'Try not to step on any toads!': David Attenborough's camera wizards on how to film Britain's wildlife

They have shot previously extinct butterflies, soaring white-tailed eagles and the lesser spotted David Attenborough. Now the team behind some of the BBC's best nature docs are training their lenses closer to homeFerocious oceanic storms. Biting ants. Venomous snakes coiling round camera equipment. Weeks sat in icy water. But mostly weather. British weather. Gloom, hailstones, mud and rain; sometimes for weeks on end.Wildlife film-makers work with forbearance in hostile environments all around the world. So three years at home filming domestic wildlife for the new nature documentary Wild Isles must have sounded like a comfortable assignment for many. But those tasked with creating a blue-chip natural history series that would make the landscapes of the UK and Ireland as exciting, epic and beautiful as Sir David Attenborough's usual globe-trotting excursions soon realised it was their most challenging assignment yet. Continue reading...