuring some more emphasis on the impact of people on the natural world.

Details here. Plenty of connections to some of the themes

It features David Attenborough's trademark narration of course, and has him walking through a meadow where Charles Darwin walked while thinking. 

It features long-tailed macaques stealing iPhones from tourists and returning them in exchange for food, for an example of animal adaptations.

There is a podcast to accompany the series for the first time. There was also an attempt to reduce the impact of filming by using local crews for filming.

Attenborough says:

"Children have an instinctive understanding about the way the world operates. By and large, children are better at understanding the natural world, and as adults we should be marking more opportunities for them to do that."

#102: Natural History Reading List #7: 'A Life on Our Planet'

A Life on our Planet has the subtitle: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future, and is written by David Attenborough.

It's an essential book for any library of Natural History-related books.

To accompany the book, there is a Netflix film of the same name, which lasts for one hour and twenty minutes.

The book explores his life and key moments, which are also labelled with the PPM of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere at that time.

The book has a wealth of quotes and information and is available in paperback now and other formats.

“All living things depend on the health of our planet. The only thing stopping humans from complete destruction is ourselves.”

A TES resource - with a biology link.

Twinkl subscribers have some options here as well.

Some resource links here. Geographers were on top of this when the film first came out on Netflix.

And some questions from some famous fans...

And some news from a few weeks ago:

Sir David Attenborough is back to present Planet Earth III 🌏

17 years after the first series aired, Sir David Attenborough returns to narrate the closing chapter of this multi-award winning trilogy.

Coming later this year.#PlanetEarth3 #DavidAttenborough pic.twitter.com/5NWjqdXvCU

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) August 31, 2023

#50: Eastenders credits

Back in October 2022, I was alerted to the fact that the end credits of Eastenders on a Wednesday episode were subtly (ish) changed to act as a trailer for Frozen Planet II, which was showing at the time.

You can see the video of the credits here.

The new end credits saw London’s East End transformed to show the river Thames bursting its banks with parts of the capital under water in a hypothetical scenario of what London could look like in the future.

It then zoomed out to capture a satellite image of the Arctic and point to the last episode of Sir David Attenborough’s series, underlining the message that the challenge of melting ice in this frozen region could one day affect us all close to home.

There are going to be many changes to the world that we have become used to in the coming decades, and most of them are not going to be welcome changes.