Backstory - Exploring Guyana

This is ‘the land of giants’, where the animals are some of the biggest of their species in the world. Yet it is rare to catch sight of the giant anteater, for example, or giant river otters, anaconda, the harpy eagle and elusive jaguar. Birds might be painted in bold colours but they too are also very hard to catch on film. I needed more time, more skill and more luck. I think the only creatures I caught well on camera were the army of leaf-cutter ants. Given that they march in their thousands along the forest floor with leaf fragments that can be the size of saucers that is no great achievement.

I returned from a country where the story is all about the wildlife with a few minutes of ant footage and some birdsong. But I did have some other evidence that wildlife existed there. Under my clothes were hundreds of bites scored in the line of duty. Mosquitoes, bêtes rouges, sandflies, kabauras and fire ants had all had a go. I was itching for weeks afterwards. Bugs might just be the biggest filming challenge of them all.