The star of BBC1's new series Secret Garden, alongside Sir David Attenborough, is a mallard duck named Doris. She builds a nest 10 feet up in a tree to protect her eggs from flooding, and later saves her nine ducklings from a hungry otter.
Series producer Bill Markham explained that viewers will learn much from the programme, which airs in the run-up to Attenborough's 100th birthday on May 8. Even the veteran naturalist made new discoveries, noting after narrating one episode that there were 'a few' things he didn't know.
Set in an Oxfordshire millhouse, the first episode features unprecedented footage of an otter hunting ducks. Doris's ducklings communicate from inside their eggs to coordinate hatching, then leap headlong from the tree at 24 hours old, bouncing on a bed of dead nettles beneath.
With only one in three ducklings typically surviving to adulthood, Doris bravely acts as a decoy to lead the otter away from her brood, ultimately saving all nine. The otter instead catches a fish.
