The first viewers of programmes like David Attenborough’s Zoo Quest had to make do with tiny black and white screens, but this was enough to inspire a generation to begin travelling to more and more destinations to see their unique avifauna.
50 : Television set
1925
The first viewers of programmes like David Attenborough’s Zoo Quest had to make do with tiny black and white screens, but this was enough to inspire a generation to begin travelling to more and more destinations to see their unique avifauna.
While the birds themselves must get the main credit for inspiring nascent birders and ornithologists, one of the greatest influences on interest in the natural world is the television wildlife documentary. Early films in the genre were screened at cinemas, but with the advent of television and the ability to broadcast them into the nation’s living rooms, their influence spread rapidly and widely to a mesmerised new audience.
As with so many technological advancements that have enriched the hobby of birding, television has its roots in the late 19th century. One of the earliest key developments was Paul Nipkow’s mechanical images ‘scanning disk’, composed of metal or card with holes placed evenly around it, showing slices of a scene or image and capable of capturing and converting motion to electric signals. Famously, John Logie Baird demonstrated moving images on his television in 1925 at Selfridge’s in London, and within two years non-publicly available transatlantic images were being transmitted. A form of video – called ‘phonovision’ – had already been developed by Baird in 1927.
Limited programming was in place by 1930, and the BBC launched its first television service in 1932. Britain was the quickest to take to the medium, despite the six-year interruption of the Second World War, and by 1947 there were 54,000 TV sets in the UK, 10,000 more than in the USA.
The natural history documentary had been evolving in parallel, and drew sizeable audiences at cinemas. Eadweard Muybridge’s Horse in Motion (1882) was one of the most important early stepping stones to cinematography, while Percy Smith later astounded cinema audiences with his time-lapse Birth of a Flower in 1910.
The BBC entered the 1950s as an organisation already producing wildlife films, with Coelacanth by Julian Huxley (1952) its most notable early production, also earning David Attenborough his first credit. The following year saw Attenborough’s first series, The Pattern of Animals, and in 1954 came the inaugural episode of Zoo Quest, which was to run for 10 years. This latter series was truly groundbreaking, taking the BBC and Attenborough all over the globe to such locations as New Guinea and West Africa, and providing real temptation for the ambitious birder, with programmes on hitherto little-seen birds-of-paradise and the still enigmatic White-necked Rockfowl. The bright variety and exotica of the ornithological world was suddenly available to view in the entire country’s front rooms.
Another early attempt to make all the earth a stage in a TV series was Look, Peter Scott’s live wildlife broadcast for the BBC, often with the accent on birds and – unsurprisingly – wildfowl in particular. The BBC’s Natural History Unit had been founded in 1957, and the most senior and iconic figure for the entirety of its existence has been Sir David Attenborough. The corporation’s switch to colour in 1967 was overseen by Attenborough, in his then capacity as the controller of BBC2.
Sir David’s series continue to unfold well into the 21st century, with many notable milestones including Life on Earth (1979) – showing the immensity of the world’s interconnected ecosystems, as well as demonstrating the truth of evolution to many millions of ‘agnostics’ – and The Life of Birds (1998), which surely inspired many viewers to take an interest in the world’s birds.
Another significant television birding evangelist in recent years is Bill Oddie. Though other presenters such as the late John Gooders raised birding’s respectability in the 1960s and 1970s, it was the one-time member of TV comedy trio The Goodies who did the most to raise the hobby’s profile above perceived geekdom, notably with Birding with Bill Oddie (1997-2000); the series visited many key birdwatching locations in Britain and around the world, giving millions a taste of the intrigue and excitement (and in some cases the privation) that birding can entail.
The extensive reach of the BBC’s programming has changed attitudes towards wildlife to a more observational and conservation-led concern, and piqued interest worldwide, through licensing and global broadcasting. Birding is an outdoor hobby, despite its modern reliance on computers and mobile phones, but the influence of a well-filmed, bird-rich TV documentary on budding birders cannot be underestimated.