Original subtitles

In my long life,

I've been lucky enough to travel to almost every part of the globe

and gaze upon some of its most beautiful and dramatic sights.

But I can assure you that nature in these islands,

if you know where to look, can be just as dramatic

and spectacular as anything that I've seen elsewhere.

The British Isles are globally important for nature.

In this series, we'll show you why that is so...

...and celebrate the wonders of these islands

that we call home.

This is Wild Isles.

Muckle Flugga.

The very far north of the British Isles.

170 miles from mainland Scotland,

at the northern tip of the Shetland Islands,

it's home to some of our richest marine and birdlife.

These rough waters are patrolled by our largest marine predator.

Orca - killer whales.

Three pods of them, having spent the winter fishing for herring

off Iceland, regularly return to Shetland's waters each spring.

They do so for one particular reason.

Thousands of common and grey seals live here.

The waters are full of food

and there are plenty of gullies and channels that offer safety...

...most of the time.

The orca that come here have a particular taste for seals.

And they have developed a unique way of catching them.

Their strategy is one of surprise.

They have discovered how to travel up channels in the kelp

to reach the shallow water where seals often hide.

No gully is left unchecked.

The orca turn on their side, so that their dorsal fin

doesn't break the surface and reveal their presence.

A seal.

It stays close to the rocks,

where a large orca would find swimming difficult.

It hides and waits for the danger to pass.

The orca bide their time.

Their best chance is to find a seal asleep in the water...

...like this one.

It wakes up and flees, but there's a pup here, too.

The orca takes its catch out into open water

and there shows younger members of the pod how to drown it.

The whole group now share the catch.

Nothing will be wasted.

Shetland is the only place in Britain and Ireland

where orca breed.

Just one of the many remarkable creatures that inhabit our seas,

lands and skies.

One reason why our natural world is so rich comes from its geology -

amongst the most varied to be found anywhere on the planet...

...from the chalk cliffs and downs of southern England

to the limestone pavements of Yorkshire...

...from the rugged whinstone cliffs of Durham

to the volcanic basalt of the Giant's Causeway

in Northern Ireland.

Each kind of rock creates its own landscape

with its own community of animals and plants.

Another reason our nature is so diverse is our varied climate.

In the north, it can be very cold indeed.

A thousand metres up in Scotland's Cairngorm Mountains.

Winter here can be truly arctic...

...with temperatures dropping to -27 degrees centigrade.

These peaks in the Highlands are patrolled

by one of our most spectacular birds of prey...

...the golden eagle.

They were once widespread across Britain and Ireland,

but today almost all of our 500 or so pairs

nest here in Scotland.

Now, however, after years of persecution,

golden eagle numbers are on the rise.

Within their territory, there is clear evidence

of how precious our few remaining wild places are.

There are now only remnants of the vast ancient forest

that once covered most of the Highlands.

The Caledonian Forest is the only native coniferous woodland

left in Britain.

It's less than 1% of its original extent.

Only 13% of Britain as a whole is covered by trees.

That's one of the lowest proportions in the whole of Europe.

Our oak trees, however, are globally important.

England alone has more ancient oaks

than the whole of Europe put together.

And over three-quarters of them are more than 500 years old.

In the grounds of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire

stands the oldest oak tree in Britain.

It's 1,046 years old

and began its life before the Norman Conquest.

Oak trees, throughout their long lives, provide food and shelter

for over 2,300 different species of plants and animals.

As the sun sets, the oak tree's night shift appears.

Among them, one of the most charming animals in Britain...

...a dormouse.

She assesses the light levels outside her nest.

The full moon could be a problem.

But after sleeping all day, she needs to get out and about.

She has four growing babies who all depend on her for milk.

But fortunately, higher up in the oak,

there is a particularly energy-rich food waiting to be collected.

For us, it would be like climbing to the top of a skyscraper.

Left alone, the babies begin to explore the dangerous world

beyond their nest-hole.

Their mother is getting closer to what she's looking for.

But tawny owls also nest in oak trees.

She freezes...

...and can stay motionless for over an hour to avoid detection.

At last, she decides it's safe to continue her climb.

Now she can smell the plant that she's looking for...

...honeysuckle.

This is worth the climb.

The flowers are loaded with sugar-rich nectar.

She bites off the petals to get to the sweet liquid at their base.

Her young are getting impatient.

One ventures out...

...and starts to explore.

Mother decides that she's eaten enough.

The baby dormice scuttle back home.

Safe at last.

But for how long?

Dormice were once widespread...

...but now they are largely restricted to Wales

and southern England.

Spring brings with it one of the woodlands' greatest spectacles...

...bluebells.

Within only a few days, the ground is flooded with colour.

More than half the world's common bluebells

flower in Britain and Ireland.

The peak of their display coincides with an important event

in the lives of one of the woodlands' bigger inhabitants.

With a sense of smell that's much more acute than ours,

a badger in East Sussex checks that the coast is clear.

Once they're sure that it's safe,

the adults allow their cubs above ground for the very first time.

Badger clans are tightly knit -

and these young cubs are linked by scent,

not just to their mother but to the whole extended family.

Britain is home to over a quarter of Europe's badgers

and their digging and foraging has been a major factor

in shaping the forest floor.

Woodlands are complex communities containing great numbers of species

of plants and mammals, birds and insects.

But over the decades, they've been greatly diminished.

In just the last 20 years, 60% of our flying insects have vanished.

Insects play a crucial role in pollinating

both our wild flowers and our crops

and they do so in a variety of remarkable ways.

The flowers of red valerian, for instance,

store their nectar at the base of their elongated blooms,

so only a pollinator with very special mouthparts can drink it.

The hummingbird hawk-moth has just the right equipment for the job...

...a long tubular proboscis.

These summer visitors can beat their wings 85 times a second

and need lots of nectar to fuel the effort of doing so.

Other flowers, like bittersweet, offer a different reward -

not nectar but pollen, which is produced

within its tightly-sealed yellow anthers.

And one insect knows how to reach it -

a bumblebee.

This female has developed a very clever way to get at the pollen.

She vibrates her body at exactly the right frequency

to make the pollen pour out.

The pollen will feed her young,

but some will rub off when she visits other flowers on her way home

and so fertilise them...

...a win for both flower and bee.

Perhaps the most complicated pollination technique of all

is that used by a common woodland plant known as lords-and-ladies.

It produces a very odd-looking flower...

...with a large purple spike called a spadix.

In the late afternoon, the spadix heats up

until it becomes 20 degrees centigrade hotter

than its surroundings and releases a foul-smelling scent.

Tiny owl midge-flies, looking for rotting matter

on which to lay their eggs, find the stink irresistibly attractive.

But the inner side of the hooded leaf that surrounds the spadix

is very slippery.

The flies tumble down into a dungeon...

...the bulbous chamber at the base of the plant.

The female parts that need pollinating

are at the bottom of this chamber.

Above them, the male parts that produce the pollen.

And at the very top, spikey, slippery, downward-pointing hairs.

These act like the bars of a prison, trapping the owl-flies below...

...and holding them there overnight.

Trapped, the flies get glued to the flower's sticky female parts,

transferring any pollen they may have brought

from other lords-and-ladies.

The flies then eat the now-dried sweet secretion

and then try to leave,

but the flower will not release them just yet.

The male flowers above are now ripe and their pollen bursts out,

showering the flies below.

The prison bars now wilt...

...and the flies are free to go.

For this extraordinary pollination to be successful,

a fly must escape this prison twice -

first to be loaded with pollen

and then, once again, to deliver the pollen

to another lords-and-ladies flower.

Nowhere here is richer in wild flowers and insect pollinators

than our traditional hay meadows.

Sadly, in the last 60 years,

we've lost 97% of this precious habitat.

But with nature-friendly farming,

meadows can be restored to provide a haven for wildlife.

It's all about the timing.

Delaying mowing until mid-July

allows birds and insects to complete their breeding

and flowers to set their seed.

It also creates opportunities

for those that are ready to exploit them.

The local foxes here in Gloucestershire

know these fields very well.

Every year, they follow the farmers from field to field

as they make hay.

And sometimes the cubs come with them.

These cubs are only three months old

and mostly interested in play.

Summer chafers emerging from the grass are worth eating.

If you can catch them!

But the cubs need to be taught how to hunt properly.

By September, they will be on their own,

so their mother shows them how.

Her acute sense of hearing enables her to detect

even the slightest rustle in the grass.

By moving her head,

she can pin-point exactly where the noise is coming from.

And then, silently, she leaps.

At least the cubs will have something to eat this evening.

Britain and Ireland's position on the globe

gives us a special importance for wildlife internationally.

We are in just the right place to welcome migrants

from the south in summer and from the north in winter.

Each autumn, around 30,000 barnacle geese arrive

on the Hebridean island of Islay.

They have all come from Greenland, where they spent the summer.

Some years, half the world population arrive here,

all attracted by the same food...

...grass.

They feed in groups.

That way, there will always be some eyes keeping watch.

White-tailed eagles - our biggest bird of prey.

Once extinct in Britain,

today, up to a dozen now spend winter on Islay.

But they've been spotted.

The eagles must select a particular bird as a target.

They're testing the geese, trying to identify a weak one.

After a journey of almost 2,000 miles,

some will be particularly exhausted.

But the eagles haven't chosen one yet.

At low tide, out on the estuary, the geese come down.

Even here, the eagles don't let them rest for long.

A young, inexperienced eagle tries his luck...

...driving them on again.

The youngster keeps the flock on the move.

One exhausted goose, however, gets left behind.

Another young eagle swoops in.

In the confusion, the goose manages to fly off.

But neither of the eagles is going to give up now.

As the goose turns,

it loses one of its pursuers.

Now it's just a one-on-one.

The goose is so heavy, the young eagle has to struggle to hold on.

This young bird and all the other white-tailed eagles here on Islay

have only learnt how to hunt barnacle geese

in the last ten years.

Across Britain and Ireland,

our mild climate attracts more than half a million geese each winter...

...making us a vital refuge for these long-distance travellers.

Here in Britain, we have one of the rarest habitats on Earth -

chalk streams.

There are only about 200 chalk streams in the world

and 85% of them flow through southern England.

Their waters, rising through chalk and flowing over it,

are rich in minerals and oxygen.

This creates the right conditions for water-crowfoot

that each summer produces floating carpets of white flowers.

Above them fly banded demoiselle damselflies -

slimmer relatives of dragonflies.

These, with dark patches on their wings, are the males,

and they are an iridescent blue.

The more metallic-green ones with plain, unmarked wings

are the females.

To attract a female, a male must secure a patch

of healthy floating leaves on which she can lay her eggs.

The male declares his ownership of a patch by flaunting his wings...

...before returning to a nearby perch.

But other males want both his territory and the female,

and they are willing to fight.

He's outnumbered.

In the chaos, he returns to his perch,

watched closely by the female.

This time, he invites her down to view his patch of leaves...

...and settles on the water surface,

showing her that the oxygen-rich waters are flowing well,

which will be vital for her eggs.

She's impressed.

Mating, however, is a complicated business.

First, he grasps her firmly by the neck

and carefully removes any rival's sperm.

Then he collects his own sperm from an opening near his head

and transfers it to her.

Once mated, the female flies to his patch of leaves to lay her eggs.

And the male joins her to guard her from his rivals.

They barge in and try and pull the couple apart,

for it's still not too late for them to mate with this female themselves.

But she has an escape route...

...under the water.

A silver layer of bubbles allows her to breathe

while she's beneath the surface.

She cuts into the plant stems with her sharp ovipositor

and starts to inject her eggs,

producing more than 400 in under an hour.

Mission accomplished.

To breed in this way, the damsels require clean,

free-flowing fresh water...

...as do other animals that live in chalk streams...

...our native brown trout and minnows.

These small fish are preyed upon by one of our loveliest birds.

We often hear them...

...but usually get only a glimpse, a flash of electric blue.

Kingfishers speed along rivers at 30mph.

Each claims a particular stretch of river

which can be over two miles long.

Fishing territories are vigorously defended

and a male will only share one with his partner.

Just to stay alive,

this female must eat over half her body weight each day.

If they have chicks, a pair of kingfishers

must catch a further 70 fish every day.

The coastline of Britain and Ireland is over 22,000 miles long

and our seas are amongst the richest in Europe.

Because of this, our sea bird colonies are among the biggest

and most spectacular to be found anywhere on the planet.

Bass Rock in Scotland's Firth of Forth

is the largest gannet colony in the world...

...with 75,000 pairs returning here each year.

Our waters, in fact, support nearly 70%

of the northern gannet's global population.

At the height of summer, the whole of Bass Rock is jam-packed,

with two nests to every square metre.

Male and female spend the winter apart, far out at sea.

But in spring, they return to their breeding grounds,

and each couple re-establish their partnership

with a delicate courtship display.

It takes over three months to rear a chick

and, during that time, both parents will make hundreds of trips

to collect food.

On average, each feeding trip is over 140 miles long...

...but, on occasion, they may travel as far as 600 miles.

The gannet's immense journeys are only possible

because they bring their catch home in their stomachs.

Mackerel and herring are the gannet's favourite food...

...though the size of a portion can be a bit of a problem for some.

Another much smaller fish is also very important to our sea birds.

Sand eels are only 30cm long,

but they occur in vast shoals.

They're a critical link in the food chains

of a whole range of different sea birds.

Lesser sand eels are the favourite prey of puffins.

Almost half a million of these lovable birds

come to our coast each summer, mostly to islands such as these -

the Farnes off Northumberland.

Puffins mate for life and pairs use the same burrow every year.

Here, they raise a single chick called a puffling.

Unlike gannets, the journeys they make for food

are usually shorter.

Their broad bills enable them to carry

remarkably large numbers of sand eels.

But their catch is always temptingly visible.

Herring gulls are twice the size of a puffin.

But the greatest threat to puffins on this island

comes from a smaller gull...

...the black-headed gull.

They are not strong enough to grab a puffin in the air.

They have to use another technique.

They try to snatch the sand eels right out of the puffin's beak.

This puffin escapes.

But the problem is that this burrow is not his.

And the gulls seem to know that.

He can't stay down there for long.

This little puffin is determined that these sand eels

are for his chick and nobody else.

Made it!

Here off the coast of Pembrokeshire,

puffin numbers have been steadily increasing.

Today, nearly 40,000 return to this tiny island every summer.

But Skomer is an exception.

Most of our puffin colonies are in decline.

Over-fishing and climate change mean the sand eels

they depend on are increasingly hard to find.

It's a clear example of just how fragile and fragmented

our nature is.

Though rich in places, Britain as a whole

is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world.

Never has there been a more important time

to invest in our own wildlife,

to try and set an example for the rest of the world

and restore our once wild isles for future generation.

To film orca hunting seals,

the Wild Isles team travelled to Shetland.

The plan was to find and follow one particular pod...

...a family of eight individuals known as the 27s.

As Shetland's biggest pod, they were the team's best chance

to film a hunt.

They had a fast boat, modified to carry a stabilised camera system...

...and drones to give them a far-reaching eye in the sky.

But finding the pod in this vast territory was not going to be easy.

So the crew enlisted local knowledge.

I just messaged my wife and asked her the, erm...

How big is Shetland's coastline?

And she wrote back to me and said it's 2,700km.

And we're looking for basically a pod of eight animals

in 2,700km of coast.

It suddenly dawned on me...

...the enormity of what we're trying to do.

Richard has vital extra help,

a WhatsApp group of 250 islanders

who regularly update each other on their sightings.

Without all these eyes looking and picking up

and posting on social media, I think it would be very difficult

to follow these killer whales.

Orca can travel 100 miles a day in their search for food.

They can appear anywhere on Shetland's coast at any time.

So the strategy was to spend as much time at sea as possible

to be able to react quickly to any sightings.

Three weeks, they haven't been anywhere...

...seen anywhere in Shetland, this pod.

It's quite difficult to film a killer whale sequence

without killer whales.

There's literally nothing more we can do

than go out, search every day, hope that the phone rings

and someone else has seen it or we find them.

And the challenge was made even greater

when thick fog made navigating the islands near impossible.

Well, the weather changes pretty quickly up here.

We were in glorious, becalmed, blue sky, flat water conditions

about two hours ago.

We've just started our journey back and we've come into this bank of fog

and it's completely surrounded the boat.

There are no reference points out here now.

Time was running out.

With just a few days left, Richard finally got a call

from one of the islanders.

Right. Cheers, cheers.

What's just happened?

They've got two bulls coming down Bluemull Sound,

heading south towards Fetlar.

The team raced to catch up with the orca.

Oh, they're there! To the right, to the right.

They've gone under us. They're right behind you.

Oh, one's in front. They've split. One either side of the boat.

They got in position ahead of the bulls and waited for them to pass.

Look at the size of that dorsal fin!

Sadly, the excitement was short lived.

It's not the 27s, which is the family group

we were hoping to catch up with, but it is killer whales.

After a month of effort, they had run out of time that year.

And the following year saw a new team, a new boat and a new plan.

Basing themselves on land, the team could be more reactive.

When the orca do turn up, we need to drop everything

and go and try and find them,

and the quickest way to do that on this island

is to tow the boat to where we think they're about to be

based on the last sightings.

That means that we have to know our slipways,

but quite a few of them are covered in this green slimy weed.

For the crew, this meant regular cleaning duty.

With the slipways weed-free, they could test the new camera set-up.

This time, they mounted the camera on a jib

to move it more quickly into position.

After two weeks with no sightings, it felt like a replay

of last year's bad luck.

But, once again, the network of islanders came to the rescue.

Second-hand information, but some orca were seen

about 10km from here at 8:00pm last night.

We just got the text this morning at 7:00am.

Tipped off that a pod of orcas was close,

the team could quickly catch up with them.

But it wasn't the 27s.

It's the 19 pod with an individual in it called Mousa,

which is quite a well-known individual.

But she was last seen on Friday

with the 27 pod in Orkney.

So we're now on Sunday and she's here,

so does that mean the 27 pod is here?

The team stuck around, hoping the pods were travelling together.

There they are! There they are, there they are, in the bay.

In the bay here. Yeah, the other side of the skerries.

Can we just spin round, please?

It's took patience and determination,

but after two years of effort,

the crew finally caught up with the 27 pod.

We are here right now on the 27s, which is our best pod,

because one of the guys working on the ferry saw them,

posted it on WhatsApp.

We were five minutes away and we were straight onto it.

The pod soon lived up to their promise

and began to hunt along the coast.

Using the drone, the team could follow as the pod spread out,

searching every inch of the shoreline.

From the boat, the stabilised camera rig

allowed them to film the action close-up.

That was carnage. All so fast.

It just goes crazy.

Yeah, a really crazy hunt. Just...

...bonkers. Just, like, chaos.

After two years of filming and thanks to the network of islanders

and Richard's expertise, the team were finally able

to capture this extraordinary hunting behaviour.

Three months after returning from Shetland, there was some sad news.

A young male orca from the 27 pod was found dead, washed up onshore.

A postmortem revealed he had drowned

after becoming entangled in fishing gear.

Each year, dozens of whales and dolphins die in this way.

But since filming, three new calves have been spotted,

the youngest belonging to the 27s.

We must do everything we can to ensure that our waters

are safe and welcoming for these rare and special visitors.

Next time...

...woodland - ruled by the seasons...

...home to dramatic battles...

...and hitherto unseen spectacles.

The Open University has produced a free poster

exploring our wild isles and their diverse habitat and species.

Order your copy by calling

or go to bbc.co.uk/wildisles

and follow the links to the Open University.

If you'd like to play your part in restoring our wild isles

and learn more about what you can do to help,

just search Wild Isles on the BBC website.