All of the following nature documentaries are fascinating, educational, feature breathtaking imagery, and are currently included in Amazon’s Prime Instant Video catalog! Click here to learn more about the Amazon Prime program and how to start a free, 30 day trial .
Blue Planet – Seas of Life (4.5/5 stars, FREE for Amazon Prime Members to view, $1.99 per episode & $14.99 per season to buy)
Extraordinary footage and eloquent narration by David Attenborough highlight…the BBC’s remarkable wildlife series, The Blue Planet: Seas of Life. [The series] begins with astonishing views of a gigantic blue whale–the elusive Holy Grail of undersea photography–and the marvels continue to demonstrate the power, diversity, and profound ecological influence of Earth’s oceans. From the surface feedings of dolphins to the pitch-black environs of deep-sea predators rarely glimpsed by humans, the oceans are seen as living entities teeming with nutrients and rejuvenating currents essential to all life on earth. This marvelous portrait of the food chain–from plankton to sharks to killer whales–continues…examining whales, walruses, penguins, and other creatures under the extreme conditions of the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. The Blue Planet: Seas of Life is one of the finest wildlife programs you’re ever likely to see.
–Jeff Shannon
Nature – Volume 2, in HD (4.5/5 stars, FREE for Amazon Prime Members to view, $2.99 per episode & $23.99 per season to buy)
Volume 2 includes the following episodes:
Jungle Eagle
My Life As A Turkey
Fortress of the Bears
Raccoon Nation
River of No Return
Cracking the Koala Code
Siberian Tiger Quest
Magic of the Snowy Owl
Animal Odd Couples
An Original Duckumentary
The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (4.5/5 stars, FREE for Amazon Prime Members to view, $6.99 per 2 hour episode & $37.99 for the entire season to buy)
The National Parks tells the human history of five of the nation s most important and most heavily visited National Parks (Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Acadia, and Great Smoky Mountains) and the unforgettable Americans who made them possible. Set against some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth, each park s story is filled with incidents and characters as gripping and fascinating as American history has to offer.
Woven into the series will also be a broader, evolving story of the very idea of National Parks, as uniquely an American concept as jazz, baseball, and the Declaration of Independence as well as the expanding, constantly changing National Parks system and the growing role they all have come to play in our nation’s sense of itself, its past, and its future. Special Features include: Spanish Audio, Spanish and English Subtitles, and Descriptive Video.
Prehistoric Planet (4.5/5 stars, FREE for Amazon Prime members to view, $1.99 per episode to buy)
Episodes include:
T-Rex: New Science, New Beast
Utah’s Dino Graveyard
Jane: Mystery Dinosaur
Dino Lab
Best of NOVA: Volumes 1-8 (4.5/5 stars, currently FREE for Amazon Prime members to view, $1.99 per episode to buy)
Volume 1 – episodes about Mars, robots, aviation, search for the supertwister.
Volume 2 – episodes about The Race for Absolute Zero, Cracking the Mayan Code, cars of the future, ants, winged dinosaurs, the Cold War, marathon running, secrets of The Parthenon and Ethiopia.
Volume 3 – episodes about the Hubble Space Telescope, dreams, monitor lizards, ancient Egypt and Machu Picchu.
Volume 4 – episodes about Space Shuttle Columbia, fractals, “Hobbit bones”, marine animal rescue, Monarch butterflies, Mammoths, Pluto and new insights into Charles Darwin’s discoveries.
Volume 5 – episodes about the Maya, lost treasures of Tibet, the Wright Brothers, ancient Israelites, new energy, spycraft, rat population explosions in India, melting glaciers, new analysis of the sinking of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor and extreme cave diving.
Volume 6 – episodes about the telescope, global economy, the recovery of Mt. St. Helens, architecture and design of cathedrals, elevators, dogs, Stonehenge, King Solomon’s mines and the crash of Air France flight 447.
Volume 7 – episodes about revisiting ground zero 10 years after 9/11, the search for extraterrestrial life and the mystery of the prehistoric Iceman.
Volume 8 – episodes about volcanoes, Allied attacks on dams controlled by Hitler, “cold case” art mysteries, a prehistoric graveyard trapped in the ice of the Rocky Mountains, separation of conjoined twins, cracking the human genome, the elements of the periodic table, tornadoes, why ships sink, secrets of the sun, Vikings, forensic science, Easter Island, megastorms and the landing of Curiosity on Mars.