CELEBRATING AUTUMN'S BEAUTY

                 

The first frosts of winter are biting as I write and the most glorious season of the year is falling slowly to the ground. Thank heaven that the natural cycles of life continue, in spite of man’s best efforts to destroy our planet. 

‘COP26’ has just passed and left me and many other caring folk disappointed, even angry, fearing that the reality of all the world’s leaders’ decisions is ‘COP-OUT’! Some good decisions were made but will it result in action? As our amazing Queen eloquently said “The time for words has moved to a time for action”. I pray that at least some of the promises are honoured.

Anyway, I’m not going to bang on about the politicians’ failures now, that can come later because celebrating the beauty that surrounds us in our gardens is a much needed antidote. 

Sue and I are very lucky to have our little wildlife garden and I’m sure we are not alone in noticing how colourful this autumn’s trees and shrubs have been. 

All the pics that follow were taken on our patch during the last few weeks and illustrate just how delightfully mild the weather has been this November, so we’re still blessed with butterflies, bees and hoverflies visiting our asters, dahlias, salvias and hebe’s.

 

Being a gardening beginner, I find it fascinating to learn about the origins of our colourful plants, the hebe for instance being a native of New Zealand, South America and even the Falkland Isles. 

 

Still flowering outside at the end of November, even after the frosts the red admirals and peacocks are finding they provide lots of nectar as last minute sustenance before they hibernate in our old sheds and log piles. 

 

 

Also vital to the late season pollinators are the ever popular dahlias. Natives of the high hillsides of Central America and Mexico [it’s their national flower], there are forty two species and long ago, the Aztecs grew the tubers as food, a crop that only died out after the Spanish Conquest. There were attempts to farm them in Europe but those plans failed, a relief as we can’t admire them if we eat them! 

This one is Bishop of Canterbury. We had originally planted that all time favourite, the Bishop of Llandaff but the slugs eat them, so we planted this one in a pot and it’s been blooming wonderful for months, only ceasing to attract carder bees a couple of weeks ago. 

The blousier bloomed dahlias are spectacular but the single flowerers like the ‘bishops’ are the ones that provide a banquet for hungry buzzers. They love ‘em! 

 

Regardless of where plants come from, we like planting the garden so it provides food for wildlife, such as our colourful cotoneasters. 

When the migrant blackbirds arrive from Europe, they home in on any tasty snacks, though the red berried beauties come from further afield, the mountains of southwestern China and the Himalayas. 

 

 

 

Our robins joined the party recently and have almost stripped the plants bare already, so fingers X’d the winter isn’t cold enough to leave them short of food. 

Our ripening grapes proved attractive to the many red admirals but once the squadrons of blackbirds arrived, they were scoffed in no time, though not before we had harvested some bunches for our wine. Sue has prepared the brew with added brandy and it’ll be ready for quaffing in six months time, by which time the blackbirds will be singing and when we’ve tasted it, so will we. 

 

Our dahlias have closed for the winter, unlike the sparkling salvias that remain open for business, the cobalt and sapphire jewels so uplifting as the days shorten into winter gloom. This one is called 'Blue Butterflies'.

Flowering long into the autumn, these beauties are vitally important to our carder bees, providing a last supper before they hunker down together, two hundred or more protected from the chill in their dense grass nests. Note to self - don’t ‘tidy' the garden too much, if at all!  Red admirals love nettles, so leave them be.

As all passionate gardeners will know, there are hundreds of different salvias, nearly a thousand throughout the old world and Americas, in central and eastern Asia and the Med, even high up in the Andes mountains. [This wind swept red bush isn't a salvia of course but anathrophillum desideratum with a Patagonian Andes background].
 

First named 'salvia' in Roman times, the meaning is‘to feel healthy, to heal’ and being the largest genus of plants in the sage family, along with rosemary, maybe the Romans knew about the culinary delights and health benefits of the common sage and other herbs in the kitchen. And us humans aren’t alone in eating them, for as already mentioned, many salvias are meccas for pollinators, one of our favourite salvias being ‘Amistad’, still flowering outside at the end of November, even in this Arctic blast. 

Apart from salvias and dahlias, I guess the most admired of the autumn ‘show-offs’ are the maples or Japanese Acers, the majority of the 132 species hailing from Asia, with others flourishing in Europe, N.Africa and N.America. 

So admired are maples that tourism thrives due to Canada’s fall colours, their national flag incorporating a stylised maple leaf. They are also admired for the sap from some species producing that sweet maple syrup. 

Another colourful highlight in our garden are the American Sweet Gums whose fragrant sap provides its name ‘Liquidamber’. Aren’t they gorgeous. 

As in Canada, Japan has leaf watching traditions and customs with festivals attracting thousands of admirers from around the world. 

There are now so many varieties and cultivars of Acer Palmatum that Sue and I are tempted to add one or two new ones to our woodland garden every year but in the meantime, we simply sit and admire the spectacle that they treat us to every autumn. Good for the soul!

 

And with the magic of winter and the arrival of geese from far northern lands to look forward to, we have lots to celebrate, even if the problems faced by nature seem depressingly insurmountable. 

However, we have the power to help ease the problems of climate change and our gardens are a good place to start. And if all of us plant them to help wildlife, we WILL make a difference. So chin up, spring is on the way!

SAVING WILDLIFE - SNOW LEOPARD

“Some parts of our planet are so brutal that any animal surviving here acquires an almost mythical status.
 

This is the greatest mountain range in the world - the highest, the toughest, the most hostile - the Himalaya. Towering above India’s northern borders, these remote mountains are home to what may be the most glamorous animal on earth.

Just to see one is a dream, to film one nigh impossible - this ghost like creature is the Holy Grail - the ultimate wildlife challenge - the snow leopard”.
 
 

Those above are the opening words of narration for my film on this legendary cat, the first ever attempt at making a film about them. I have always loved cats and having made films about lions, leopards, tigers and mountain lions I had to try an even greater challenge. However, having read lots of scientific research and books, I was in no doubt about just how difficult it was going to be.

Recognised by many as the world’s pre-eminent field biologist, George Schaller described the mountains in which snow leopards live as “a land of just enough” and that refers not just to the animals but the human inhabitants too.

 The tracks of a snow leopard can be seen on the right of this photo and shows just how difficult it was to follow them with camera gear.

Like many mountain adventures, our quest was to end in tears and triumph and for one of us, the dream became a nightmare, his determination driving him close to death, no surprise I guess when trying to conquer this Everest of the natural world.

Ex Australian marine Mitchell Kelly was my main cameraman and in the first couple of years he achieved great success. For instance, snow leopards had never been seen mating, let alone filmed but Mitchell rose to the challenge and succeeded, along with many other firsts. We also managed to film a lot of intimate scenes and got to know how and where they moved around in their precipitous terrain.

However, he had to be evacuated from the mountains three times, once for torn stomach muscles from carrying heavy camera equipment up steep mountain sides, then more seriously, from altitude sickness twice, the last time nearly killing him. It was an immense relief that he survived but from then on the film became a damage limitation exercise.

We had already suffered tragedy when my original colleague and close friend on the quest, Chip Houseman was killed in a Thai Airlines crash just days before we were due to start filming. We had made an Academy Award winning film together on tigers in India and it was during the filming that we hatched a plan to tackle this unconquered challenge.

 

This is not going to be a story of how we made the film, even if we did manage to complete a film about these beautiful cats and learn a lot about how they lived in the unforgiving Himalayas of Ladakh in NW India.

I would lay awake at night, not because I couldn’t sleep in a tent with a broken zip in minus twenty temperatures but because it was the best time to hear the mating calls of the cats. Their high pitched screams would carry a long way through the valleys and give us an idea of where they were located and interestingly, those descriptions by mountaineers thinking they were hearing the yeti calling in the night were actually snow leopards!

I met an English school teacher in Bhutan who described seeing a yeti in a snowstorm on a high pass. It stood by the road edge looking at him, similar to a large grey langur monkey but more like human size, then shuffled off into the trees. When you consider that Bhutan is covered by 60% of dense forest and bamboo and impenetrable, it is easy to hide a large primate from prying human eyes. So yeti’s do exist!
 

That’s a story for another time, so back to snow leopards and our struggles to film them and though our story only scratched the surface, the film was shown on prime time ITV and around the world to big audiences. However, our main achievement was to prove to the wildlife film-making world that snow leopards could indeed be filmed and like my previous story about pumas in the Andes of Patagonia, several film crews followed.

Most notable was cameraman Mateo Willis, the son of a great friend, David Willis who took the wonderful Radio Times pic. I was able to help Mateo a bit on location details etc. and he and his colleagues from the BBC filmed some amazing behaviour for David Attenborough’s series ‘Planet Earth 2’ and if you saw it, you would never forget. The images of three snow leopards and their violent behaviour as a mother defended her cub from an aggressive male were magical.

The result of all this filming success in our chosen valleys in Ladakh is the direct way it has saved snow leopards from persecution, for just as with my pumas, tourists want to see the mythical cats. The local people are as delightful as humans get and were extraordinarily helpful during our filming and they have since become the perfect hosts for tourists seeking snow leopards.

This is our terrific team of Ladakhi helpers who were wonderful companions, some of whome are guiding tourists up there right now. The high ridge above them was a favourite patrol route for snow leopards in the evenings - sometimes!

Attracting tourists was the brain child of the world’s leading snow leopard scientist, Rodney Jackson [who is on the right of our happy snap] and who took this picture of our star cat with his remote cameras. He rightly argued that if the wildlife was worth lots of dollars to the rural economy, they would be looked after by the locals instead of persecuted for killing their sheep and goats. So he encouraged the locals to set up ‘home stays’ for tourists in the tiny mountain villages near the main travel corridors of the cats.

 

One entertaining story from the village which I'm assured is true is of a young girl who took out the family's sheep and goat herd for their daily feed int the hills. It wasn't long before a snow leopard rushed out of the mountain side and grabbed a sheep and the girl, instead of running away, rushed forward and grabbed the other end of her sheep. A tug of war followed and eventually the snow leopard let go and slunk away into the mountains. One sheep saved by a young girls bravery!
 

My friend Mateo Willis who filmed the wonderful snow leopard behaviour for Attenborough’s ‘Planet Earth’ close to this village told me recently that the remote mountains where we filmed in the ’90’s have now become a honey pot for wildlife seeking visitors from abroad and the valleys are full of tents and telescopes. 

 

He also said that the cats have become more tolerant of humans, just as our pumas did in the Andes Mountains and this has now made them easier to see. So it's a win win result all round.

Given the recent skirmishes between the Indian and Chinese armies on the Ladakhi border nearby, this tourist hot spot wouldn’t be a healthy place to be right now, but we are praying that all the snow leopards survive and flourish as they have done these last few years.

 

 

Our films legacy was a small contribution to start the ball rolling in environmental tourism in our chosen patch but you could argue that the peace and tranquility of the area has been spoilt. Maybe George Schaller would think that ‘the land of just enough’ has become ‘a land of too much’, but a lot of wildlife has been flourishing, including the rare and endangered snow leopard and this in turn has allowed many folk to enjoy seeing this mythical creature for the first time.

Given the increasing climate crisis makes me wonder if an increase in wildlife tourism is such a good idea but that’s a debate for another time. However, it’s a likely truth that if wildlife isn’t worth money it’s unlikely to survive and for better or worse, that’s a contribution that television has made a reality.

The wonderful drawings of snow leopards are by that leading artist Gary Hodges, so thank you for sending them to me Gary.

WILDLIFE FILM-MAKING - an introduction

two of the stars in our leopard film for the BBC - "A Darknesss in the Grass" - 1985-6

CHAPTER 1

For most of my life I’ve enjoyed the privilege of travelling to some of the remotest corners of the world to film wildlife.

a polar bear hunting the pack ice at midnight for our BBC series of three films "Kingdom of the Ice Bear" - 1983-85

Wildlife has been a passion of mine since childhood and after leaving film college in 1965 I started a career making films with the BBC Film Unit. I left in 1973 and since then have been lucky enough to spend nearly fifty years out in the wilds with some wonderful animals and people.

the Andes Mountains in Patagonia can be a violent place, the wind lifting water off the surface of lakes

happiness is being high up in remote places

However, if you look up Hugh Miles on the internet you’d think, judging by the pictures that all I ever do is go fishing … if only … but it’s simply one of many hobbies I enjoy, gardening our two wooded acres being the most time consuming, especially as a stream flows though our patch and we’ve created five ponds.

'home sweet home' ... and always a joy to return to my family after weeks in the bush

So if this blog is going to be representative of my life it might be a good idea to start telling a few more stories about the animals I’ve been lucky enough to live with. But before I do, I’ll add a few words about my blog.

Since I started writing it has so far conjured up over 206,000 views from all over the world and I find it unbelievable that it has attracted so much interest. I know this number is only small beer compared with many blogs but 200,000 seems like a lot of readers. I’ve written five books but maybe this beats them for readership.

Unexpectedly, only 50% of readers come from the UK, for the USA contributes 25,000+ and most surprisingly, Russian viewers sometimes outnumber those in the UK. Other unusual countries include China, Brazil and South Korea though what they see in it I can’t imagine.

However, if my ramblings about wildlife, gardening and fishing are enjoyed by so many, I’m delighted because I simply love telling stories ... and some of them are true! For better or worse it’s in my blood and friends and family keep on insisting I should share my adventures. So if you keep on reading, I’ll keep on writing.

barnacle geese nesting in the remote north east of Greenland, filmed for the BBC's 'Ice Bear' in 1984

My job as a cameraman/producer required me to ‘live on the edge’ and I’ve always admired that famous ‘gardener’ who restored the glories of Heligan, Tim Smit because he believes that “if you’re not living on the edge you’re taking up too much space".

Ladakh in the Himalayas - filming for ITV's "Searching for the Snow Leopard" and usually only seeing footprints - 2001-04

camera 'traps' enabled us to identify individual cats. This was our territorial male called Mikmar at 15,000 feet

I’ve been trying to live on the edge since the 1970’s, so writing ‘tales from the bush’ seems like a natural extension to my past life creating stories for television. Writing a blog combines words and pictures, is a lot quicker, cheaper and easier than making films and in spite of the limitations, it seems like a reasonable alternative … but where to start?

glacier ice is always wonderful, whatever the continent ... and it sure is exciting when large lumps break off

It could be the Arctic or Antarctic, Svalbard or South America, Alaska or the Himalayas, New Guinea, even the UK … but I’d hate you to think I’m attempting to win ‘bragging rights’. I’m no publicist and quite shy but I’ve been extraordinarily lucky and consider every film I made a privilege because being able to live with charismatic animals and many marvellous folk is indeed a treat.

the Himalayas become ever more inspiring the higher you climb - filming for the BBC/David A's "Planet Earth" - 1982

the Impayan Pheasant is Nepal's national bird, also called appropriately 'the bird of many colours'

I have more than my fair share of special memories and even if I’d prefer to use my remaining time on this planet living in the present and future, recalling past adventures is enjoyable too.

the star when filming our BBC leopard film called "A Darkness in the Grass" - 1985-6

I thought I might start with a few stories about filming leopards in East Africa but on reading through my journals I’m finding that we had so many exciting moments it’s creating too many words. So by way of an introduction, I'll start with a few pictures from some of my more 'significant' films and carry on writing about leopards another day. 

As any photographer will have already noticed, I'm not a 'proper' stills photographer because if something good is happening I need to have the film camera in my hands to capture the action. Compromising the quality of the movie isn't an option so I've never taken many stills. Those I do are strictly happy snaps but don't get me wrong, I love taking pics but don't have the fancy cameras with auto focus etc. In fact, most of the pics are taken before the digital age on slide film using cameras that should be in a museum.

Anyway, the first major wildlife film I made was when I was head of the RSPB Film Unit. I'd 'done' blue tits and other cute birds more than enough so for one of the most exciting birds in the world I needed to look no further than the osprey. 

mum with two cubs almost ready to fly - one of several intimate moments filmed from the top of towering scaffolds

Such is the birds charisma that if I could nail some spectacular fishing dives and intimate scenes at the nest I stood a chance of being noticed by the BBC Natural History Unit and after two challenging but ultimately successful years my reputation rose like the ospreys splash and on completion, I joined the ranks of the self-unemployed. I hoped I didn't prove to be unemployable.

As a postscript, the film eventually sold to over forty countries so it turned out to be a nice little earner for the RSPB. As a staunch supporter since childhood, I was well pleased.

strike action! ospreys are such exciting birds and filming them for my RSPB movie was memorable - 1977-78

a suitably friendly greeting on the first of many visits to Africa

What followed was remarkable, for within days of finishing filming ospreys in Scotland I was on the plane to East Africa to film lions hunting in the wonderful Ngorongoro Crater. It was for one of the BBC's most famous series ever, "Life on Earth" and was their final shoot, for they had failed to capture the sequence twice already. No pressure then.

dinner time for the pride but for the wildebeest within a few hours, it's dust to dust

In spite of eight years at the BBC Film Unit in London filming all manner of progs like Beethoven and Dr.Who, along with five for the RSPB, I was still a comparative novice in the wildlife filming business so it took a deal of courage on the part of producer John Sparks to trust me with such an important shoot. My contract was for a month but within two weeks I was back home, a mixed blessing as I'd just spent over £20,000 on camera equipment and only received two weeks pay instead of four. However, my reputation was enhanced, for we'd filmed the lions making a double kill on the first day, another kill to match it on the second, then captured the rare sequence of two male cheetahs catching and killing a wildebeast. It was a remarkable run of good fortune and it's been downhill ever since!

a big fat mum with her little fat cubs - and filming for the BBC's legendary series "Life on Earth" was complete - 1978

 

As a result of the outstanding success of 'Life on Earth', these were exciting times, for in the early 80's we were entering the era of what became known as 'Blue Chip' movies ... the best that money could buy, with bigger budgets and huge audiences. I'm told by a friend that was at last weeks Wildscreen Festival that the pressure on budgets is such that they have now been renamed 'Blue Cheap'!

eight feet of towering bird above me -1978-79

I was hoping the Beeb would eventually trust me to shoot a complete film and surprisingly, within three days of finishing 'Life on Earth' I was back in East Africa to make a film about Ostriches for David A's BBC series "Wildlife on One". As a general rule, ostriches only attract 'walk on parts' in movies so anything interesting I filmed would likely be a 'first'. They would be a considerable challenge and I was acutely aware that if I didn't get any film I wouldn't get to eat. At least they couldn't fly away like ospreys but they could certainly walk and for the first four days they did just that ... away from me.

 
In the end I found a way of getting them to trust me and the result was a fascinating film that won me the Panda Award for best photography at the first ever 'Wildscreen', the world's leading wildlife film festival held every other year in Bristol. There was an amusing twist to this result because the prize was either the processing and printing of enough film for a half hour movie - very valuable - or an inflatable dinghy - more exciting. My son Peter was gutted when I returned home without the boat!

our male standing guard over his eggs and hatching chicks

You can just see my camera at the bottom of the nest but lying there with a wide angle lens carried a risk, for ostriches have a reputation for disembowling intruders, even lions. At first he would thump the ground forcefully and flap his wings in anger but I held my nerve and luckily he eventually trusted me enough to allow me to film intimate scenes without getting a good kicking.

our lady with her creche of chicks

My wildlife career was developing nicely but it takes a deal of courage on the part of producers to trust me to deliver the goods.  Several commissions came my way which I'll skip for now because for a few years otters became the focus of my life. 

at home on the wild and windy shores of Shetland

In the early eighties the Shetland Isles were one of the few places that otters could be reliably seen and it's difficult to believe that they were pretty much 'extinct' in most English counties. This 'rare' animal had never properly been filmed because they were regularly persecuted ... until the seventies hunters in Shetland received a bounty, so I had a big challenge ahead ... nothing like being thrown in at the deep end to film 'impossible' animals.

what a privilege it was to film these beautiful animals in Shetland's wind and rain ... though the sun did shine too - 1980-85

I only had one sighting in the first ten days but eventually won some success by habituating a particular female that after several weeks trusted me enough to be close to her and her cubs. 

seriously cute or maybe not? - three plus months of 'playful' but eventual killers

She would even swim up to me, so it was a magical experience and over about four years I made three films about her, the first of which was an Attenborough BBC "Widlife on One". As otters had hardly ever been seen on TV it was an extremely popular programme and garnered an impressive audience of 17.3 million.

they were always fond of lumpsuckers, a big meal and easy to catch

I took loads of pics of her and the cubs because I decided to write a book about living with these wonderful animals in the farthest corner of the British Isles. 

Now they are everywhere in the country and it's ironic that instead of the long journey to the Shetland Isles I can now film them in our garden in Dorset, eating our fish! Their recovery is one of conservations' greatest success stories, though I doubt many ducks and fish think it's cause for celebration.

These early successes with my filming meant that the world was opening up for me and next up I was lucky enough to be picked to film another extremely popular three part series for the Beeb,"Flight of the Condor". It was the pan pipes that done it!

the Andes Mountians in southern Chile - one of the most stunning locations to film in the world - 1980-82

Torres del Paine National Park is home to many condors and was our filming base for a few weeks  © Laurie Campbell

The three films told the story of an exciting journey from the very tip of South America at Cape Horn following the Andes Mountains all the way through Peru into the Amazon Basin in far off Equador.


One of the most exciting moments when filming in the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile was the brief sighting of a puma. This lit a fire so inspiring that I made a vow to return one day to try to make a film about these elusive cats.  

my star cat 'Penny' the puma that I lived with on and off for more than two years -1993-5 ... © Laurie Campbell

However, I didn't make it back until 1993 and I've still only reached 1980 in this introduction, so that and many other films I made in the next decade will have to wait until another day because it's very autumnal and I need to be in our lovely garden right now. I'll pen another introduction to more stories in due course, so in the meantime, if you're interested, watch this space.