EI Guardian

Natural World: Eagle Island

REVIEWS:

Sam Wollaston
Thursday October 27, 2005
The Guardian

I hate Gordon Buchanan. Not because he's a bad person in any way. In fact,
quite the opposite. I think he may be the perfect man, and I'm just jealous.
He's dark and rugged and healthily handsome, he has a gentle Hebridean
accent, a poetic outlook, and for a living he photographs baby otters. He's
the presenter of Natural World: Eagle Island (BBC2) - or Natural Werrold as
he says it - and I imagine many women watching will have been sneaking
sideways glances over at the slobs sharing the sofa with them. Why can't you
be a bit more like Gordon Buchanan?

Gordon's been away from the Scottish island of Mull where he grew up - the
best place in the werrold - for a while. Now he's back for a year to make
this film about some of the lovely creatures there - the white-tailed sea
eagles, otters, seals and dolphins, basking sharks, maybe even a minke
whale. There's a lot of waiting around involved in filming wildlife, but
that's OK with Gordon; he can use the time to reflect, to appreciate
Scotland's light and landscapes in new ways, to bask in the cloak of
romanticism that his homeland comes wrapped in. Actually I am beginning to
hate him seriously now.

Some of the eagles have nested, there are young mouths to feed. So their
parents go off to fetch dinner. A sea eagle will fly lazily along above the
water, looking down, like a shopper browsing the aisles at Tesco, deciding
what kind of fish to get. Then, when he's made his choice, he just reaches
down and plucks it out, a lovely fresh fish supper. One minute the poor
thing was swimming happily in the sea, the next it's up at the top of a fir
tree having its eyes pecked out by a couple of hungry eaglets. That's on a
Friday, obviously. Other days there might be game - rabbit or hare perhaps.
And on a Sunday, there could even be lamb.

They're massive birds, sea eagles, eight feet from wing tip to wing tip. But
even so a lamb is quite a load to take back home. They look like those huge
American helicopters, carrying enormous hanging cargoes around war zones. If
I had a small baby and I lived in Mull, I think I'd constantly be scouring
the sky. It must be a nightmare, having to go and fetch them back down from
the top of those huge trees, worried sick you won't get there in time to
save their eyes. Or lives.

Otters prove more elusive than eagles, harder to film. Throughout the spring
Gordon can't find a family to get close to. He takes off across the sea, in
his kayak (he's an action man as well as a poet). But all he can find is a
basking shark to play with, considerably longer than his boat. And a school
of bottlenose dolphins, leaping happily out of the water. No otters though.
And it's not much better through the summer. It turns out that the stormy
autumn months are a better time to find an otter than July. As Stevie Wonder
said (sorry). Gordon finds a mother with two young cubs, beautiful animals -
playful, slippery and whiskery. They do aquarobics for Gordon, in the silver
water against the sunlight.

Best of all though are the lonely Mull landscapes, the big skies, and the
seas, whipped up into an angry frenzy by the autumn gales. Gordon loves it
when the weather is rough. To him, the sea always symbolises escape and
endless opportunity. Yes, of course it does. Shut up Mr Perfect, you're
boring me now.

Purchase DVD's and Books of the programmes and series I have edited HERE.