The Life of Birds — S01E03 — The Insatiable Appetite

00:00:37 If you travel by air, it's very important to keep your weight down to a minimum.

00:02:13 but it also prevents its owner from getting them from a teasel

00:04:14 Got it!

00:05:36 Squirrels do, for a start,

00:07:37 All the members of this woodpecker family, eight birds in all, use this one tree.

00:09:55 They're just deep enough to tap the vessels along which the tree transports its sap,

00:12:04 and the sap-sucker moves on to them, and makes wells of yet a different shape.

00:13:40 And that is what the hummingbirds, with exquisite accuracy, manage to collect.

00:15:38 Cows, having grazed, lie down and bring up each mouthful for a second grinding chew.

00:17:36 they sit for hours on end with their distended stomachs turned towards the sun,

00:19:11 and that's what I've got in here.

00:20:27 Here in South Africa, this species of heather encloses its nectar in a ''floral safe''

00:22:45 to shield its nectar from all but its established partner,

00:24:41 so a nectar drinker has to have a succession of suppliers.

00:26:51 That, by and large, is heavier work,

00:28:50 They may be difficult to find; they may be even more difficult to catch,

00:30:39 The most nutritious morsels are the soft, fat, stingless grubs

00:33:00 But woodpeckers never got to the Galapagos, far away from anywhere in the Pacific.

00:35:35 Another remote and isolated island, on the other side of the Pacific - New Caledonia.

00:38:13 but something more subtle - to irritate.

00:41:29 started in prehistory, even before human beings arrived in Europe.

00:43:25 A kind of fly-catcher - a cattle tyrant,

00:46:19 Dandruff is another part of their diet.

00:48:00 They eat them; and those are the birds we'll be looking at in the next programme in this series.