The Last of the Lookouts

Three million years ago, camels roamed through Greenland’s endless forests and our ancestors lived in the trees. It all came to an end with the Ice Ages. What died and what survived, as natural selection shaped the evolutionary tree during this epochal shift from hot to cold? Until now, scientists have known less about the natural world before the Ice Age than they did about the age of dinosaurs, which ended 64 million years ago. A new discovery is set to reveal this lost world, species by species. Led by Danish gene-hunter Eske Willerslev, a team of scientists for the first time in history is sequencing DNA from before the Ice Age. The picture that emerges is of a hot planet, when forests blanketed the Arctic and carbon levels matched those in our atmosphere today. Is this a portrait of our own climate future?

Nearly 150 North American bird names have not aged well, ruffling feathers in the ornithological world and revealing deep roots in colonial legacies. Keen birders explore what's really in a name?

In an urban backyard on Canada’s West Coast, a window salesman has created a living laboratory for investigating hummingbird behaviour. The Bird in My Backyard follows citizen scientist, Eric Pittman, as he documents the journeys of two female Anna’s hummingbirds as they attempt to raise their young in his urban garden. It’s a story about the childlike curiosity in all of us, the wonders it can reveal and the doors it can open if we just lean in a bit closer.

Sandpipers' Last Supper tells the story of the western sandpiper’s long-distance migration and the biofilm in the mud that supports the species’ survival. The documentary highlights the ecological value of intertidal mudflats and the urgency to save these vital habitats for shorebirds, one of the fastest disappearing groups of birds in the world.