Orcinus orca, so good they named it twice

I watched the first episode of Wild Isles, David Attenborough's latest, this week and very good it was too. In brief:

(1) Excellent as Attenborough's voiceovers always are, a programme entitled Wild Isles really ought to be narrated by someone with a West Midlands accent.

(2) Youngest Sister and I have long thought that the herring gull deserves a proper wildlife documentary. Despite its sometimes-seeming ubiquity, particularly at 5am in a seaside bedroom with single glazing, they're on the conservation Red list, and they are, when not attempting to steal chips, impressive birds. They deserve their moment in the spotlight. Alas, that came as the baddies vs the cuter puffin.

(3) Every wildlife documentary I have seen or similar story I have read that features orcas/killer whales in recent years seems to include a story about how the particular pod the camera team is following has learned to hunt its prey in a unique manner. Since orcas are highly intelligent predators, that is perhaps not surprising once they are closely studied. Still, I think this was about the forth pod in a row. One day the "something uniquely them" about a particular family is going to be that they've developed tool use, creating blow darts out of carefully-splintered seal ribs that they coat with Portuguese man o' war venom and have used in combination with their more common practice of drowning the prey once captured to take control of a nuclear submarine, the sort equipped with ballistic missiles, and the captain is urgently conveying their demands.