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Sir David Attenborough spent the better part of last year in lockdown doing the narration of BBC Earth’s latest offering, A Perfect Planet. Being 94, he did so hunkering down between duvets hung from his dining room walls. The result? The impeccable narration fans have come to expect.
A Perfect Planet explores how the forces of nature work in synergy to make our planet just perfect: how volcanoes, solar energy, the weather and ocean currents shape and support life on Earth to make it the only planet — to our knowledge — that can support life.
“I don’t know how long we can go on finding new things to say and new ways to say them but throughout my last sixty years, every year there has been a major technical improvement which has made us able to tell stories in new ways,” Attenborough tells me over a Zoom call.
One such story, told in the first episode, Volcanoes, is the filming of 2-million lesser flamingos that flock to Lake Natron once every few years to breed when the conditions are just right.
Sitting at the foot of Ol Donyo Lengai, one of Africa’s most active volcanoes in Tanzania, the water of Lake Natron is so alkaline in some places that it can burn the human skin. But the algae, which grows in the volcanic water, serves as a vital food source for these flamingos. It’s also the source of their distinctive pink feathers and luminous orange eyes.
This footage has been filmed before, but never with a drone. This technological innovation has enabled the crew to capture a view of the giant crèche of flaminglets making a mad dash across the sunbaked salt lake to a fresh water source, capturing stunning reflections dancing off the water-covered salt surface in some places.
