Attenborough achieves a childhood ambition of finding and filming the birds-of-paradise described by Alfred Russel Wallace in his book, The Malay Archipelago.
As a result, sexual selection has produced the most incredible variety of extravagant displays imaginable.... A carved wooden idol that Attenborough purchased in an auction room is traced back to its origin: Easter Island.
During the course of this programme its whole history is discovered: carved on Easter Island while there was still wood of the Toromiro tree (now extinct on the island), to represent the god Makemake, traded with the crew of captain Cook's ship, transported to Tahiti, probably traded by the Tahitians with the crew of an American whaling ship and ended up in the US.
Like the Birds of Paradise, Bowerbird females build their nests and raise their young alone so the male has all day to gather his treasures and create his bower.
He travels there to find out what that piece of amber has to tell about life in the forest where it bled from some sort of pine tree, trapping a community of insects as it oozed down the bark.