his magnificent series celebrates the incredible variety of the world's best loved creatures and provides fresh insight into their fascinating way of life. Three years in the making, David Attenborough travelled around the globe, visiting 42 countries from the Arctic to Antarctica to uncover the private lives of these conquerors of the air.

Birds take centre-stage for the first time and turn out to be remarkable bright and engaging animals. Apart from their advanced acrobatic skills, they have some bizarre ways of finding food and getting a mate. In Japan, crows crack open nuts with the help of cars and in Australia, choughs gang up and kidnap their neighbours' young. Far from the comfortable image of birds singing away in British gardens and swimming on ponds, humble hedge sparrows are cheating on their mates and coots are killing their young!