Wild Isles

Original version

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Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

David Attenborough reveals the spectacular and important British wildlife on our doorstep.

Extraordinary. Dramatic. Beautiful. Sir David Attenborough celebrates the wonders of British wildlife. It's our home, as you've never seen it before.

Series 1

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David Attenborough

Nicholas Gates

Adam Coates

Hilary Jeffkins

Alastair Fothergill

Silverback Films Ltd

Wild Isles: Series 1: Grasslands

Grasslands

BBC One - Wild Isles, Series 1, Grasslands

David Attenborough explores our grasslands and reveals extraordinary wildlife stories.

David Attenborough explores our grasslands, from beautiful flower meadows to the rich open landscapes of our mountains, and reveals some extraordinary and dramatic wildlife stories.

David Attenborough explores Britain and Ireland’s grasslands, revealing 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, laying her eggs in empty snail shells. Meanwhile, 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.

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 turn some of this land back to wilderness. 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 red ants, which are tricked into adopting the butterfly’s unassuming but predatory caterpillars. 

Our story then journeys to the mountains. Each morning in early spring, feisty male black grouse battle for prime position on their frozen breeding grounds. Their sole mission is to impress a female. Meanwhile, on south-facing scree slopes, dozens of adders emerge from hibernation to perform a surprisingly delicate courtship routine. 

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 mammals in Britain and Ireland, red deer.

The grasslands of Britain and Ireland are under threat. We have lost 97 per cent of our species-rich meadows in the last century, as modern agriculture replaces these precious habitats. This episode shows just how important different types of grassland are to the species which call these islands home.

Wild Isles: Series 1

BBC One

David Attenborough reveals British wildlife as spectacular as anything found on the globe.

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