Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC

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Hello and

the BBC World Service I'm Louis Adagnogo and today we go into the BBC

Archives to hear about the early years of natural history

broadcasting. In the mid-1950s the BBC broadcast a new television program in

Britain called Zoo Quest and it launched the career of a man who has since brought the natural world into millions of homes around the world.

The naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough.

That is the picture of a very rare bird, the white-necked picketharties.

It was drawn from some preserved skins that were sent to the British Museum many years ago

from Sierra Leone in West Africa.

In late 1954, Sir David Attenborough went to Sierra Leone with two zoologists and a cameraman

to try to find that tropical bird, the white-necked picatharties, and bring it back to England.

It was the first ever natural history expedition for the man who'd go on to become the godfather of nature programs and years later he'd describe it in a

series of BBC interviews. I was very anxious to get into the tropics as a

naturalist I learned to see it and I had already been programs with people from the London Zoo.

And there was a lovely man there called Jack Lester,

...