PLANET EARTH Mountains

As the snows retreat trees come into bloom. Cherry blossom. Rhododendrons（杜鹃花） - here in their natural home they form great forests and fill the landscape with the covers of a new season. These forests are a host to a rich variety of springtime migrants. Beneath the blooms - another display. It's the mating season for oriental pheasants（野鸡）, Himalayan monal, tragopan（角雉） and blood pheasant. Musk deer（麝香鹿） make the most of a short flash of spring foods. This male smells a potential mate. The red panda, rarely glimpsed in the wild. It was once considered a kind of raccoon（浣熊）, but is now believed to be a small mountain bear.



By midsummer its larger, more famous relative, has retreated into a cave. A giant panda nurses a tiny week old baby. Her tender cleaning wards off infection. She won't leave this cave for three weeks, not while her cub is so utterly helpless. Progress is slow for milk produced on a diet of bamboo is wretchedly poor.



Four weeks old and the cub is still blind. Its eyes do not fully open until three months after birth, but the chances of the cub reaching adulthood are slim. The struggle of a giant panda mother to raise her cub is a touching symbol of the precariousness of life in the mountains.