Highlands: Scotland's Wild Heart Blu-ray [2016]

Beautiful evocation of what makes the Highlands so special. On the surface, a harsh and forbidding place with few people, treeless landscapes and wild storms. But surface is not everything. Instead, the series tells intimate stories of how wild animals manage to live and survive in many Highland habitats. The gorgeous photography is often close-up, showing us the care, patience, dedication and affection parents have for their offspring. This pattern repeats itself no matter the species: pine martens in a hay loft, guillemots on the narrow ledges of sea cliffs, osprey and golden eagles in their eyries, roe deer in long grass, red squirrels in trees, otters along the seashore. Survival depends on three things: feeding and nurturing, shelter and protection, teaching and learning. The window for all three, owing to the harsh Highland climate, can be short. The days of summer may be long, but the season is short. Likewise, the job of parents rearing their young can be hard and the learning curve of offspring steep.In one poignant segment we see a guillemot chick high up on a cliff ledge. The time to reach the sea is now. The chick must leave the ledge. But she is frightened. She creeps to the edge, looks down, steps back, overcome by the fear of falling and dying. The drop is immense, a sheer plunge of over 400 feet. She is tiny, just a little puff ball on thin little legs. Her wings are tiny too, almost useless. She will never be a proper flier. Guillemot wings were designed like flippers for the sea, not as wings for the air. The guillemot is a distant relative of the penguin and shares many traits with their southern polar kin. Clumsy on land, useless in the air, wonderful swimmers at the sea. But now this guillemot’s time has come and she hesitates. She paces the ledge and will not jump. All her siblings have — a half dozen brothers and sisters. So she will stay on the ledge and die of starvation or from predation (stoats, martens, raptors), or she will die falling from it. The circle of death, made by fear, surrounds her. Her family are in the water below, both parents and her siblings. All have reached the safety of the sea. What happens next is extraordinary.The calls of her father from below to her have gone unheeded, so he proceeds to climb back up the cliffside to her. He will coax her down, one dangerous step at a time. Gingerly they descend from one cliff ledge to the next. But there’s a serious problem. The ledges are filled with other sea birds (razorbills, kittiwakes, puffins, fulmars). These do not want intruders. They harass and endanger the guillemot chick. Father and daughter manage to get halfway down the cliff face. But the chick, harassed by a razorbill, slips and tumbles. She falls clumsily, helplessly. Yet her body — so lightweight, supple — does not smash against the rocks below. Instead, she bounces and ends up in the sea, apparently unharmed. What an adventure! But it shows the lengths to which some parents will go to protect their offspring, securing a future for their kind. The instinct to live is so deeply etched in the minds of creatures that they’ll face any challenge to achieve it. Which of course is why the creatures we see in the world today are here, ourselves included. They have been tenacious.The series depicts the four seasons in three episodes: spring and summer (Disc One), autumn/winter (Disc Two). Also on the second disc is a fourth episode which deals with conservation efforts being made in the Highlands.Spring is a time of arrival for many migratory animals, especially birds. The osprey winter in West Africa but breed and raise their young in the Highlands during the spring and summer. Dolphins and Orca killer whales also visit the shores of the Highlands in the warmer months. Everywhere during the spring babies are born in burrows, tree holes, nests, grassland, streams, lochs and ponds. Parents are busy with the three essential things: feeding, protecting and teaching their young. By the end of summer many of the young will be on their own, fending for themselves, their childhoods quickly over. If they don’t learn to forage and hunt well, they will die before having offspring of their own. Darwin was correct in stating how the best adapted individuals in any group sustain the group’s genetic line through time. The environment challenges and tests them. Those who succeed, carry on. Those who don’t, die prematurely. Grand and simple idea. Why did it take us so long to wake up?Summer is the season of rapid growth. The wings of young osprey must be long and strong enough to support the body in flight. The agility of red squirrels must be good enough to let them leap from tree to tree. The legs of young roe deer must be sturdy enough to help them dash to safety from predators. And the eyesight of young flying golden eagles must be keen enough for them to spot camouflaged mountain hares on the ground. The summer days last 18 hours at their peak. It’s a time of bustling activity in forests and fields. Parents are busy foraging and hunting. Offspring are busy feeding and playing, or playing in some cases (pine martens, otters, squirrels, mountain hares). It’s a time of preparation too for the coming colder months. The osprey will fly back to West Africa by the early autumn. The young osprey must be strong and healthy enough to make the journey. It’s why they are born so early in the spring, as six months are needed for them to develop to meet the challenge. Caches of nuts and seeds are buried on the forest floor by red squirrels, whose sense of smell and spatial memory are highly evolved. Without these reserves of food the squirrels would not make it through the long, harsh winter. How did the squirrels learn to do this? Through trial and error, chance, the contingencies of evolution. Those who learned survived, passing on their knowledge to their offspring.Autumn and winter come early to the Highlands. The wonderful Ewan McGregor, who narrates the series, says this:“It’s a still, crisp, perfect morning. But this is a shallow beauty. With the brief summer now past, the animals of the Highlands are in for the long haul. The next few months will see them driven to desperate measures as they prepare for the lockdown of the Highland’s longest, darkest and most overwhelming season — winter. Some take flight, seeking refuge in the warm south. But those who remain will need every drop of resilience they can muster. Only the toughest will survive what the elements are about to throw at the Highlands.”In the autumn pink-footed geese fly to the coastal margins of the Highlands for the winter. Why? Because it’s marginally warmer here than in their breeding grounds in Iceland. Salmon also return. They swim hundreds of miles from the sea to reach Highland rivers. Then they swim upstream to reach quiet streams where they will breed. They return to the place of their birth to give birth in return. Their journey is perilous and arduous. Only the strongest will endure. They even need the strength and stamina to launch themselves over waterfalls in the river. They are one of the hardiest creatures alive, both in body and mind, their determination astounding, the instinct to survive and reproduce dwarfing all other things.Reindeer live year round in the Highlands. They died out here 8,000 years ago after the last ice age, hunted to extinction. But the nomadic species as a whole lived on elsewhere — in Siberia and Scandinavia. In the 1950s reindeer were reintroduced to the Highlands and today they are thriving, perfectly suited to alpine and arctic conditions. Temperatures in the depth of winter in some parts of the Highlands plummet to well below -30º Celsius. The warm coats of the reindeer insulate them from the cold. The blubber of grey seals along the coasts does the same. They are cosy in winter.The coats of mountain hares turn from brown in summer and autumn to white in winter, another feat of evolution. The hares are invisible against the backdrop of snow, at least from the perspective of golden eagles who patrol the skies above them with a view toward enjoying them as a meal. Ptarmigan, birds in the grouse family, are the same. In winter their coats also turn white for protection.The last episode deals with both people and wild animals. The people are conservationists, ecologists, zoologists. They are also forestry and marine workers, as well as volunteers. Then there is the public, including eco-tourists. All are interested in the health and protection of the Highlands and its wild inhabitants. Many conservation programmes are underway and have been highly successful. The list of animals protected and helped to breed includes osprey, golden eagles, red kites, shore birds, reindeer, and the endangered Highland wildcat. Some even think reintroducing top predators such as wolves and bears would be a good idea to help keep the roe deer and grouse populations in check naturally. Bears, wolves, elk and wild boar once roamed freely through the Highlands. But they and their forest habitats were destroyed by man. Now, that same species — homo sapiens — knows better and is trying to make amends for sins committed in the past. It’s an example of how science and education dovetail to make a potentially better, healthier world for all, not just for a select few.In a famous book called Why Look at Animals? by John Berger, art critic and writer, animals are shown in a degraded state. They were once among us and we them. We grew up freely with them and wholly depended on them. They fed us, clothed us, helped us build our shelters. We revered and exalted them, painted their images on cave walls and deer skins. We dreamt of them and gave ourselves animal names. They were part of the same world we shared.But that was then, long ago. Animals today, Berger says, have been reduced to players in the human theatre of amusement and entertainment. Zoos are well-kept prisons. Even game reserves are large stockades. Animals are no longer our kin in the wild because we ourselves are no longer wild. So in our world, one made up of commodities, animals are commodities too. That is their role. They are by-products of our culture. They are cartoon characters, not living beings.It is one indication of the crisis in civilisation. How can both environments, habitats, wildlife and civilisation be simultaneously sustained? This is the challenging question that won’t go away. We have seen in the past how destructive man can be. The Highlands were once forested from sea to sea. Today only 1% of the Caledonian Forest is made up of native-growth trees. Nearly all the original trees have been destroyed. These days when one sees the bare hills and mountains of the Highlands they look natural to us in their treeless state. They are not. They are a violated landscape.But things change, including human awareness and outlook. We have never known more about the natural environment and natural history than we do now. Plenty of people understand and care, committed to helping how they can. Volunteerism is on the rise, as is eco-tourism, a wonderful source of revenue that helps wild things stay wild. We have finally come round to understanding that we cannot live without wilderness and wild things in our lives. They are a vital part of our heritage as a species, and if we lose them we lose important parts of ourselves in the process. So, conservation benefits all — the environment, habitats, wild things, us, the earth.The Highlands are part of a cautionary tale. They represent a model of how we might proceed to make a better world for our offspring, just as wild creatures do for theirs. Ours is a great responsibility. Like it or not, it’s ours and ours alone. Are we mature and wise enough to fulfil it? That question will be shortly answered this century.

...If you know where to look!’And these cameras certainly knew where to look!The stunning photograph of the red squirrel, by Neil McIntyre, on the front of the box is an accurate pointer for the treats in store on this superbly presented Blu-ray...'As seen on the BBC'.♦ HIGHLANDS: SCOTLAND'S WILD HEART♦ BLU-RAY♦ ITV STUDIOS GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT♦ © MARAMEDIA LIMITED/2016♦ ONE DISC: 236 minutes (4 parts x 59 mins)♦ SUBTITLES : ENGLISH HOHFrom the back of the box:‘In the North of Scotland, far from the bustling cities and gentle hills of the South, lies Europe’s greatest wilderness – the Highlands of Scotland. Scoured by ice and weathered by storms, it may look bleak and lifeless, but wildlife is thriving in this unforgiving place. If you know where to look!In this stunning four-part series, narrated by Ewan McGregor, we meet ospreys, red squirrels, otters, dolphin and golden eagles – all struggling to turn adversity to their advantage and make a success of living in Scotland’s living Wild Heart.’Breathtaking scenery, the appropriate tone of narrator Ewan McGregor throughout and the most beautiful atmospheric music makes for a 5-star combination, in my book. The latter complements without distracting, IMO. It is occasionally suitably moving, sometimes pleasantly jiggy (with a faint hint of Peter Gabriel’s ‘OVO’ ~ 'The Show’, at the Millennium Dome, springing to my mind, at times).I believe that the music was specially composed by Donald Shaw & Simon Ashdown for the series and I sincerely hope it will become available separately like the soundtrack from  Hebrides: Islands On The Edge .With spectacular camera work, including some super-slow motion, we see all sorts of gems of nature with the first three parts dedicated to the seasons (Autumn & Winter are combined) and the fourth ~ the measures that are being taken to protect the future of this truly majestic area:✩ SPRING - SEASON OF EXTREMES'It's late March in the Cairngorm mountains and the hills are on fire! Old heather is being burned in readiness for the grouse season. Traditionally, this inferno marks the end of winter and the start of spring in this wilderness. But spring is the most unpredictable of all seasons here. Ospreys, red squirrels, dippers, capercaillies, roe deer and bottlenose dolphins have struggled to find food and raise their young while coping with the extremes of wind and weather.’✩ SUMMER - THE GREATEST RACE'Summer is the most intense of all the seasons in the Highlands. Animals are in a great race to raise their young to independence before the nights close in and the storms of autumn arrive. Some, like otters and pine martens, are single mothers working ceaselessly for their young, while others, including golden eagles, work in pairs to look after the chicks. Most spectacularly of all, young guillemots on dramatic Handa (an island off the west coast of Sutherland) face a leap for life as they tumble to the sea from 400ft cliffs.’✩ AUTUMN & WINTER - AGAINST ALL ODDS'It's a still, clear autumn day in Glen Affric, in the North West Highlands. The forests are flushed with gold, but it's a shallow beauty that marks the beginning of the Highlands' longest, darkest and most overwhelming season.Animals that can't migrate to milder climes have to be equipped to deal with an all-out assault from the weather. Reindeer, ptarmigan and mountain hare are all adapted for these arctic-like conditions, but this turns out to be one of the snowiest winters in living memory, driving the animals of the Highlands to the absolute limit.’✩ THE HIGHLANDERS'The Highlands may appear a wild and unforgiving place, but for millennia people have lived alongside wild animals here, sharing the same weather, seasons and landscapes. For many years, the impact of humans on the landscape has been damaging, with forests cut down, seas warming and many iconic species like the wolf and bear vanishing.But now things are changing and people are working to put back what we've lost. Humans are finding ways of protecting the Highlands' precious ospreys, eagles, red kites, seabirds and dolphins. Never before has so much work been done to restore the wild Highlands to its full glory.’

Authors managed to create something about nothing. A couple of birds, a squirrel, an osprey, a cat and a few insects - that's, basically, it. Nothing unique or distinct, but very well filmed nevertheless. Perhaps too many repetitions - the same footage is seen over and over again, but the music is good, narration is perfect, and overall quality shows that a good story can be told even about forsaken wasteland, such as Highlands.

Wonderful photography and excellent narration. The Highlands have seldom been filmed with so much detail and even a "native" like me learns new and interesting facts every time I watch. (I watch quite often -- especially when I'm homesick.)

This is a wonderful 4 part series shown some time ago - and repeated recently - on the BBC. Absolutely no political bias shown in this programme; just a celebration of Scotland's iconic wildlife at its best, and not a midgie in sight!Euan McGregor's understated, almost reverent, commentary only adds to the enjoyment. I can, and will, watch this series over and over again.

Great dvds, brings back a lot of happy memories of holidays with my late husband, especially Falls of Shin, where his ashes are scattered.

Have been to visit the Cairngorms National Park and is great.Lovely to see again and especially the Ospreys and Squirrels which didn’t see much of when there.Well worth a watch

Beautiful Video with extremely vivid action shot. Places you would never to be able to see the animals and birds and scenery on two DVDs.See the Osprey and Golden Eagle in magnificent Flying display into the water to catch fish, see the full stretch of their wings as they carry the fish in their lethal talons and getting airborne again. Must for animal and bird watchers. Great to watch.