''Attenborough in Paradise'' is a

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

television documentary Television documentaries are televised media productions that screen documentaries. Television documentaries exist either as a television documentary series or as a television documentary film. * Television documentary series, sometimes called d ...

written and presented by

David Attenborough Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and writer. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, the nine nature d ...

. It was first transmitted in 1996 and is part of the ''

Attenborough in Paradise and Other Personal Voyages ''Attenborough in Paradise and Other Personal Voyages'' is a DVD collection of seven David Attenborough BBC documentary specials. Documentary Summaries ''A Blank on the Map'' (1971) The central area of New Guinea was thought to be uninhabi ...

'' collection of seven documentaries. In this program Attenborough fulfills a childhood ambition, developed after reading a book as a nine-year-old, to see the

greater bird-of-paradise The greater bird-of-paradise (''Paradisaea apoda'') is a bird-of-paradise in the genus '' Paradisaea''. Carl Linnaeus named the species ''Paradisaea apoda'', or "legless bird-of-paradise", because early trade skins to reach Europe were prepared ...

in display; and records the spectacular birdlife of the

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

forest, in particular the various

birds-of-paradise The birds-of-paradise are members of the family Paradisaeidae of the order Passeriformes. The majority of species are found in eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and eastern Australia. The family has 45 species in 17 genera. The members of this ...

. In 2015, the BBC released a new episode of the series shot at a Sheikh's private aviary in Qatar.

Quotes

In the final piece to camera for this documentary David Attenborough introduces quotes from the 1869 book ''

The Malay Archipelago ''The Malay Archipelago'' is a book by the English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace which chronicles his scientific exploration, during the eight-year period 1854 to 1862, of the southern portion of the Malay Archipelago including Malaysia, S ...

'' by

Alfred Russel Wallace Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was an English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection; his 1858 pap ...

. 53 min 15 sec

References

*From DVD

External links

* 1996 television films BBC television documentaries Nature educational television series {{BBC-documentary-tv-prog-stub