Planet Earth series - Seasonal Forests - Film August 27, 2009

Seasonal Forests. The penultimate episode of our Planet Earth series surveys the coniferous and deciduous seasonal woodland habitats the most extensive forests on Earth. Conifers begin sparsely in the Arctic but soon dominate the land, and the taiga circles the globe, containing a third of all the Earth's trees. Few creatures can survive the Arctic climate all year round, but the moose and wolverine are exceptions. 1,600 kms to the South, on the Pacific coast of North America, conifers have reached their full potential. These include some of the world's tallest trees: the redwoods. Here, a pine marten is shown stalking a squirrel, and great grey owl chicks take their first flight. Further South still, in the Valdivian forests of Chile, a population of smaller animals exist, including the pudu and the kodkod. During Spring in a European broad-leafed forest, a mandarin duck leads its day-old family to leap from its tree trunk nest to the leaf litter below. On a Summer night on North America's East coast, periodical cicades emerge en masse to mate an event that occurs every seventeen years. After revisiting Russia's Amur leopards in Winter, a timelapse sequence illustrates the effect of the ensuing spring on the deciduous forest floor. In India's teak forests, a langur monkey strays too far from the chital that act as its sentinels and falls prey to a tiger. Planet Earth is a BBC documentary winning several prizes narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Alastair Fothergill. It was first broadcasted in the UK from 5 March 2006.

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