Life in the Wild: Entering the magic world of wildlife filming

I stopped the car and looked across the estuary. It was early and with not a breath of wind, the slack tide was like a mirror. Tiny ripples of light indicated where the birds were active. A heron stabbed at the water catching a fish, male Eider ducks cooed and bobbed their way along the water line, goosanders flipped and disappeared under the surface. I instantly fell in love with the place.

This was my very first documentary film as a freelance. It was for BBC Horizon about Aberdeen University's Culterty field station at Newburgh's Ythan estuary in the north east of Scotland. I knew nothing at all about wildlife. I even had to identify birds I was seeing from the hide in a bird book.  The film was called 'Ythan Estuary, One of Nature's Hotels'. The field station gave me free reign with lots of help from their technicians. Throughout the year I filmed the guys working away in the sand dunes and on mudflats. 

At the time I was also very interested in wildlife art and in particular Scottish artist, Archibald Thorburn. His much sought after watercolours had a particular perspective that intrigued me. Ducks and waders were always in-situ, you could see where they were in relationship to the background, that's what I tried to do, get close to the birds with a wide lens. 

Filming from a hide was new to me and I had to experiment with different ideas so that I wouldn't frighten the birds away. One thing I learned very quickly was the birds have to come to you. I would make a note of where the waders were at a specific spot at a specific time and tide of the day. Then when the birds had moved on I would set up a hide and next day go in before they arrived, that was the theory.

One morning I nearly died trying to get close. Inchgeck is a small spit of land that becomes an island at high tide in the middle of the estuary. I erected a hide the previous day. The plan was to get onto the island while the tide was rising. Under cover of darkness in the early morning I would not disturb the birds as they gathered for the high tide roost. 

There was a full moon and I set off wading through the water carrying all my equipment. I was halfway across when clouds covered the moon. It was as if someone had switched off the light, there was total darkness and I had no torch. I stopped for a moment as the water rose pressuring the sides of my thigh length waders. 

There could only have been an inch or so before flowing over the top. Had that happened I wouldn't have been able to walk at all. The load I was carrying was getting heavier so I decide to proceed in the direction that I had been travelling, reasoning that I should be reaching the other side soon. 

The pressure on the top of my waders increased and it was becoming uncomfortably close to the rim. I felt some water enter and so I stopped. I hadn't learned to swim then. Eventually the clouds parted, lighting the water and revealed that I was actually walking out to sea. Shaking, I turned sharp left and reached the island, getting safely inside the hide just before dawn. 

There have been a number of occasions throughout my career when I've taken what I thought was a calculated risk but that frankly, was just plain daft. That was definitely the scariest, stupidest thing I had done, up until then. 

On the island the result was a brilliant sequence of close up shots of waders and cormorants only a few feet away. Was it worth the risk? Maybe, but I wouldn't try it again without a powerful torch. Later that afternoon when I finished filming I walked back across the same channel. The water was high again and my waders filled up with icy water numbing my feet so that I couldn't feel the ground I was walking on. It was a long way back to the car and my toes stung with pain as I thawed them out with the heater.

Photo: Collected

Of all the strange places I have changed film magazines, the weirdest one was in Orkney in the far north of Scotland. I made the mistake of leaving the black light-proof bag back at the hotel a couple of hours drive away. Faced with the prospect of a long drive I searched Kirkwall's narrow flagstoned high street for somewhere that might have a dark room. Then I walked into a bank.

"Excuse me," I said. "I'm part of a film crew filming in Orkney and I don't happen to have my black bag, do you have any room that is light proof or maybe one I could make light proof."

It was an unusual request and the woman behind the counter smiled and turned to a colleague. She turned back to me.

"I think we've got just the place," she said standing up. "Follow me."

She took me through a corridor, opened a door and inside a room was a giant walk-in safe.

"How long will you be," she asked, switching on the inside light.

"About five minutes, why?"

"Because I have to lock you in."

She locked me in with a clunk and a whirring sound as I opened my camera case. I switched off the light and loaded two mags then switched the light back on. While waiting for her I looked at what was on the shelves. There were bundles of high value notes stacked up everywhere and what looked like sheets of penny black stamps. I was amazed at the trusting nature of the bank staff. Fancy locking a complete stranger inside a bank safe stuffed with cash. They didn't even check my camera case on the way out. I hope there are no potential bank robbers reading this.   

Lit by the headlights of a council snowplough, wind whipped the snow horizontally across the guide poles indicating where the road was. It was how I imagined the arctic to be.  Stuart Nimmo, a BBC film editor/director, was driving a snowmobile pulling a sledge with me in it lying face down, looking backwards. 

I was filming the oncoming snowplough with lights blazing as we headed for the Lecht ski slopes. We were in snowbound Corgarff cut off from the rest of Aberdeenshire by strong winds and snow filled roads. I accepted without question that he knew how to operate the Skidoo but I did wonder how experienced he was as the blades of the plough got closer. The headlights reflected off the snow showing the V shaped blades streaming tons of powdery snow to both sides. It was spectacular. Working out of BBC Aberdeen, Stuart lived near Corgarff and coming from the south of England, spotted the potential of a good documentary. 

At that time the community had no power despite the march of power lines across the landscape. They had to rely on oil-fired generators and each other in times of need such as the conditions we were experiencing. The film was called 'What Do You Do All winter' chronicling a way of life that has long gone. There was a very efficient bartering system in place where a couple of snared rabbits could be swapped for a couple of pints of beer or chopping logs for a neighbour could be rewarded with a hot meal. 

Many years afterwards I wanted to do a follow up when they were eventually connected to the grid to show the comparisons but the film had disappeared. A historical document was gone. 

"Mike there's a train full of passengers that's lost. It's been caught in a snow drift somewhere between Inverness and Wick, come in to Beechgrove." 

Bill Hamilton's call from the BBC newsroom was terse and to the point, he ended the call without waiting for a reply. It had been a particularly bad winter with very heavy snow and high winds causing massive drifts. The police and rescue services were so stretched that they prioritised the many stranded motorists on the A9. Mountain rescue teams had to dig through twenty foot deep snow drifts to get them out. They didn't have the resources to locate the train and rescue the passengers. I arrived at the BBC newsroom in Aberdeen and everyone seemed to be on the phone. 

"We'll need a helicopter," said Arthur Binnie to me, still holding the telephone. "What about PLM in Inverness?"

PLM was a small company run by pilots Dave Clem and John Poland of Local Hero fame. 

"The Jet Ranger is too small and won't fly in bad weather," I said. "The only helicopter that will fly in all weathers is a Sikorsky S-70, They ferry personnel to the oil platforms offshore." 

Within an hour we were taking off from Dyce heliport heading north. The storm had abated temporarily allowing us good speed following the railway tracks and then we reached Forsinard and saw the train stuck in deep snow. They had been stranded there for two days with no food and fuel. We circled it a couple of times filming. 

The people were dirty, cold, exhausted, scared and hungry. There was no jubilation or cheering, they didn't have the energy, they stood silently watching as the helicopter settled creating a blizzard of snow. As it cleared, what struck me as most odd was the lack of emotion. They seemed to have accepted their fate and us arriving in a helicopter was just part of that. 

While we were filming Bill's piece to camera, women and children were being loaded onto the Sikorsky and airlifted to safety. When it returned, the pilot said the storm was closing in and it was time to go. We packed as many people in as we could, there were no seats let alone seatbelts, and took off.  I later discovered that those who boarded the helicopter didn't know it was the BBC that rescued them. When I look back on that day it seems surreal, like a dream.