Bird Island Deadly Pole to Pole

My name's Steve Backshall!

And this is Deadly Pole To Pole.

Ohhh!

From the top of the world to the bottom...

Whoa!

..deadly places, deadly adventures, and deadly animals.

And you're coming with me every step of the way!

Argh!

Our Pole to Pole journey has crossed the planet

and is finally reaching its grand finale.

We're heading south down to Bird Island on this boat -

the Hans Hansson.

We're going to be at sea for a month in the roughest seas on the planet.

This is one of Deadly's most ambitious trips ever.

We'll need to take just about every bit of kit we own.

Where we're going, there are no hotels,

shops or mobile phone reception.

Over 1,000 kilometres from the Falklands,

Bird Island is a long way from anywhere.

Rugged and remote, it's rarely visited by humans.

But, during the summer months, this tiny speck of land

has more wildlife crammed onto it

than just about anywhere else on the planet,

with a bird or seal for nearly every square metre of land.

The shoreline becomes packed

with some of the most bad tempered animals you'll ever meet,

all jostling for the best spot on the beach.

But, to get to it, you'll have to endure four days of hard sailing.

The notoriously big waves of the Southern Ocean

make for some tough days at sea.

Oh, this is like hell on Earth.

Any distraction from the constant rocking and rolling is most welcome.

A boat far from land becomes a real focal point for wildlife,

particularly for birds.

It is such an extraordinary spectacle,

it's well worth coming out here and braving the waves and the wind for.

Just standing here now,

there could be as many as 15 different species

just around the boat.

I mean... Oh, that's a giant petrel, that bird there!

We've got... The dark birds are white chinned petrels

and sooty shearwaters.

And the smaller birds, these little ones here,

they're almost like bats flapping around behind me.

Those are prions.

We're going to be seeing an awful lot more of those.

But the really big birds, those are the albatross,

the ancient mariners, the true wanderers of the open ocean.

These are birds that people would cross continents

and travel thousands of miles to see, and they're coming to us.

The increasing number of winged wonders

is a sure sign we're nearing our destination - Bird Island.

We've finally got our first sighting of land.

It looks really sinister,

it looks like a land that time forgot,

but this is one of the finest spots for wildlife on the entire planet.

Although incredibly remote,

Bird Island is not uninhabited.

Since the 1950s, there's been a base here

so that the wildlife can be studied.

Though these islands have no permanent human population,

there are a few hardy scientists that work here,

some of them right through the winter.

I'm guessing they're going to be glad to see a few new faces.

Hello, hello!

The wildlife here is highly cherished

and bio security is strict.

So, after a thorough boot wash,

we can go in search of one of the island's fiercest inhabitants -

the Antarctic fur seal.

Aggressive and highly territorial,

fur seals are the bully boys of Bird Island.

Lion-like teeth are used both for fighting other seals

and chasing down anything that gets too close.

It's hard to believe, when you see this amount of animals,

that these fur seals were almost hunted to extinction by human beings.

As many as 112,000 of them were killed

every single year for their fur,

but they have made a dramatic recovery,

and now these beaches,

where they haul out ashore and come to breed,

are bawdy, noisy,

and they smell like a sewer.

Fur seals have to come ashore to breed and give birth to their young.

Once the pups are born, the females go on feeding trips

lasting up to two weeks.

When the females return,

the pups suckle rich, high energy milk

before the mother has to head out to sea again.

During this short time ashore, the pups double their weight

and are weaned at around four months,

after which they have to be able to fend for themselves.

The pups are just ludicrously cute.

It's kind of hard to believe, sat in front of this lot here,

that they're going to turn into, at least some of them,

these massive intimidating males.

Right now, I guess it's high time for them.

They're not having to go out to sea and feed themselves -

they're still being fed by their mothers milk -

so they've got loads of time to just play around in the surf,

to learn how to swim, but they're also learning

all those skills that are going to be so essential for them in later life

when they turn into fully grown predators.

This big guy in front of me here is a mature male.

All of these smaller seals off to the side are his harem of females.

He'll command a territory up here on the beach,

fighting off other males for many months at a time,

so he has to lay down lots and lots of fat reserves

so he can stay here without having to go out to sea to feed.

The males fight for the best spots

so they can attract as many females as possible.

These fights can be brutal.

Many males die from exhaustion as they're so busy

defending their territories that they don't feed during these months.

But it's not their fighting with each other

that makes them so lethal.

It's their skills as hunters of the open ocean

that makes them so interesting to us.

Some of the males might go down to 150,

perhaps even, in extreme cases, 200 metres

to catch their prey,

and the way they find it is with a rather exquisite set of senses.

Have a look at this fella here.

He's got big, dark soulful eyes, which suck in the light,

and also that rather fabulous drooping moustache of whiskers

which is incredibly sensitive.

It can sense not just the presence of fish in the water,

but the wake they leave behind after they've swum away.

They are, it has to be said, despite their sometimes cute appearance,

one of the most ferocious of all marine predators.

To prove my point, and see this animal at its best,

I really need to get kitted up

and prepare for a chilly plunge into the ice cold water.

All the way down this coastline are hundreds and hundreds

of Antarctic fur seals.

There's very little diving if any done here,

so these animals will never have seen

a human being underwater before.

How they react to me is anyone's guess.

They might think I'm a predator and all leap out onto shore,

but they are naturally very inquisitive animals,

so I'm hoping they're going to want to play.

The water here is just above freezing,

which is OK if you've got a good layer of blubber.

But I'm going to start to suffer the effects

of the cold water almost instantly.

Oh, it came in like a bullet!

The speed these animals are travelling at is simply phenomenal.

Oh!

How beautiful is that?!

As they're swimming,

they're leaving a trail of silvery bubbles behind them.

It's beautiful.

Oh-ho-ho!

This is one of the pups.

You can see it's a good deal smaller than the others...

..and also definitely more interested in us.

Hello, little guy.

This must be a totally, totally new experience for this little one.

It's probably no more than three months old.

In water like this, which is so murky,

it's almost like pea soup,

I guess you get more of an idea of why this animal

is such an effective predator.

Antarctic fur seals will dive down

to as much as 200 metres below the surface

to search for their prey.

At that depth, it's dark, you can't see anything at all,

so they have to sense their prey using those big long whiskers.

And it's so effective that they can manage to catch fish,

even fast moving squid.

But the majority of their diet

is made up of shrimp-like animals called krill.

One of the most abundant animals in the Southern Ocean,

these small creatures are a major food source

for birds, whales and seals alike.

They're elegant, agile, feed on squid and fish,

way down in the depths of the oceans.

Fur seals are deadly.

These bad tempered bully boys of the beach

have sharp teeth used for fighting each other

and agile, streamlined bodies.

The formidable Antarctic fur seal.

But this is Bird Island,

so it's time to find some winged wonders.

By far the most numerous bird here is one that's rarely seen.

It's called the Antarctic prion.

22 million pairs of these birds nest on these islands.

To see them, we'll need to spend a night out on the hillsides.

This is where we're going to be spending the night.

I think it's going to be quite a relief not to be on the boat

going up and down all the time.

The only problem is going to be getting to sleep

with all that penguin noise.

CONSTANT DRONING SOUND

Our hut is right next door to a colony of penguins.

So these are our noisy neighbours, the macaroni penguins.

There are absolutely thousands of them,

and unfortunately it kind of seems that they never shut up

and they are right on our doorstep.

They're not actually named after pasta,

but a colourful 18th century hat

on account of the bright yellow plumage on their heads.

But they're not the birds we're here to see.

So, it's back to the hut to cook up some culinary delights

and wait for night fall.

It's surprisingly cosy in our little hut,

especially now we've cut out all the wind.

I reckon we've probably got about an hour and a half until

it gets dark and the animals that we're here to find start arriving,

so it's time to make ourselves some dinner.

With a bit of warm food in our bellies,

before we knew it, it was time to head out into the cold dark night.

OK, so I've got the crew filming me in red light,

because animals don't tend to see so well in red light

and it doesn't put them off their stride.

I've got my thermal imaging camera here

and you can see some of my camera crew.

Can you see the only bits that really stand out

are the bits that are warm?

And just over here is a giant petrel chick.

It's very well insulated,

but you can still see the heat

coming in around the eyes and the beak.

And then over the back there, towards our hut, and beyond it,

is the macaroni penguin colony.

And it looks like the lights from an enormous city behind it.

But, once I look up into the air,

there's a very strange sight.

Look at that. Little white shapes on the wing.

They're almost like little fairies.

Like thousands of Tinkerbelles just flying around our ears.

These are Antarctic prions.

They're probably the most numerous bird in these islands.

There could be 40 million of them.

And they're coming in now to nest.

This vegetation is called tussock grass

and, at the bottom of it, is a lattice work of burrows.

Now, inside there, in this one here,

it's quite fresh looking,

it could well be inhabited. There's probably a chick in there.

Despite its unusual behaviour,

it's not really the prion I'm interested in.

The animal I'm after feeds on these birds.

Because the reason they only come ashore at night

and have their defenceless chick hidden deep inside a burrow,

is because of the presence of a rather aggressive predator.

To get a good look at the prion predator,

I need to set up a rather gruesome experiment

to tempt it out into the open.

This is just one of the many fur seal carcasses,

the dead bodies, that you'll see over the beaches here on Bird Island.

It's still relatively fresh, there's plenty of meat here.

I have a couple of small cameras here and here,

so hopefully we'll get a close up view

of everything that comes in here to feed.

Within seconds, our suspects turn up,

and among them is the bird eating monster

that stops the Antarctic prions coming home until nightfall.

The most numerous birds here are Antarctic skuas.

Those are the brown birds like this one just coming in to land now.

Once the skuas get stuck in, they really don't mind me being in close.

I mean, their wing feathers are brushing against my face.

And they just don't seem to care. They are so focused on food.

It's easy to turn your nose up,

but actually they serve an incredibly important role in the ecosystem.

Without them, carcasses like this would build up

just about everywhere and spread diseases.

But by far the most impressive bird here at the carcass

is this massive creature,

the giant petrel.

It really is like some kind of flapping dinosaur.

I mean, it has this reptilian bluey green eye,

and then that massive, huge beak.

Their sense of smell is much more potent than most birds

and they can find a dead, decaying, rotting carcass like this

from miles away.

And it's unbelievably grotesque in the way

it just plunges its head into that carcass

getting caked with dried blood.

There is no doubt who dominates the carcass.

So, one of these two species of bird is the prion predator.

But which one is it?

The petrel might be the king of the carcass

but the killer I'm after is the skua.

These skuas may here be scavenging on meat,

but they're the very reason that the prions choose to come in at night.

Although happy to scavenge,

these birds are accomplished hunters.

Some specialise in raiding the burrows of birds like prions,

scoffing down their young chicks.

Others will pick on defenceless penguin chicks,

who, without the protection of their parents,

are vulnerable to the skuas,

especially when they gang up together.

And with strength in numbers,

skuas will even try to take on young fur seal pups.

With a bad attitude and a big appetite,

don't underestimate the skua.

Guilty as charged.

Armed with a stabbing beak...

..this bird gobbling predator will team up to overcome bigger prey.

The opportunistic, pugnacious killer from the sky.

These islands feel so exposed, constantly hammered by winds,

perhaps a thousand miles from the nearest continent.

But there's one magnificent creature that thrives in these elements.

They live their whole lives in the gales and the storms,

and I'm hoping to find some just over this ridge.

As I head into a land that time forgot,

I can feel my excitement levels rise.

As you look around the tussock grass,

you can see these intense little white dots.

Well, they look little from a distance,

but when you get up close, they are not small at all.

We're in the presence of giants.

These are wandering albatross -

the largest of the seabirds, living to more than 50 years old.

There are little more than 6,000 breeding pairs

of these birds left on the planet.

They spend the majority of their life at sea,

only coming ashore to breed on a few islands,

of which Bird Island is one.

It's only when they turn front on like that

and spread those wings that you get any sense of scale.

This is the biggest wingspan of any bird.

It can be three and a half metres - that's double my height.

There are special mechanisms in these wings

that mean, when they're out, fully extended,

they lock in place

and they can't come above the height of the shoulders.

It means that they can soar and glide over the waves

without any expenditure of energy.

The wings are just locked there in place.

These birds are so well adapted to soaring and gliding.

Perhaps the only part of their lives which isn't so easy is landing.

HE LAUGHS

It's not surprising when you weigh that much

and have wings that long. It's really not easy.

Albatross don't get much practice at landing on solid ground.

They can go for more than five years out on the open ocean

before returning to land.

Albatross spend their lives out at sea hunting.

The majority of their diet is made up of things like squid

and krill, and it's all caught with that massive mighty beak.

Because of the size of their wings, albatrosses are not great divers.

It's very difficult for them to get under the water,

so they can't swim down in search of prey.

Instead, they just have to stick that long neck and beak down

and snatch squid and krill from below the surface.

It's during these long feeding trips

that the albatross faces its biggest threat -

getting caught up with hooks from the long line fishing industry.

And over the last few decades,

numbers of wandering albatross have been in steep decline.

But how far do these birds really wander while feeding out at sea?

Sailors have known for many centuries

that wandering albatross cover extraordinary distances.

But over the last few decades,

scientists have started applying satellite transmitters

to particular individual birds,

and some of the journeys are just insane.

This here is one feeding journey from an adult bird.

It left here in Bird Island

and then it's gone all the way up the coast of South America

as far as Brazil, and then done an enormous great big loop,

come all the way back

to land at exactly the same place on Bird Island.

In this movie here, you can see several different birds -

each one of these has a colour -

and you can see the journeys they're undertaking.

They're all staying south of the Equator,

but covering just the most ludicrous distances.

Individual birds have been tracked travelling 5,000 miles in a week,

and they could circumnavigate the entire globe in a month.

That would have to be one of the greatest journeys

undertaken by any animal on Earth.

Their huge wings and ability to lock them in place

enable them to soar endlessly over the seas,

travelling as much as one and a half million miles in their life time.

But they also use a technique known as dynamic soaring,

where the birds swoop up and down over the waves,

using differences in wind speeds to help propel them along.

This, and the updrafts created by the huge waves of the Southern Ocean,

mean the albatross can soar effortlessly hour after hour,

day after day.

To imagine what life must be like for a wandering albatross...

It would seem so lonely to be out at sea for all those years

without ever seeing another member of your own species.

But then, when they come back to land to breed,

they just perform this extraordinary, beautiful duet.

They are so glad to see each other again.

LOUD SCREECHING

This is called sky pointing.

It's one of the most joyous sights and sounds

you'll hear from any bird.

And I think, essentially, it's just saying, "I'm pleased to see you."

If they're lucky enough to attract a mate,

wandering albatross will pair for life.

One pair are known to have been together over 18 years,

returning to the same island to raise over six chicks.

On land, they build a nest made out of mud, grass and moss

into which they lay a single egg.

After two months, this hatches and the parents take it in turns

to feed the chick, returning every two to three days,

although it can go several weeks between meals.

The chick remains on the nest through the cold, harsh winter,

not fledging until eight months after it hatched.

By their first flight, they weigh more than their parents,

which may help explain why they have so much trouble getting airborne.

But once up and away,

they might not return to land for five years.

It's an incredible existence.

They live their lives in one of the most extreme, inhospitable,

hostile of all environments, out on the waves and the sea,

constantly blown by the gales of Antarctica.

But these birds are more than just beauties,

they are true emperors of the skies.

Wandering albatross are deadly.

The largest wingspan of any bird...

harnessing the wind for effortless flight.

Hooked beak for picking prey off the surface of the sea.

The wandering albatross - bigger is undoubtedly better.

Bird Island has been a fantastic adventure,

and more than lived up to expectations.

The rocket propelled fur seals that hunt in the icy seas.

Oh! How beautiful is that!?

Feisty giant petrels and opportunistic skuas.

And, of course, the one animal that makes Bird Island what it is -

the truly wonderful wandering albatross.

Our time here on Bird Island may be done,

but our adventure in the chilly south is only just beginning.

We're heading over there, to South Georgia,

one of the greatest spots on the planet for wild wonders.

Join me next time for more incredible deadly adventures.

Wow!

Hey! I've got one, I've got one!