Three Minutes of Nature

THREE MINUTES OF NATURE

Three minute nature and wildlife videos from around the world, produced for sharing on social media. You’ll also find these videos posted regularly on my Facebook Page. Here’s a selection of them, and do come back soon for more as I am constantly making new ones.

Penguins

Here’s a very special penguin! This is a Gentoo Penguin with leucism, a condition that only affects around 1 in 20,000 Gentoos and results in white feathers. Watch as she returns to her nest to feed her chick.

Six minutes of raw video footage from the shores of Antarctica. No music, no narration, just the sound of a few thousand Adélie Penguins as they go about their morning.

During my early career I filmed A LOT of penguins, 17 different species in fact! Here’s a montage featuring all of those (even if some of the footage is far from perfect). Many of these species are classified as endangered and we are at risk of losing them. Depending on whom you talk to there are between 17 and 28 different species. Rockhoppers, Gentoos, Kings and Little penguins are often divided up into several species. Here are the 17 ‘core’ species, so to speak.

BEARS

Three minutes of adorable Polar Bear cubs.

A three-minute montage of Black Bears catching Salmon in Southeast Alaska.

A three-minute montage of a few Polar Bears I have encountered on the Arctic sea ice. All filmed in summer, and in various regions of the Arctic.

Three minutes of Black Bears foraging for food in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. First a mother and her two cubs find some berries, before the cubs have a go at catching salmon in a dangerously swift river.

A juvenile Brown Bear walking up a river in Southeast Alaska in search of salmon. This young bear is skinny, but it is the beginning of summer and will fatten up quickly as she finds fiish (and learns a better fishing technique). This bear has been nicknamed ‘Scooby’ by the locals due to her unorthodox approach to fishing, that resembles scuba diving.

Three more minutes of beautiful Brown Bears searching for salmon. Sadly the large female bear with the green tag in her ear was killed by a trophy hunter recently. ‘Speedy‘ was famous on Alaska’s Chilkoot River, extremely tollerant with the many tourists who who stop by to observe her from the highway, a wonderful mother to several sets of cubs, and an absolute pleasure to photograph. She will be missed by many.

Three minutes of my favourite Spirit Bear (or Kermode Bear) footage from Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest.

Did you know Polar Bears are classified as marine mammals? They’re excellent swimmers and scientists have recorded huge distances. In 2011 a bear was tracked swimming 426 miles straight. Long swims are becoming more common as sea-ice continues to shrink. These swims can be deadly to cubs, and burn up fat reserves. Here’s a three-minute montage of some swimming Polar Bears encountered whilst out on assignment.

SEALS

A 3-minute montage featuring one of my favourite critters, the Southern Elephant Seal. How can you not love them?

I couldn’t resist putting together another three-minute montage of these delightful beasts.

A three-minute montage of some rather sleepy Weddell Seals in the Antarctic summer.

Have you ever seen a 900kg Walrus rolling down a beach while urinating all over itself? Well if not, here’s your chance. [sound on!]

Nature is not always predictable. Here’s a surprising encounter with a Leopard Seal in Antarctica.

Hilarious footage of Walrus burping and farting whilst wallowing in mud on the shores of Svalbard in the high arctic. This is raw video with unedited sound and images.

ANTARCTICA

A collection unique species found in Antarctica during the summer months, presented here in several minutes of raw footage filmed during the past few years.

The Brown & South Polar Skuas, birds that a lot of people love to hate, mainly because their diet includes baby penguins (caution viewers!). However surviving in Antarctica is never easy, they’re incredible birds and most definately deserve a shout-out. Here’s a three-minute montage of these fascinating birds loitering around penguin colonies on the Antarctic Peninsula over the summer months.

THE ARCTIC

The impeccable beauty and grace of the Arctic Tern. 3-minutes of Arctic Terns in slow-motion. One of the most beautiful (and defensive – don’t stray close to their nests!) birds I have ever photographed. This is all handheld with a 500mm lens in Svalbard, some tricky shooting. These incredible birds migrate from Antarctica to the arctic and back every year, just amazing. In their lifetime this distance equates to roughly three return trips to the moon, an impressive feat for a small bird.

Three minutes of the utterly mesmerizing Aurora Borealis, filmed from a vessel at sea in the Canadian high arctic.

GALÁPAGOS

Nearly ten years ago I had a short-but-very-sweet assignment in the Galápagos Islands, an incredible experience. Here is a selection of my raw footage featuring eighteen unique species (which is just a handful of which one encounters during a short time in this fascinating archipelago).

PUFFINS

I have found some old footage in my archives from the Bering Sea. These are Tufted Puffins, with that iconic hair doo, perched in the cliffs of the Pribilof Islands. The steep terrain meant that these were not easy shots to get! If you listen closely you may hear a few thousand Northern fur seals roaring away in the background.

Three minutes of footage from a delightful afternoon viewing Atlantic Puffins, nestled in the steep and crumbling cliffs of Bjørnøya.

WHALES

Humpback Whales feeding in and gliding through Antarctic waters in this collection of aerial, surface and underwater footage by wildlife photographer Richard Sidey. Includes whale rainbows and bubble-net feeding, plus one incredible and unforgettable encounter with our small team of whale research scientists. This footage was filmed over several assignments in the past few years.

Aerial footage of Humpback Whales bubble-net feeding in Antarctica. Learn more about this amazing learned behaviour in my film, Whales in a Changing Ocean, now available to watch free online.

Three minutes of Beluga Whales, filmed from above, on and below the surface of the arctic seas. You’ll want to have sound on for this one! Beluga Whales are fascinating creatures! They can turn their heads and communicate with high-pitched calls (which you can hear in this video -they are also known as the Sea Canary). Unfortunately Belugas are one of the most commonly kept cetaceans in captivity and are housed in aquariums, dolphinariums and wildlife parks in North America, Europe and Asia.

Whales, rainbows and bubble-net feeding. Enjoy three minutes of Humpback Whales in the icy waters around the Antarctic Peninsula.

ABANDONED PLACES

Tyuleny Island is a small island in the Sea of Okhotsk, east of Russia’s Sakhalin Island. Northern Fur seals were hunted on the island between 1854 and 1897. Over 100,000 were caught, with over half being taken illegally by foreign vessels. This led to the seizure of several schooners by Russian men-of-war in 1884 and 1891, including the arrest of a party of seventeen men left by a British vessel in 1895. There are many seals on Tyuleny’s shores and in its surrounding waters, hence its name which means “seal” in the Russian language. It was formerly called “Robben Island,” from the Dutch name for seal. In the spring and summer seabirds nest on the island, including crested, parakeet and rhinoceros auklet, common and thick-billed murre, black-legged kittiwake, ancient murrelet, and tufted puffin

A walk around Pyramiden, an abandoned Soviet coal mining settlement on the arctic archipelago of Svalbard. Founded by Sweden in 1910 and sold to the Soviet Union in 1927, Pyramiden was closed in 1998 and has since remained largely abandoned with most of its infrastructure and buildings still in place, the cold climate preserving much of what has been left behind.