Nature's Great Events: The Great Flood

Wednesday 9pm, 11th March on BBC One

The great flood in the Okavango turns 4,000 square miles of arid plains into a beautiful wetland. Elephant mothers guide their families on an epic trek across the harsh Kalahari Desert towards it, siphoning fresh water from stagnant pools and facing hungry lions. Hippos battle for territory, as the magical water draws in thousands of buffalo and birds, and vast clouds of dragonflies. Will the young elephant calves survive to reach this grassland paradise?

The experienced mother elephants time their arrival at the delta to coincide with the lush grass produced by the great flood. In a TV first, the programme shows the way they use their trunks to siphon clean water from the surface layers of a stagnant pool, while avoiding stirring up the muddy sediment on the bottom with their feet.

Bull hippos also converge on prime territories formed by the rising flood water. Two big bulls do bloody battle, at times being lifted out of the water by their rival. Lechwe swamp deer, zebras, giraffes, crocodiles and numerous fish and thousands of birds arrive in the delta. And, in a phenomenon never before filmed in the Okavango, thousands of dragonflies appear - seemingly from nowhere - within minutes of the flood arrival, mating and laying eggs.

As the flood finally reaches its peak, elephants and buffalo, near the end of their epic trek across the desert, face the final gauntlet of a hungry pride of lions. In a heart-wrenching sequence, a baby elephant is brought down by a lion in broad daylight.

Nature's Great Events: The Great Tide

Wednesday 4th March, 9pm, BBC One

A mighty army of dolphins, sharks, whales, seals and gannets hunt down the billions of sardines along South Africa's east coast each winter. This is the Sardine Run: an underwater Armageddon, the greatest gathering of predators anywhere on the planet, and the most spectacular event in the world's oceans. From intimate moments of the creatures caught up in the run, to the dramatic finale of this spectacular event, The Great Tide is an action-packed feeding-frenzy, filmed underwater, on the ocean's surface, and in the air.

However, in recent years the sardine run has become less predictable, perhaps due to the warming effects of climate change. If the sardine run does not happen, the lives of the animals caught up in the drama hang in the balance.

Pioneering a unique boat stabilised camera mount for surface filming, the Nature's Great Events crew capture all the high octane action as the predators compete for sardines, filmed with aerial, underwater and above water cameras. Super slow motion cameras also capture the very moment gannets plunge into the water, hitting it at sixty miles an hour.

A violent winter storm is the trigger for the sardines to begin their desperate dash. They are followed by a super-pod of 5,000 dolphins and further up the coast more predators gather. A shoal of sardines 15 miles long is pushed into the shallows and aerial shots show thousands of sharks gathering to feed on them.

The climax to the sardine run is a spectacular feeding frenzy as the dolphins round the sardines up into balls on which all the predators feast. Gannets rain down in their thousands, sharks pile in scattering the fish and a Brydes whales lunges in taking great mouthfuls of sardines.

Nature's Great Events: The Great Salmon Run

Wednesday 18th February 9pm on BBC One

Every year grizzly bear families in North America depend for their survival on a spectacular natural event: the return of hundreds of millions of salmon from the Pacific Ocean to the mountain streams where they were born. The salmon travel thousands of miles to spawn and then die. The great run not only provides food for bears, but for killer whales, wolves, bald eagles, and even the forest itself. The question is: will the salmon return in time to keep hungry bears alive?

A mother grizzly and her cubs emerge from their den high in snowy Alaskan mountains. Filming from the air the team capture a TV first, following the bears as they negotiate a near vertical slope on their journey to the coast where they await the return of the salmon.

Meanwhile, the salmon are making their way to the to river mouths where they must swim upstream and against the current. The programme reveals how they tackle the torrents and leap over waterfalls, a feat equivalent to a human jumping over a house.

Dozens of hungry bears eagerly await the salmon that make it up river. In another TV first, underwater cameras record the ingenuity and fancy footwork they use to collect dead salmon from the bottom of deep pools.

In the final 10-minute diary, Close Encounters of a Grizzly Kind, wildlife cameraman Jeff Turner, who has filmed bears for 20 years, reveals how he pioneered techniques to show for the first time how bears caught salmon underwater.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hq341

Nature's Great Events: The Great Melt

Wednesday 11th February, 9pm BBC One

The first in a new series about the most dramatic wildlife spectacles on our planet.
The summer melt of Arctic ice, opening up nearly three million square miles of ocean and land, provides opportunities for millions of animals, including beluga whales, families of Arctic foxes, vast colonies of seabirds, and the fabled Arctic unicorn, the narwhal.

For polar bears, however, it is the toughest time of year. Why? How will they survive?
A mother polar bear and her cub make their first journey together onto the sea ice. They are looking for ringed seals, their favourite prey. It is a serious business but the cub just wants to play. The melting ice makes it harder for them to hunt and threatens their survival.

In a unique aerial sequence, the migration of narwhal with their distinctive unicorn-like tusks is filmed for the first time. The whales' journey is risky as they travel along giant cracks in the ice. If the ice were to close above them, they would drown. Hundreds of beluga whales gather in the river shallows. They rub themselves on smooth pebbles in one of the most bizarre summer spectacles. Guillemot chicks take their first flights from precipitous sea cliff nests to the sea 300 metres below. They attempt to glide to safety but many miss their target. Their loss is a bonus for the hungry Arctic fox family waiting below. As the melt comes to an end the bears gather, waiting for the sea to freeze again. Two 400kg males square up to each other to spar.

In the final ten-minute diary, Quest for Ice Whales, the crew show how they managed to capture footage of the elusive narwhal on their annual journey through the ice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hn4hs

Natures Great Events: The Great Melt

Wednesday 11 February on BBC One at 9pm

The BBC Natural History Unit have done it again and have managed to capture "never before seen footage" of the narwhal, (often called the arctic unicorn due to its unique spiral tusk which is actually an extended tooth! The BBC filmed the whales during their summer migration, as they navigated through cracks in the melting Arctic sea ice.

The team believes this aerial footage, which forms part of the BBC Natural History Unit's new series Nature's Great Events, is the first of its kind.

"The Great Melt" episode documents the summer melt of Arctic ice, opening up nearly three million square miles of ocean and land, provides opportunities for millions of animals, including beluga whales, families of Arctic foxes, vast colonies of seabirds, and the fabled Arctic unicorn, the narwhal.

Click here for a sneak preview of the incredible Narwal sequence.

Nature's Great Events

Nature's Great Events coming soon to BBC One. More information in the BBC Press Pack

Using state of the art filming technology, Nature's Great Events on BBC One captures the Earth's most dramatic and epic wildlife spectacles and the intimate stories of the animals caught up in them. From the flooding of the Okavango Delta, in Africa, to the great summer melt of ice in the Arctic and the massive annual bloom of plankton in the northern Pacific Ocean, each of the six programmes features a different event set in one of the world's most iconic wildernesses. The series is narrated by David Attenborough.

The characters include tiny grizzly bear cubs emerging from their den in snow-covered mountains; baby elephants struggling to survive against drought and lion attack in Africa; humpback whales hunting as a team; the world's largest concentration of dolphins and sharks gathering off the coast of South Africa; and polar bear families navigating their precarious way on ever-thinning ice.

The world-renowned BBC Natural History Unit uses sophisticated high definition cameras, cutting-edge aerial, underwater and ultra slow-motion filming techniques to capture in intimate detail some of the audience's best-loved wildlife, as their lives become entwined with these dramatic events.

As the Earth is rapidly changing, we can no longer take these great natural events for granted. By filming the events and their fluctuations this series takes the pulse of the planet.
A BBC/Discovery Channel/Wanda co-production. The series producer is Karen Bass and the executive producer is Brian Leith.

Nature's Great Events is also being simulcast on the BBC HD channel – the BBC's High Definition channel available through Freesat, Sky and Virgin Media. With up to five times more detail than standard definition television, HD gives you exceptionally vivid colours and crisp pictures to make Nature's Great Events a truly cinematic TV experience.

For more information see the BBC Press Pack