Using cutting-edge new filming techniques to show everything in exquisite detail, viewers have a uniquely privileged perspective flying high above the Serengeti on the backs of Vultures in Africa to hunting for bats with red-tailed hawks in North America.

The birds are shown up-close in flight and interacting with other animals down below: barnacle geese fight off polar bears that are invading their nests, pelicans plunging into huge shoals of sardine and anchovies and cowbirds shadowing bison herds to feed on the insects disturbed by their hooves.

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To create its bird’s-eye view of the world Earthflight uses a host of extraordinary filming techniques including filming “imprinted” flocks from microlites, wild flocks filmed from model gliders and silent drones, full-sized helicopter with stabilised mounts and cameras on the backs of trained birds. Slow-motion techniques also reveal extraordinary detail such as swallows plucking feathers from the air.

Earthflight truly is a bird’s-eye view of the world.

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Earthflight  -

Watch it:

See some of the highlights from Earthflight on our YouTube channel

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North America

Programme 1

Take off in a ‘snowstorm’ of  geese and glide under San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge with pelicans. This is the world on the wing – a world with secrets known only to the birds.

The countdown to Earthflight’s epic adventure begins in the Gulf of Mexico as five million snow geese prepare to fly the entire length of North America. Each spring, these families of geese head north on a gruelling 3,000-mile journey to the Arctic to breed.

Cruise with them on a tight schedule along familiar ‘flyways’, taking a route across the parched Monument Valley and up the Mississippi before catching skyscraper-induced thermals over New York City.

One unwelcome fellow traveller is the bald eagle. At every opportunity it plummets into the flock to grab a meal. But it’s salmon not geese that lure the eagles away to Alaska. As the annual salmon run kicks off, duck and dive among squabbling grizzly bears as the eagles snatch a share of the feast.

At the other extreme, brown pelicans seem to enjoy a far more relaxed Californian lifestyle. In the balmy seas of Baja, join a young pelican on its hunt for fish. It takes its cue from the breaching humpback whales and massing dolphins way below – that’s where the schools of anchovies are sure to be.

Hitching a lift with pelicans on their leisurely route up the golden coast reveals the never-filmed-before behaviour of devil rays somersaulting out of the water and the daytime spawning of thousands of grunion fish. Eventually the pelicans make their final descent into San Francisco Bay, gliding past Alcatraz and slipping under the Golden Gate Bridge.

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Africa

Programme 2

On the second leg of this world trip, head north over Africa. Plunge into the great sardine run with thousands of Cape gannets, explore the Great Rift with fish eagles and vultures, and slow dance with millions of pink flamingos on Kenya’s Lake Bogoria.

Off the Cape, gannets race high above the waves. They are the dolphins’ keen eyes in the sky. From up here they readily spot the whorling shoals of sardines, and the first gannet to take the plunge sparks a feeding frenzy of gannets, dolphins, sharks and whales. Along the shore, kelp gulls follow young seals as they take to the sea for the first time. The gulls know that great white sharks hunt in these waters and will prepare dinner for them.

High above the Serengeti, riding on a vulture’s wide wings, the full drama of the mass wildebeest migration plays out below. As the wildebeest cross the plain they’re attacked by lions, before facing the mighty Mara river where huge crocodiles lie in wait. The scavenging vultures just have to wait for the spoils.

In Kenya, flamingos are on the lookout for their perfect lake – hot, toxic and brimming with tasty algae. Eventually they find the perfect spot and two million flamingos descend on Lake Bogoria, instantly turning this soda lake pink. Here they cement lifelong bonds in an wild party of synchonised dancing. But danger lurks in pink paradise in the shape of hunting baboons and fish eagles.

On the longhaul flight north to Europe, glide with white storks on the thermals, encountering slight  turbulence over Victoria Falls. Then take a somewhat smoother route up the Nile.

Swallows are hot on their tails, taking a lower flightpath and refuelling rapidly on the wing as billions of lake flies rise out of Lake Malawi. Then these tireless little birds cross the vast Sahara on their 6,000-mile trip home.

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Europe

Programme 3

Rome, Venice, London … Earthflight departs on its grand European tour, and takes filming to new heights. Using a host of extraordinary techniques that include filming imprinted birds from microlites, we soar with birds over the Grand Canal, the white cliffs of Dover and Edinburgh castle. It’s the world from the air as never seen before.

Take to the wing with grey cranes and white storks as they head north for their breeding grounds, riding high on the thermals created by these world-famous sights.

Discover how cranes take the shortest route across the narrow Straits of Gibraltar and many stop off in the South of France for a spot of R&R. But the famous Camargue white horses kick up a fuss around these hungry new arrivals, many push on again up the Loire Valley – where 50,000 cranes may fly by in a single day.

Navigating by the sun and magnetic fields, birds also follow well-known landmarks – from chateaux along the Loire valley to the tulip fields of Holland.

Meanwhile, thousands of male white storks have left Africa behind and set their sights on Istanbul – their entry point into Europe. Next they must reclaim their ancestral homes – the chimney pots of Germany – and do a spot of nest DIY before the females arrive.

In Rome, the heat of the city lures in 20 million starlings that perform nature’s greatest aerial display – one that outwits the world’s fastest bird predator, the peregrine.

Barnacle geese strike out over Britain, but bad weather sometimes pushes them over London – normally a no-fly zone. Just over the Scottish border is Bass Rock – home to 40,000 gannets.

Finally, geese touch down in Svalbard and start to raise a family. But ravenous polar bears threatens to wipe out their colony, and the plucky birds rally together to see off the world’s most dangerous predator.

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South America

Programme 4

In this bird’s-eye view of South America, condors soar along the Andes, scarlet macaws explore the heart of the Amazon and hummingbirds and vultures show us the continent’s greatest sights. It’s a journey that includes Machu Picchu, the Nazca Lines and the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Santiago.

In Patagonia, giant petrels shadow killer whales as they hunt seals by stranding their huge bodies on the beach.

At Iguassu Falls, dusky swifts dive through the cascades to huddle in communal roosts and hummingbirds bathe below.

In a secret Andean location, condors soar in flocks over 40-strong and scavenge on casualties from herds of fighting guanacos. Elsewhere, a mother condor gently pushes her youngster to the edge of a 200-metre cliff – flight school begins.

Deep in the Amazon, macaws seek medicinal clay. They are joined by a host of secretive jungle animals, including spider monkeys and tapirs, all after the same remedy.

In Peru, condors soar over fighting sealions waiting for casualities and on a mass exodus north, birds converge on the Panama Canal.

In Costa Rica, black vultures descend on turtles as they lay their eggs in the sand and pick off the eggs that ping-pong through the air. 

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Asia & Australia

Programme 5 

In this bird’s-eye view of two continents, demoiselle cranes negotiate a dangerous Himalayan pass on their way to India while high-flying bar-headed geese take the fast track 5 miles above.

In Rajasthan, vultures watch hunting tigers hoping for a meal and pigeons visit a temple dedicated solely to sacred rats. Pigeons are also our guide to the greatest gatherings of camels on Earth and learn to dodge buzzards around the battlements of Jodhpur Fort. 9,000 cranes overwinter in the most unlikely of spots – a barbed wire compound in the centre of a desert town.

In Australia, rainbow lorikeets drop in on Sydney and patrol Australia’s Gold Coast. In the outback, white cockatoos swirl in thousands and budgerigars pass Uluru (Ayers Rock) and gather in the biggest flocks ever recorded.

In China, swallows and swifts visit the Great Wall and the Forbidden City of Beijing. In Japan, the country’s most revered birds – Japanese cranes are fed fish by appreciative locals and are joined in strange, momentary harmony by hungry red foxes, white-tailed eagles and Steller’s eagles. As peace descends, Japanese cranes dance beautifully in the snow.

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Behind the Scenes

Programme 6

To fly like a bird, Earthflight not only captured remarkable images of wild flocks but also relied on some extraordinary relationships between people and birds. Filmed over four years, in six continents and more than 40 countries, the Earthflight team used many extraordinary techniques.

For some of the unique flying shots, members of the team became part of the flock. The birds followed wherever they went – even in a microlight over Edinburgh and London.

In Africa, paragliders floated alongside wild vultures, while a model vulture carried a camera inside the flock. In South America, wild-living macaws, that were rescued as babies, still come back to visit their ‘foster mother’ as he travels along a jungle river. In Africa, a radio-controlled ‘drone’ silently infiltrates masses of pink flamingos without disturbing a feather, and microlights and helicopters capture the dramatic moment white storks arrive over Istanbul.

A tame vulture carried a camera across the African bush and recreated the behaviour of his wild relatives. Similarly, in the USA, a flock of hand-reared snow geese followed the migration route of wild flocks and took in the sights and sounds of New York – managing to get lost in Brooklyn.

Iceberg-cam, blizzard-cam and snowball-cam are a new generation of spycams on a mission to explore the icy Arctic islands of Svalbard in Norway. Backed up by snow-cam and drift-cam, these technologically advanced spycams contain sophisticated electronics to endure polar arctic conditions.

From the outset, the wildlife filmmakers are faced withsome of nature’s greatest challenges. But one spycam is just a breath away as cubs emerge from winter maternity dens.

Next the spycams team up and prepare to follow in the footsteps of polar bear mothers and cubs as they face their first summer in a world of shrinking ice. Each mother has a single goal, to guide her cubs to the rich hunting grounds of the sea ice. But on the way they must run the gauntlet of roaming males.

One mother and her cubs make it, and iceberg-cam tracks them across shifting ice as they head north towards the sturdier pack ice. But not all bears are so lucky – a mother and cub are marooned on the island, and it’s here that spycams reveal the true depth of polar bears’ intelligence.

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The land offers slim pickings and spycams discover how land-locked bears unearth new opportunities hunting walrus, diving for kelp, eating grass and even raiding bird colonies – filmed for the first time. Elsewhere on the island a washed-up whale carcass offers a bear banquet; and iceberg-cam captures the bears’ little-known social nature as they share this rare bounty.

Back on the sea ice, iceberg-cam makes another discovery – the polar bears’ astonishing intelligence as they hunt seals. While life is relatively good on the ice it has its dangers. The mother and her cubs reach the end of the drift ice and are faced with a marathon swim. Will they make it to the security of the pack ice?

With spycams at their side, Polar Bear Spy on the Ice follows the bears’ fate during a difficult ice-free summer. Ultimately, spycams reveal that polar bears’ intelligence and curiosity are key to their survival in a world of shrinking ice.

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Polar Bear Flirts with Mate

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Polar Bear Hunts Bearded Seal

When Worlds Collide

Thousands of killer bees invade a football pitch, millions of mice wipe out a harvest, huge fish shoals leaping into boats …animals can reach such immense numbers that they take over our lives. From the outside these superswarms are the stuff of nightmares, but from the inside they’re things of beauty.

Mayflies by the trillion invade a mid-west city for one night only, locust swarms destroy crops as they invade by both land and air, ferocious driver ant swarms invade an east african village, high above Rome 10 million starlings perform incredible aerial displays as they come in to roost.

Swarm ventures into the very heart of these amazing natural phenomena. Incredible high-speed shots from inside swarms reveals how they view our world. Real-life footage from TV cameras, mobile phones and camcorders relives the moment when swarms invade our lives.

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Program 2:

One million heads, one beautiful mind

In the first program we saw how animal swarms collide with our world. This time the intelligence behind such mass invasions is explored. When swarms gather, they generate a mysterious swarm intelligence, communicating and learning in amazing ways.

Bees hold commitee meetings to discuss new nesting sites, flocks of quelea learn from each other where to find the best food, fire ants even use their own bodies to form a raft and escape when their nest is destroyed by floods.

All unite as one and act like a giant organism controlled by a single brain. One newly discovered swarm may even use its united strength to save the planet from the greenhouse effect! The superorganism can accomplish far more than the sum of its parts.

As in program 1, real-life footage combined with state of the art high-speed camera techniques shows the complexity of the superorganism, and how this intelligent being affects us and the planet.

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To enter the world of this tiger family, John Downer and his wizard team, cameraman Michael Richards and techno-boffin Geoff Bell, deploy the ultimate all-terrain camera vehicles – elephants – kitted out with the latest high-definition ‘secret weapons’ of wildlife filmmaking – trunk-cam, tusk-cam and log-cams. The four elephants here in India’s Pench national park have also been taught new filming skills by their mahouts – how to keep a steady trunk and a delicate touch.

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As eco-friendly 4X4s, the elephants carry the hefty trunk-cam and smaller tusk-cam wherever the tiger family goes across its 10-square mile territory. The tigers seem oblivious to the elephants and allow them to place trunk-cam right under their whiskers to film. The elephants also use the devices to film the tigers on the move. The human film crew film from another elephant and control the ele-cams remotely.

Tigers may be the A-list celebrities, but there’s a cast of rising B-list stars too. Cheeky langur monkeys are transfixed by their reflections in log-cam, and rare sloth bears, red dogs and a leopard with her cubs all make cameo appearances.

It’s almost unheard of for four cubs to survive through to adulthood, and these four face many dangers along the way – from rogue male tigers and leopards in their territory to being left home alone. Tiger – Spy in the Jungle is there every step of the way.

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TREK features a cast of literally thousands, as countless wildebeest, zebra and antelope are joined by the hyena, leopard, jackal, cheetah and crocodile that prey on them. To personalise this story our spycams follow the fortunes of a baby wildebeest. We experience all the significant events of his 3000 kilometre year-long circular journey.

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This epic story combines natural humour with high-octane drama. But the bouldercams, dungcams and invisiblecams of past productions have grown into an army of over twenty mobile and remote cameras. These give saturation coverage of this awe-inspiring event. Trek: Spy on the Wildebeest is a two part series for BBC 1 starting with ‘The Journey’ and ending with ‘The Crossing’.

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Lion Vs Hyena

This hyena learns the hard way what happens if you steal food from lions as this male lion shows who’s boss.
This battle may have been won but “The war between lions and hyenas over food never ends”
Clip taken from Trek – Spy on the Wildebeest.

Narrated by: David Attenborough

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Top 10 facts about Wildebeest

• 1.5 million wildebeest graze 7000 tons of grass a day – that’s 2.5 million tons a year – the equivalent of mowing 6000 Wembley stadiums a year.
• Wildebeest urinate enough to fill 125 road tankers, plus 500 tip trucks of dung, a day.
• They graze for 18 hours a day.
• The entire herd drinks enough water to fill five Olympic-sized swimming pools a day.
• In one year they travel 3000 kilometres.

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• Over one and a quarter million wildebeest take part in the migration.
• Each February the Serengeti plains experience the world’s largest baby boom. In just three short weeks over half a million calves are born.
• Just 50% of the calves survive their first 6 months – quarter of a million succumb to disease and predators.
• The calf learns to use its legs faster than any other mammal – up and walking in under four minutes.
• The thrashing of young saplings by a quarter of a million bulls helps stop the spread of the woodlands. Their destructive behaviour inadvertently preserves their precious grasslands.

Meanwhile, on the ski jump current gold medallist Simon Ammann faces fierce competition from a flying squirrel; and in the cross country the reindeer suddenly reveals its secret ‘weapon’ – an energy-saving prancing technique.

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In true Olympic style, sport commentators, John Motson and Jonathan Pearce, bring their live commentary skills to the animal arena. Animals from the chilly regions of the Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine regions compete alongside humans in 7 events; cross-country, giant slalom, ski jump, sledging, ice skating, ice hockey and a unique event to the Games, the cold endurance.

Everything you see in Animal Winter Games is real. Spectacular animal behavior is seamlessly blended with record breaking human Olympic triumphs, in a dazzling winter wonderland of snow-capped mountains and ice sculptures. The result is a fast and furious battle for gold, in which human Olympic champions take on the greatest winter athletes of the animal world.

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The international voice cast includes:

Kate Winslet
Helen Mirren
Jim Broadbent
Sean Bean
Robbie Coltrane
Martin Freeman
Rupert Graves

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Talking Lion Cubs Breastfeeding Tips – Voices by Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet, Martin Freeman & Rupert Graves.

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Spitting Cobra Vs Talking Lion Cubs – Voices by Kate Winslet, Martin Freeman & Rupert Graves.

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Related programmes:

Lions – Spy in the Den
Elephants – Spy in the Herd

Featuring some of most astonishing feats in nature, many of which have never been filmed before, this one-off spectacular, showcases how animal abilities surpass that of any human competitors.

Commentators John Motson and Jonathan Pearce add to the excitement. From the opening ceremony to the nail-biting finale, expect the unexpected.

Related programmes:

Bears – Spy in the Woods
Lions – Spy in the Den

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