A Collection Of Spring Moments | BBC Earth

it's march and light returns of the high arctic sweeping away four months of darkness a polar bear stirs she has been in her den the whole winter her emergence marks the beginning of spring after months of confinement underground she toboggans down the slope perhaps to clean her fur perhaps for sheer joy [Music] [Music] her cubs gaze out of their bright new world for the very first time the female calls them but this steep slope is not the easiest place to take your first steps but they are hungry and eager to reach their mother who's delayed feeding them on this special day now she lures them with the promise of milk the only food the cubs have known since they were born deaf and blind beneath the snow some two months ago their mother has not eaten for five months and has lost half her body weight now she converts the last of her fat reserves into milk for her cups [Music] the spring sun brings warmth but also a problem for the mother it starts to melt the sea ice that is where she hunts for the seal she needs to feed her cubs and she must get there before the ice breaks up for now though it's still minus 30 degrees and the cubs must have the shelter of the den a male red sided garter snake he survived the winter by hibernating underground where the temperature never dropped below zero the weak sun persuades more males to emerge they're cold and can't move fast yet they are in an urgent race the first males to warm up will have a head start when the first females appear meltwater provides the first drink they've had for six months at last a female has emerged the warmest males will inevitably be the first to react to her smell she will only mate once so competition between them is intense this male has overslept he will need hours to warm up at the moment he stands no chance of mating most of the other males are ready to chase females but curiously some leave the race and go to join the cold mail [Music] they slide their warm bodies over him just as they would if they were courting a female more and more males crowd around him why their relative temperatures show what's going on his cool body showing as blue is quickly warming as it absorbs heat from the other males he's a trickster he's fooled the others by giving off a scent just like a females and they are trying to mate with him he only needs a few minutes of this to steal enough heat from his rivals to catch up and join the chase every spring tens of thousands of garter snakes fight it out in this mating frenzy it is in numbers the greatest gathering of reptiles in the world and it seems that our male from the camera trap has picked up ascent and found himself a female due to his small size this male wouldn't normally have a chance to mate this female seems impatient and our male doesn't have to be asked twice his small size causes a few logistical problems but with persistence and the odd leg up finally he succeeds [Music] mating over the female grooms the young male with no yearlings around she can afford to spend time with her man [Music] spring climbs the mountains hibernation isn't something an animal just wakes up from even after surviving here for seven months if the transition from oblivion to action isn't exactly right the marmot could die it needs what's left of its fat stores to heat its heart and blood the warmed heart beats faster [Music] the warmed blood flows first to the critical areas and then to the whole body it's a quick system but it takes almost all of what's left of the marmot's energy if it takes more than what's left the marmot never wakes up [Music] half the youngsters don't wake up but most of the adults do their bodies around a third lighter than when winter began they're ravenously hungry but they hardly eat for at least a week the time it takes to rebuild their gut lining and because they use so much energy just waking up some don't last that week awake and amid the spring vegetation they starve because there are so few vancouver island marmots every survivor is important for the species understanding how hibernation works is important too it may help save them every spring the male alligators put on a spectacular mating display they sink down in the water so their backs are just below the surface and make really low frequency sounds and the consequence of that is that water droplets on their back look like they're dancing and it soon becomes a water dance-off as rival males compete by displaying to females i've never really had any desire to be close to a bellowing alligator but i do want to see this and to do it i've got to trigger a chorus of amorous alligators to see this spectacle helen needs to encourage some alligators to start dancing and to do this she needs to replicate their infrasonic calls so they think there's a larger male close by and that requires speakers even bigger than a campervan these speakers produce sounds of 19 hertz the same deep frequency as the alligators bellow so let's see if they can entice a grumpy alligator to start flirting so that's it those are the big infrasound speakers sending sound out over the lake here and now we just have to wait and see if any of the alligators react [Music] straight over there's tail up in the air getting ready to call there are two parts to this display [Music] a deep bellow from their mouths it's like hearing dinosaurs and the water dance although we can't hear it these alligators are actually producing a very low frequency hum and this causes water droplets to bounce off their backs for these ancient predators this elaborate display is essential for attracting mates [Music] [Applause] but how do they make the water dance just using sound [Music] footage from our high-speed camera reveals their secret the alligator's back is just below the surface of the water as it begins to bellow its entire body vibrates and its back acts like a piston driving the surface of the water into a dramatic splashing display [Music] it's thought that alligators have been calling like this for at least 70 million years one such place is the sea of okut in far eastern russia this is the island of thalam throughout the long arctic winter it's encircled by ice but as spring approaches that begins to break up and sea birds that have spent the winter feeding out on the open ocean far to the south begin to return its isolated position and steep cliffs make talon a perfect nesting site the tufted puffins arrive first these are the pacific cousins of our less spectacular atlantic species horned puffins soon follow in all 14 different species return to talon each spring and in just a few weeks the once silent cliffs come alive to the cause of 4 million breeding sea birds this is a multi-story avian city [Music] assembling in these dense colonies after having spent a largely solitary life at sea provides the birds with the social stimulation that is the key to coordinating their breeding by nesting and laying together they ensure that most of their chicks will leave the nest at exactly the same time just like the turtles this is the way they spread the impact of predators the world's largest eagle stella's sea eagle a third as big again as a golden [Music] throughout the summer the eagles hunt in thailand's crowded colonies riding on the updrafts they patrol the top of the cliffs looking out for any kitty wake that ventures too far from the rock face suddenly the huge eagle stoops with the aerial agility of a falcon coordinating panic among the kitty wakes confuses their attacker [Music] but the eagle doesn't give up and it has got one [Music] [Music] catching insects one by one takes a lot of time and a lot of energy and very few creatures that feed that way can get enough to build and sustain big bodies but some insect eaters early in their history about 40 million years ago solved that problem by broadening their diet and one of their descendants lives right here in my garden in london and i can tempt it out with a wide variety of food including for example minced meat the hedgehog is still very much a creature of the night but it's too big to hide in the leaf litter that makes it vulnerable to attack from animals like foxes to make up for this its hairs have become a cloak of prickles and if it thinks it's in real danger it's got a special trick the hedgehog will stay an impregnable spiny ball like this until it decides that danger has passed but one thing is guaranteed to make a male hedgehog drop his guard the promise of an amorous liaison if you're outside on a spring evening you may be lucky enough to witness an extraordinary sight [Music] you might think that having a coat of spines on your back would be something of a handicap when it comes to the intimacies of courtship and indeed classical naturalists thought that hedgehogs actually mated belly to belly the male noses the female spines which seems to excite her although as far as he's concerned it does look rather painful whether the female flattens her prickles to help the male is unclear but it does seem that the old joke that asks how do hedgehog's mate was right all along the answer is of course with great care [Music] [Applause] so even though only one percent of the original pine forest remains writer jim crumley can still feel humbled in its presence pine woods are i mean to my way of thinking are completely different from any other kind of wood especially a big pine which like you get around the cairngorms where you do get the chance to you know go for a long walk in in trees and there is a sense at the beginning of as you enter the pinewood that it sort of says to me walk more slowly you walk softer look at where you are and take notice sheltered in the woods from the fickle weather jim can easily lose sense of time under a tree like this he had his first encounter with one of the rarest and shyest creatures of the pine forest i was lying just on the ground and i probably hadn't been in a deep sleep but i've been dozing and there was a scrapper kelly and making this preposterous noise and it just started to literally parade up and down and this strange kind of popping cork noises started and it was extraordinary to encounter for the first time in such a situation or capers are only found in pine forests where they feed on the pine needles and shoots it's in april when the males head towards the special place in the forest known as a lek a northward for dance [Music] i kind of followed it as best i could crawling on my stomach and got to the edge of the slow clearing and there were three or four others there it was into this big black fan thing it's like a black sunrise it's one of the most extraordinary things in nature the objective exercise obviously is to attract the females and that whole thing that kind of joy of discovery thing is what absolutely for me underpins um everything they'll do in the natural world it was a rare moment indeed there is so little native forest there are fewer than 2 000 kappa kali left reluctantly the chicks take a few nervous steps towards the edge [Music] encouraged by a gentle nudge he leaps into the unknown dad follows right behind him reassuringly calling to his chick made it [Music] so the landings may not be stylish but at least they're on target it's easy to misjudge the distance and some fall short of the water but even now dad sticks close by he encourages his chick to take the last few steps towards the safety of the waves but some chicks land a long way from the water they're sturdy enough to survive the fall but this is no place to be left alone for the mother fox it's easy pickings with so many free meals falling from the sky she runs from one kill to the next the chicks will be jumping for only three days so she must make the most of this bonanza the survival of her own family depends on it [Music] with more chicks than she can possibly carry the mother fox has to be clever what her family can't eat now she buries for the days ahead she'll have a well-stocked lada enough for all eight of her cubs [Music] you

Channel: BBC Earth

Views: 143,958

Keywords: bbc documentary, bbc, bbcearth, bbc earth

Id: T_ECL3fn1Pw

Length: 29min 1sec (1741 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020