Since I started filming in the 1950s, on average, wild animal populations have more than halved. I look at these images now and I realize that, altho… - David Attenborough

The savage, rocky shores of Christmas Island, 200 miles south of Java, in the Indian Ocean. It's November, the moon is in its third quarter, and the sun is just setting. And in a few hours from now, on this very shore, a thousand million lives will be launched.

An eye from another world; a smell-detector, investigating the path ahead. We don't often see a snail that way, and that's because we've only recently had the tiny lenses and electronic cameras that we need to explore this miniature world. But when we meet its inhabitants face to face, we suddenly realise that their behaviour can be just as meaningful to us as the behaviour of many animals more our own size.

Each [pelican] has already survived many perils in its young life. As a chick, it fought battles with its brothers and sisters and won.