Fascinants insectes

The Baltics are rich in superlatives: a fifth of the world's spotted eagle stocks breed here. One of the largest courtship arenas for snipes is located here in the floodplains of Latvia. More than 1000 wolves go on the hunt in Latvia's forests. Lithuania is the land of storks - with over 13.000 pairs, no other region in the Baltic States has more white storks.

Every year, in the middle of Croatia, it's the same story: after the annual snowmelt, a huge flood wave spills out of the Alps toward Zagreb and Belgrade. This leads to an increase in the River Sava's water levels of some ten meters. In the species-rich, alluvial flood forests of the last major meadow landscapes of the continent, enormous predatory fish like the catfish lie in wait for prey.

The white chalk cliffs of Rügen are among the most impressive natural monuments on earth, which the painter Casper David Friedrich immortalized for posterity as early as the 19th century. Germany's largest island with its seaside resorts from the Gründerzeit, its smaller side islands and peninsulas that give it its shape, its lagoon-like Bodden waters, the dense beech forests, the yellow rapeseed fields and the meadows, the shady tree avenues and the white sandy beaches is not only a magnet for tourists, but also a unique natural paradise in the middle of the Baltic Sea, a habitat for the rare white-tailed eagle, fallow deer, raccoon dogs and badgers as well as a resting place for huge swarms of migratory birds such as geese and cranes that can be heard trumpeting from afar. In this nature documentary, the unique landscapes and the diversity of the animal world of Rügen are captured with beautiful pictures during the changing of the seasons.