“Weird” kid became nature’s storyteller

For a few folks, childhood obsessions and adulthood careers merge neatly.
Most of us don’t get to be superheroes or rock stars. Bertie Gregory (shown here), however, still obsesses on nature the same way he did when, he says, “everyone thought I was a bit weird.”
And sometimes, the old dreams and new ones blend.
As a kid, he marveled at how Charles Darwin used the Galapagos Islands to figure evolution. Now one of his six episodes of “Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory” – which arrives Wednesday (Sept. 13) on Disney+ — brought his first trip to the islands. “You can see everything in action,” he said.
There were the iguanas, lined up on rocks and “looking like mini-dragons,” while calculating precisely. They were there to build up their body temperatures; then they would plunge into frigid water, feeding for just as long as they could tolerate.
Galapagos can be dangerous for a creature … and for a filmmaker. At one point, a 10-foot wave suddenly belted Gregory and his colleague in opposite directions. “I remember hanging onto a rock with one hand and a camera with the other.” Fortunately, the show keeps hiring experts native to the area; one dove in to help both men reach safety.
All of this – minus the near-death part – is sort of what Gregory, 30, had dreamed of as a kid.
Like many British “presenters,” he comes from comfortable roots. (Both parents are doctors.) Still, he doesn’t have the usual posh, prep school, Oxford-or-Cambridge background.
He lived in Redding (about an hour from London), but the family took frequent trips to Cornwall. “We were all obsessed with the ocean, so we would go there to surf.”
There and at home, he would wander to nature. This was considered odd, he says, until he started to “steal” his dad’s camera and take it with. “It was a good way to explain what I was doing, I could get other people excited.”
At 16, he was one of 20 teen photographers spanning the country; his assigned turf was London, where he found a peregrine falcon in Big Ben’s tower. At 18, he was named Youth Outdoor Photographer of the Year. During college (University of Bristol), he landed photo journeys (including three months in the Amazon) and made contacts. The day he graduated, he flew to his first assignment.
At first, that was as a cinematographer. On an Iceland coast for “Seven Worlds, One Planet,” he filmed the introduction by David Attenborough – who is 67 years his senior. “I feel very fortunate to be on the shoulders of such giants.”
He particularly admires Attenborough’s championing of new technology. For Gregory, there’s the tech of a drone, a relatively inexpensive (about $1,500) way to get fresh views.
Armed with equipment and experts for “Animals Up Close,” Gregory ranged from Africa (in search of the giant-tusked forest elephant) to Antarctica, where whales use strong teamwork to flush out a seal.
He even got to re-visit a site. For “Seven Worlds,” he spent five weeks in Patagonia, filming a puma and her cubs. He returned four years later for “Animals Up Close,” following one of the cubs.
“When I met her, she was this lovable ball of fuzz,” he said. Now she manages to feed her cubs.
Gregory spent 51 days with her, culminating in an intense fight with a larger creature. The result is brutal, either agonizing or exhilarating, depending on your rooting interest.
“You’re not meant to get emotional about it,” Gregory said of the presenter’s role. But it’s hard to avoid it, especially when seeing the triumphant puma stepping aside as her cubs and her sister dine, realizing that “in a week, she’s going to have to go through it again.”