The veteran broadcaster is getting close to the animals he loves in his home city – just a few months before he turns 100
06:00, 09 Dec 2025
Sir David has got up close and personal with London’s wildlife for a show from home that is close to his heart(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Passion Planet Ltd/Gavin Thurston)
Nestling in the hands of the world’s greatest naturalist, a baby peregrine falcon looks up and seems very happy to be in the company of Sir David Attenborough.
The charming story is just one of the many contained in Sir David’s one-off BBC special Wild London, which is all about the wildlife that thrive within England’s capital city.
Along the way viewers will also be treated to the sight of a thrilled Sir David getting up close to many creatures, from the fluffy falcon baby – which is being ringed for its own protection – to a tiny harvest mouse and a family of foxes.
READ MORE: I’m A Celebrity voting figures reveal huge gulf between finalists as fans had their sayREAD MORE: Katya Jones reveals she’s taking a pause over Strictly exit -‘my heart is broken’Sir David looks thrilled to be holding the peregrine chick – and so does the bird(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC / Passion Planet Ltd / Gavin Thurston)
Then there is a gull that hunts pigeons by drowning, foxes stashing chicken bones in car bonnets, herds of deer running through suburbia and pigeons travelling on the tube.
Sir David, who turns 100 in May, has spent his life travelling the globe but this one-hour special sees him transfixed by the wildlife that, as a Londoner for the past 75 years, lives right on his doorstep. On choosing Richmond as his home, he says: “A wilder city is a healthier city. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”
Director Joe Loncraine says that they were spoilt for choice when it came to the stories – and that Sir David was keen to be involved from the moment they pitched him the idea.
“His memories of London informed what we did and where we took him,” Joe says. “He’s got peregrine falcons nesting near his house and he says on camera that he used to have a hedgehog in his garden and he doesn’t anymore, which he’s really sad about.”
In the film there are also shots of Sir David lying on the ground in someone’s garden as he examines the great Hedgehog Highway idea – holes in fences which encourage the spiky creatures to roam freely and find a mate.
The family of foxes who live in an allotment in Tottenham, north London, are incredibly tame(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC / Passion Planet Ltd / Gavin Thurston)
Joe and executive producer Gaby Bastyra have worked closely with David Mooney, chief executive of the London Wildlife Trust, to find the right stories for the film and for Sir David to participate in. “You talk to him about stuff that he’d be interested in, and you can tell straight away the ones he likes, the ones he doesn’t,” Joe explains.
The cameras follow some peregrine falcons as they nest on the Houses of Parliament and teach their young to fly and hunt high above our heads. Gaby says Sir David loved handling the chick as it was ringed for monitoring . “He’d never held or met a Peregrine chick before, and he was genuinely enthralled and loved the moment of it.”
Mooney said it seemed the baby bird knew it was being held by the legendary BBC broadcaster. “We do a lot of bird ringing across London and I’ve never seen, in 20 years, a bird of any kind look up like that – he knew it was David Attenborough. Of course he did!”
David also gets to hold a tiny field mouse(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC/Passion Planet Ltd/Joe Loncraine)
Joe said that getting the shots of the falcons fledging and teaching their young to fly had been tricky. “It’s one of those things you really don’t know that it’s happening above your head in Hackney or Charing Cross Hospital or the Houses of Parliament or London Met University. Finding the right vantage point is hard. You’ve got to be there at 4.30am, sometimes earlier.”
Another astonishing story also features birdlife – in the form of a lone gull in Hyde Park which has learned to hunt pigeons by dragging them into the Serpentine and drowning them.
While filming this spectacle, the team from independent production company Passion Planet, found that the local coots were also getting involved – as heroes. “I don’t know whether or not they were deliberately trying to save that pigeon,” Joe says. “But the fact that they do that is quite amazing. That was a real shock and a bonus.”
It is rumoured that another gull is copying this behaviour but has yet to succeed in a kill. “London’s pigeons might need to watch out,” Joe warns.
Pigeons also feature in another story, suggested for the programme by Sir David himself. Joe grew up in West London but had never seen a pigeon on the Hammersmith and City line. “And then David Attenborough told me about seeing pigeons on the way to Ally Pally when he worked at the BBC,” he says. “So they’d been doing that for 70 years.”
Sir David holdes the delighted peregrine falcon chick as it is ringed for surveillance and protection(Image: CREDIT LINE:BBC / Passion Planet Ltd / Gavin Thurston)
Viewers will see the birds calmly walking onto the tube, letting the doors close behind them, and then leaving a few stops later. In terms of filming them, they just had to wait. “You can’t usher them on because it’s not every pigeon, it’s just some of them.”
The fox family living on an allotment in the heart of Tottenham are the cutest, fluffiest specimens you could ever wish to see. And the cameras catch some new behaviour. “I was completely captivated to know that foxes stash chicken bones on cars, like storage units,” Mooney says. “I was really taken aback by the takeaways.”
Gaby said she’d been astonished by how happy the foxes were to let the film crew, and Sir David, get close to them. “It was seeing them with different eyes,,” she marvels. “There’s this amazing wild dog living amongst us.”
Another great spectacle are herds of deer running around in Harold Hill, East London. They dodge traffic and trample over lawns, helping themselves to prized blooms on the way. “I think that the garden owner who was fast asleep and had their roses devoured would be pretty surprised,” Joe laughs.
Mooney says he hopes the BBC special will help the audience want to reconnect with wildlife in urban spaces. “London is one of the greenest cities in the world, there’s so much nature around us. We just really want people to stop and take a look at it.
There’s over 1600 sites of importance for nature conservation in London. To have so many eyeballs now watching this story celebrating London’s wildlife, recovering our lost connections with the natural world – it feels like a kind of crescendo of so many years worth of work. Finally, people noticing the value of London and its ecology.”
Around 55,000 Londoners are currently on the charity’s supporter list and they need it to grow. “There are 9 million people living in London, so we’d like to double or treble that number. There’s a real mission here.”
Wild London, New Year’s Day, 6.30pm on BBC1 and iPlayer.
