We rarely buy videos of movies, but we do have a substantial collection of natural history documentaries, mostly presented by David Attenborough. These provide a solid base to anyones natural history knowledge.

The photography in these series, produced by the BBC, is amazing. And over the years, with fancier technology, the camera work just keeps getting better.

Sir Attenborough has presented (or narrated) a large number of natural history films over the years. The Life Collection is well worth investigating – a box set containing 24 discs, 4360 minutes.  The collection includes Life in the Undergrowth, Private Life of Plants, Life of Birds, Life of Mammals, Life in the Freezer, Life on Earth, The Living Planet and Trials of Life. For whatever reason, this box collection only seems to be available at Amazon.co.uk (for £50) but not at Amazon.com.

Also essential viewing are Life in Cold Blood, The Blue Planet, Planet Earth, and the Life series. They are all really good.

One of the things that you get from having the complete collection is that you start to see the patterns of how plants and animals fit together in the web of life. The insights from the documentaries translate into seeing the same patterns in the living things in your own garden.

Some of the life in our undergrowth

Sir Attenborough is pleasant to listen to – repeatedly. So, as well as providing us with fascinating natural history, Sir Attenborough provides a great role model in using excellent descriptive language, that is well spoken.