 |
Sanjida O'Connell has always been passionate about
animals and nature. Sanjida talks about
how she caught the nature bug, and some of her favourite moments from the Nature's
Calendar television series. | | Sanjida
caught the nature bug from an early age |
A
passion for wildlife
I've always been passionate about animals. When
I was five we were living in Africa and I remember looking into long grass (much
taller than me) and thinking, 'I must go in there and find some bugs', but being
just a little bit too frightened to go for it! I studied zoology at university
and went on to do a PhD on chimpanzee psychology, where I compared chimp minds
with childrens'. The real difference lay between male and female chimps:
the girls paid attention to my experiments and did well, but the boys, sadly,
chucked things and peed on me. They failed the tests. Right now,
as well as presenting, I direct science documentaries and write novels, as well
as non-fiction books and articles on science and the environment. Brilliant
nature  Nature's
Calendar has been a real pleasure to work on over the last few months.
I've
travelled to places I wouldn't otherwise have gone to - it's always brilliant
to visit places in this country as, like many people, I tend to travel abroad
for holidays. My favourites are the Bitterns at Lee Valley, where you can
sit very close to the birds and observe these incredibly shy creatures up close
and personal. I was so close I could see the green of a Shag's eye, and
lay in a patch of nettles nose to beak with a nesting Tern - what a treat! World
wildlife
 As
well as presenting, I also write books. My latest is called 'Sugar: The
Grass that Changed the World'. It involved travelling to terribly difficult
places like Barbados. In the meantime you can see me back on home territory
presenting Nature's Calendar on 91热爆 Two. I hope that you'll join me and
my fellow presenters. Nature team Meet
the rest of the Nature's Calendar team:
Chris Packham
Mike Dilger
Janet
Sumner Meet the web team:
Sue
Wilkinson
Photo credits
All
bird photographs are copyright and courtesy of WWT. | 
