Natural World (1983) s25e02 Episode Script

This is Tarka country, North Devon, immortalised by the author Henry Williamson in a much-loved story about an otter who lived and died here.
He was called Tarka, which was the name given to otters many years ago by men dwelling in hut circles on the moor.
'It means Little Water Wanderer, or, Wandering as Water.
' Almost 80 years have passed since Tarka The Otter was written.
What has become of the otters who inspired this famous tale? I am a film maker and, like Williamson, I have long been fascinated by otters.
I've always wanted to follow in Williamson's footsteps and search the River Torridge for Tarka's descendants, those otters that he studied while writing the book.
What is life like for an otter cub growing up on this river now? Some things he saw, I can only imagine.
Otter-hunting was then common and Williamson learned much about otters from following the local hunt.
By the bank, 50 yards below Elm Island, stood the Master, looking into water six inches deep.
A fern frond, knocked off the bank upstream, came down turning like a little green dragon in the clear water.
It passed.
Then came an ash-spray, that clung around the pole he leaned on.
Its leaves bent to the current it swung away, and drifted on.
And then the lovely sight of an otter moving with the stream, slowly smooth as oil under the water.
'A 20-pound dog,' thought the Master, remaining quiet by the shallow water listening to the music of his hounds.
The hounds splashed past him, stopping to the scent.
Tarka's head showed, and vanished.
He swam under Rothern Bridge, whose three stone arches, bearing heavy motor-transport beyond their old age, showed the cracks of suffering that ferns were filling green.
A line of coarser bubbles breaking across the stickle, where six men and two women stood in the river.
Tarka's head looked up and saw them.
The water was threshed in a line from shillet-bank to shillet-bank, but he did not turn back.
As he tried to pass between a man in red and a man in blue, two pole-ends were pushed under his belly in an attempt to hoick him back.
But Tarka slipped off the shillet-burnished iron and broke the stickle.
'The whips ran on the bank, cheering on the hounds.
' In Williamson's day, this stretch of the river, described in such loving detail, was an otter stronghold.
But had they survived? In the 1970s otters nearly became extinct right across Britain, not because of hunting but because of pollution.
It was the hunters who were the first to notice and the hunt was quickly abandoned.
Little else about this stretch of the river has changed.
A quarter of a mile below Rothern Bridge the river slows into the lower loop of a great S.
It deepens until half-way, where the S is cut by the weir holding back the waters of the long Beam Pool.
'Canal Bridge crosses the river at the top of the S.
' And this is where my search began, curious to see just how accurately Williamson had described otter life.
Can I find Tarka's descendants nearly 80 years later, get to know the otters as he had done, and can I film them? I began in the winter, focusing on the stretch of the River Torridge where his fictional otter, Tarka, was born and died.
For weeks I searched for signs and found nothing.
Then, finally, an otter's fresh tracks.
I felt more confident that sooner or later I would see one.
I had filmed otters on the coast in Scotland, but these river otters were so much more elusive.
But it was to be a few more weeks before I had a breakthrough.
My first sighting.
Because it was small I thought it was probably a female, but it was too fleeting to be sure.
No sooner had I found her than I had lost her again.
A ghost on the river.
Over the next couple of months I was lucky to get a glimpse, let alone a shot.
The otter is one of the hardest animals in Britain to film.
Then my luck changed.
The sightings became more regular.
A pattern emerged.
At around nine o'clock most mornings, I would spot an otter heading upstream from the tidal zone down in Weare Giffard.
It would swim under the railway bridge and head upriver.
I presumed this one had spent the night feeding in the estuary and was on its way to bed.
Beam Weir is an ideal place to spot otters.
I would station myself there and then I nearly always lost the otter in the deeper water above.
But it wasn't just one otter.
I had started to get shots of at least two.
This really large dog otter exuded confidence.
I wondered if this was his territory and how many fights he had had.
There was also a very small female who seemed more nervous.
I began to see the small one more and more regularly.
She looked young.
She would go to great lengths to avoid me, crossing fields or diving deep under the water, although she was often betrayed by a bubble trail.
She only ever regarded me from a safe distance.
Days would go past and I wouldn't see her.
I was amazed at how Williamson could have known so much about the secrets of otter life.
I started to look for her at night.
I had the benefit of modern technology - infrared cameras.
She was much easier to film in the darkness.
One night I watched as she met up with a dog otter, presumably her mate.
In the book, Tarka and his mate White-tip played all night, tumbling in the water.
My two were doing just the same.
Next morning I saw them again, two otters moving as one with the water, the racing chain carrying them to the estuary for a mating feast.
Tarka and White-tip had stayed together through the winter, but my two for just a few days.
March winds brought the grey sea-rains to the land, and the river ran swollen, bearing the floods of its brooks and runners.
Salmon, languid from spawning, dropped tail-first over the sills and down the passes of the weirs Tarka caught them easily in the eddies and hovers, and dragged them to the bank.
In Williamson's day the Torridge was one of the greatest salmon rivers, but now far fewer come home from the oceans to breed.
Otters normally eat live prey, so I was surprised to find her scavenging a dead salmon.
As spring progressed, I found it increasingly hard to film her.
She would appear at Beam Weir any time of day for a short period and feed intensely on eels.
She wasn't the only one.
Eels are the otter's favourite prey.
I also saw her eating trout, roach, tiny bullheads and frogs.
Sometimes she would be so intent on the eels that she would forget about me, but she would still make the effort to lose me before returning to bed as soon as she had a full belly.
She seemed hungrier than ever, but she never stayed for long.
What was going on? As I watched, I wondered if this female might be in a rush to return to cubs, and if so, they must be nearby.
In the mud below Beam Weir, tiny paw prints.
Cubs.
My suspicions were confirmed.
A day later I found her with a cub, nervous and in a hurry to move it along.
It seemed around eight to ten weeks old.
Otters aren't born with a natural aquatic ability.
They have to learn it.
It certainly couldn't copy mum's dive.
It was comical just how clumsy it was in the water.
The cub tired quickly and they soon vanished under a sycamore tree opposite the cow-drink.
Was this their holt? I settled and waited quietly.
Later that evening my patience was rewarded.
She headed back down towards Beam Weir with not one but three cubs.
They were too small to cope with the current, looked terrified and stayed close to the bank.
They reminded me of Williamson's description of Tarka and his family.
One, a small male, had fallen behind the others.
He was easily distracted, just like Williamson's Tarka as a cub on his first journey.
Noticing his absence, she called to him with the trademark otter whistle, cleverly designed to carry over the crashing water of the weir.
Reunited, the young family headed down river.
I was fascinated by the small male.
Had I found my modern-day Tarka? They showed no respect for the sharp beak of a fellow fisherman.
Old Nog the heron lost any chance of fish.
So, 80 years later, a new Tarka is born on the same stretch of river.
As well as Old Nog, other characters from the book were living nearby.
The Halcyon bird that regarded the young cub Tarka with a beady eye still nests in the same sandy bank that Williamson wrote about.
The exact spot where Tarka was born.
Over the next few weeks, the male cub and his two sisters grew quickly and gained confidence in the water.
Now they were easy to follow because they made such a racket, usually whistling for the male cub who was nearly always left behind.
I would usually find them soon after dawn, as mum was taking them down river fishing.
A couple of hours later, the expedition over, they would reappear again, playing and squabbling.
Mum would try to round them up.
She was heading for bed in the cow-drink holt.
Like any youngsters, bed was the last thing they were interested in.
Finally, she would manage to get her boisterous family over Beam Weir.
Summer was moving on.
There's one annual migration Williamson's Tarka didn't have to deal with.
Tourists.
Hordes of them.
Each year they head for the Tarka Trail.
But otters are so secretive that most people will never see one, even when it's right under their nose.
Although I came to the river every day, I didn't see my young family for the whole of July.
I spent the height of summer searching the rivers and estuaries for signs, but found none.
But I couldn't give up and like Williamson 80 years before me, I fell in love with this place.
At the beginning of August, one of the strangest and most primitive visitors to the river appeared.
The lamprey, sucking its way upriver to spawn.
While I waited for otters, I had plenty of time to observe their nuptials.
I wasn't alone.
I was often joined by the large dog otter, who made the most of the feasting opportunity.
But still there was no sign of the family.
I was concerned to find out what had happened to the cubs, but had run out of places to look.
What would Williamson have done? He would have consulted the hunt.
He didn't like hunting but knew that the huntsmen were a mine of information.
I'm glad the hunt stopped, but we did lose a connection with this hidden creature.
I looked at the old hunt records.
They said that mothers take their cubs up the side streams.
So I went away from the main river.
These streams were very different.
Much more private.
Sure enough, I soon found spraint marking the territory, a sign that my quarry was here.
And then finally, after weeks of worry, the sight I'd been hoping for.
But she was alone.
Had something happened to the cubs? Anxious to find out, I stayed.
As it grew dark, more of Williamson's characters revealed themselves.
Old Brock, whose nightly forays took him across the stream on this badger bridge.
Suddenly, there they were.
I counted four heads.
They were all busy hunting.
They must have been lying up here during the day, but now they led me back to the main river.
They had grown quickly.
Now they were strong and swift.
An efficient unit.
As they swam, they were bombarded by the bats that Williamson called aerymice.
Up above Canal Bridge, they fished.
I had missed a lot.
They were at least four months old now and could catch some food for themselves.
Some things hadn't changed.
While the sisters stayed together, the young male, my Tarka, was exploring alone.
He only betrayed his lack of confidence by his constant whistling for mum.
All the cubs were still dependent on her.
They had a lot to learn before they could fend for themselves.
Like his namesake, this Tarka was overwhelmed with curiosity, investigating everything.
I followed them all night, longer than I'd ever done before, until they disappeared into a holt.
Mum didn't seem bothered by me, which gave me the confidence to try and film inside the holt.
I carefully hid cameras in a hollow willow tree where otters sometimes slept.
Just before dawn a few days later they returned.
I had no idea if her acceptance would go this far.
If she returned to the holt and my scent was all over it, she might simply march the cubs to another hiding place.
It worked.
For the first time I saw otters inside their home.
It was like a scene from the book.
Mum was peering out of the willow window for a sign of Tarka.
Why wasn't he with them? Had his curiosity got him into trouble? All the girls were now present and correct and they indulged in a spot of rubbing to get dry.
I felt much the same as mum, unable to settle.
I headed back to the main river.
It was easy to find the missing cub.
He was making such a noise playing in the fast-flowing water.
But while his siblings slept the deep sleep of the exhausted he was busy exploring.
The sun was almost up when Tarka made his way up the brook, waking everybody in the process.
The beauty of Williamson's book is that it is so close to the truth.
He had never seen inside a holt and yet he managed to describe it so accurately.
Thanks to my cameras, for the first time I felt I knew my real otter family just as I knew Williamson's fictional one.
I was gaining a more intimate understanding of these animals than I'd ever dared hope.
Again and again I'd find myself marvelling at how beautifully his words captured the spirit of the river.
The shock-headed flowers of the yellow goat's beard, or John-go-to-bed-at-noon, had been closed six hours when a grey wagtail skipped airily over the sky-gleams of the brook, flitting from stone to stone, whereon it perched with dancing tail and feet.
The water reflected the colour of its breast, paler than kingcups.
It skipped to the ripple line to drink.
Two sips had been taken when it flew up in alarm The brook swirled fast by the farther bank, under the sycamore it moved dark and deep.
From the water a nose had appeared and the sight of it had alarmed the wagtail.
Two dark eyes and a small brown head fierce with whiskers rose up The wagtail was still watching as two heads moved across the pool and a third behind, slightly larger, for Tarka followed his sisters.
My modern-day Tarka did indeed follow behind his sisters.
He was always behind because there was always something new for him to sniff.
Towards the end of the summer, when the tourists began to drift away, mum brought her family out in the day more often.
Now that the cubs were stronger, they were more adventurous.
Their focus was on learning to find food, searching under rocks for the bullheads and loaches underneath.
Because his sisters were always playing while he was learning to hunt, Tarka's skills were more advanced.
He was reaping the benefits.
I could see the beginnings of a dog otter.
He was well on the way to growing up.
Dimpsey, the Devon word for twilight, when day and night hunters meet, seemed to last forever in some of those summer evenings.
I would usually pick up the otter family near Beam Weir.
They knew me well enough to carry on regardless and now didn't show the slightest bit of interest at my presence, let alone concern.
I loved it when they were fishing and I could watch them as they slowly worked up and down river.
Mum always seemed to think ahead, planning where they would fish and where they would sleep in the morning.
When she had a specific destination in mind, she wouldn't let them stop, no matter who was in the way.
They would either wait or sneak around.
I thought it was because they were so used to me that they were casual, but on several occasions I witnessed them treating other visitors with the same diffidence.
It was an arrogance born of the fact that they could become invisible at any time they wanted.
My Tarka was getting the hang of it but the sisters still had a lot to learn.
He was acquiring the cunning of maturity while the sisters splashed like children.
He moved slowly as an eel moves, as smooth as the water and with sinuous ease.
Now the only sign of his presence was a snaking bubble trail.
A tiny wavelet moving along with the water, then nothing, in water no deeper than a boot.
As he moved without a trace past the fisherman's feet, between him and his fly, not even a ripple would prove his presence.
Like his namesake in the book, as he grew, my Tarka was becoming more restless.
The last to go to bed, the first to get up.
He was becoming more and more independent.
Life was more laid-back for his sisters.
They were still constantly playing.
Inside the holt, mum was also more relaxed and was teaching them how to wrestle.
Over the weeks, this game got more intense.
I wondered if it was preparation for fighting in later life.
Each of these girls would have to find and hold on to a territory some day.
I found my Tarka in the half-light as the sun struggled to meet the horizon.
He seemed very interested in a moorhen.
I privately thought waterfowl might be a little ambitious for one so young.
Later that day I found him eating a moorhen.
Once again he had surprised me.
The sisters had developed a close bond.
They were always together playing.
For some reason, Tarka never joined in their games.
I was sad to think that they wouldn't all travel together like this for much longer, but I didn't realise that this would be the last time I would ever see them as a family.
Tarka was about to leave.
September came with rain.
I hadn't seen so much all year.
The weir in flood was an immense loom the down-falling water warp was whitey-yellow with bubbles Below, the bubble-woven waters leapt and roared and threw up froth and spray.
The railway bridge loomed low and black against the glimmer of sky and water.
This was the biggest flood I had seen.
I had no idea where Tarka was but I had found his sisters.
They were struggling, clawing up the sides of the bank as the river threatened to sweep them away.
I was worried about them.
Their holts were all flooded.
All the normally safe places had disappeared.
They had become so exhausted that they needed mum's help just to keep afloat.
But one creature was enjoying the frothing waters.
I found him fit and frolicking.
He was stronger than his sisters.
Just like the Tarka in Williamson's book, he was lured by the flood water.
Here was a survivor.
Yellow from ash and elm and willow, buff from oak, rusty brown from the chestnut, scarlet from bramble - the waters bore away the first coloured leaves of the year.
Beeches preserved their tawny form in rain and hail, but yielded more and more to the winds.
Sandmartins and warblers deserted their old haunts, kingfishers and herons remained.
The reeds sighed in the songless days, the flags curled as they withered, and their brittle tops were broken by the rains.
By early November, salmon and sea trout were leaping.
Feverish to spawn, they were throwing themselves at the weir in their effort to breed.
For the talented fisherman, a feast.
The cormorant had caught a sea trout and, not to be outdone, Tarka was diving into the swirling waters and in no time had caught his first salmon.
But it wasn't all good news.
The salmon had attracted the big dog otter back to this stretch of river.
I was concerned that he might not be so tolerant of another male who was almost fully grown.
This was his territory.
He would protect it aggressively, even against his own son.
Then, in late November, I received terrible news.
A young male otter had been hit by a car and he was covered in serious bite wounds.
Perhaps he was escaping from a fight.
Was he being chased from the river when he ran into a danger he didn't know? Was it my Tarka? I couldn't tell.
I searched the river as far up as the moor, desperate for any sign.
Williamson had written that Tarka died under a pack of hounds, a marathon hunt lasting eight hours and 45 minutes.
Perhaps my Tarka had met a much more modern fate.
Through the depths of winter I revisited all the familiar locations, always looking for just one otter, until one day in March.
Tarka's descendants are making a comeback.
The rivers are cleaner and otters are protected by law.
Williamson's otters faced the hunt.
These days, roads are the greatest threat.
Henry Williamson was so obsessed with detail that he wrote, I have walked over every yard of the country described, once with a measure tape.
80 years on, I have found Tarka the otter's descendants thriving in Devon and been astounded at just how close to the truth his book is.
But it's time for me to leave.
The joy of finding Tarka is matched by the sadness of saying goodbye, but like his namesake, this otter has to begin a new chapter of his life.
Tarka was alone, a young male of a ferocious and persecuted tribe whose only friends, except the Spirit that made it, were its enemies - the otter-hunters.
His cubhood was ended, and now indeed did his name fit his life, for he was a wanderer, and homeless Already his mother had forgotten, and perhaps would never again remember, that she had loved a cub called Tarka.