Saturday Morning Documentary: BBC’s Natural World: The Monkey-Eating Eagle of the Orinoco

With the strings of success the BBC had with Planet Earth and Life, I guess it was only natural (pun intended) that they produce more series on wildlife.  The first episode of Natural World was last year about the Himalayas, which was actually pretty interesting.  It was narrated by David Attenborough, the same guy who narrated both Life and Planet Earth and I assumed he was narrating Natural World as well.

Don’t be mislead by the awesome title of this one.  Yes, there is such a thing as a monkey-eating bird but there is no actual footage of any killing of its prey. Instead, the hour-long episode follows a baby Harpy eagle living in the jungles of South America as it grows up.  There is footage of the parents bringing back dead Capuchin monkeys to give to its young but nope, no wild goring, attacking struggle between bird and monkey.  How disappointing.

Also disappointing is the fact that Attenborough doesn’t narrate this one.  It’s done by one of the filmmakers/scientists who follows the chick and studies it,  and although he’s a decent narrator, he does kind of get borderline neurotic (“There’s rain!  But what about the chick?  Is it alive?????”).

There doesn’t seem to be much conflict/difficulty for the baby Harpy eagle to grow up.  At one point, the father doesn’t return for a few days and both the mother, who has been staying in the nest with the chick, get hungry.  But then he comes back.  All is good.  More exciting is when the team rapels up the tree to install a camera of the nest — since their view from outside the tree isn’t that great — and the birds attack the crew members.  That’s really the most attacking there is in the episode.  (SPOILER ALERT!  The crew was fine.  No one died, though that would’ve made for some good TV).

Altogether, I found myself more interested in the toucans that lived next door than the Harpies.  Maybe they were just prettier to look at.  Hmm.  Maybe I’m shallow like that.  Anyway, the Harpies, a species I knew nothing about before I saw this, seem vaguely interesting.  That’s about all I got to say.

Next time, put in some monkey-eagle action and you’ll get this viewer, and I’m sure many more, interested.

Harpy eagle in flight