Original subtitles

(BIRD CALLING)

♪

For most of European history,

Ireland was the very edge of the world.

A remote green land looking out into the abyss.

The great ocean that stretched into eternity.

And off Ireland's north and west coasts,

were the most extreme places of all.

Rocky citadels that were the very first

to face the Atlantic storms.

♪ (MUSIC SURGING)

Whoa!

These savage islands were sought out

by a handful of humans looking for God and refuge.

And by wild creatures in search of shelter and food.

♪ (TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC)

My name is Eoin Warner and I've spent my life

travelling the length of Ireland

in search of its precious wild places

and the elusive animals that make them their home.

(SEAL CRYING)

(ANIMALS ROARING, CRYING)

But I've always wanted to explore

the most remote places of all and on this journey

I'll be sailing out into the Atlantic -

to the hidden worlds on Ireland's Wild Islands.

(BELLOWING)

(BIRDS CALLING)

(WATER GURGLING)

♪ (UP-TEMPO MUSIC)

Fair Head on a fair day.

Fair Head is a giant wedge of volcanic rock,

on the coast of Northern Ireland

and about as far from home as I can get on this island.

For I grew up in West Cork on Ireland's southern tip

and this far north is unknown country to me.

But I'm not travelling alone.

I'm travelling with a saint - Naomh Sinach.

Naomh Sinach Mac Dara is the patron saint

of seafarers in Connemara.

He has power over the wind and on this little voyage,

I need all the help I can get.

Barely 25 kilometres from Scotland,

this is where my journey begins.

From here I'll head west into the setting sun,

exploring the wild islands off Ireland's north coast

before turning due south and down our Atlantic seaboard,

ending my trip in more familiar territory,

the southern rocks and islands of my home County Cork.

But that's a long way off yet.

The very first step on my Atlantic journey

is Rathlin Island.

♪ (TRADITIONAL MUSIC)

Rathlin is the largest island off Ireland's northern coast.

With over 40 shipwrecks on the seabed round here,

It's no wonder it ended up with not one,

but three lighthouses.

Away from the coast,

Rathlin has a sheltered, gentle personality.

But head to the north side of the island

and it's a very different story.

Up here you'll find one of Ireland's

most spectacular wildlife spectacles.

The sea stacks and bird cliffs of Kebble.

(MID-TEMPO MUSIC ON FIDDLE)

(BIRDS SQUAWKING)

Rathlin Island is a beacon for seabirds

from all over the North Atlantic.

(LONG, DRAWN-OUT SQUAWK)

For there is one time in the year,

when these open ocean dwellers need dry land.

(CHORUS OF SQUAWKING)

(FURIOUS SQUAWKING)

There's over a quarter of a million seabirds

nesting around Rathlin Island.

(BIRDS CALLING, SQUAWKING)

It's just... fizzing.

The place is fizzing with energy.

Like... it's just magnificent.

What I've really come here to see,

are the baby guillemots.

And one of the most dangerous leaps of faith

undertaken by any animal on the planet.

(WAVES CRASHING)

The first three weeks of their lives

are spent on tiny ledges,

trying not to fall off.

(LOUD CAWING, SQUAWKING)

But then the day comes

when Mum's behaviour suddenly changes.

She stops feeding her chick

and as it gets hungrier and hungrier,

she tries to lure it to the edge.

There's only one problem.

The chicks can't fly.

(MUSIC DARKENING)

These little balls of fat and fluff,

they're coming to the edge, they're looking over it

nervously. And you can see in their little faces

how vulnerable they feel,

how... how scared they are to face that huge jump.

The chick's mother keeps encouraging him to the edge.

(WAVES CRASHING)

It's over 100 metres to the water.

From the waves below,

his father calls up to reassure him.

(WAVES CRASHING)

Finally, the moment of truth.

♪ (MUSIC PLAYING)

♪ (MUSIC DARKENING)

But his troubles aren't over yet.

After the biggest jump of his life,

now he must now swim for his life.

(WATER ROARING)

(SHRIEKING, CALLING)

♪ (MUSIC BUILDS AGAIN)

(BIRD CRYING)

(YELPING)

Many don't make it.

(SQUAWKING)

(SING-SONG CALLING)

(CHIRPING)

Others land among the rocks below.

Unharmed but not out of danger.

Here, they're extremely vulnerable

and are an easy meal for the gulls.

From the water, her father calls.

Desperate to make contact.

(INSISTENT CHIRPING)

She hears him and calls back.

♪ (HOPEFUL MUSIC ON BANJO)

(CHIRPING)

♪ (MUSIC PLAYING)

(WAVES CRASHING)

Finally she makes it to the water.

That very tender moment, it's just special

when you see them just going off, facing into the open ocean.

Two little black dots on top of the cresting waves.

♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS ON BANJO)

Many chicks jump in the dark,

when there's less chance of being attacked by gulls.

So the jumping continues

all through these short summer nights.

(GENTLE CHIRPING)

But come late July, the cliffs are falling quiet.

The last jumplings heading out

for their very first winter at sea.

(WATER LAPPING)

Rathlin is believed to be

the very first Irish island to be settled by humans,

with the earliest pioneers

crossing over from Scotland 8,000 years ago.

Rathlin was at the very heart

of the ancient Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riada,

encompassing the coast of Antrim

and the west coast of Scotland.

And it's had a really chequered history.

It's been a place of refuge

but also a place of massacre.

It was here on Rathlin Island

that the Vikings first attacked Ireland in 795.

And to add insult to injury,

they use it as a base then to control the Irish Sea.

If these cliffs could speak.

(BIRDS CALLING)

I'm on the hunt for a shape-shifter...

.. a witch in deep disguise.

Mists, caves and lakes were gateways

to the Celtic underworld.

Through these portals,

female spirits could enter our world,

and take the form of this animal.

The Irish hare.

♪ (LIVELY MELODY ON FLUTE)

Ever since I've been a child,

I've loved that intimate moment that you have with a hare

when you accidentally flush it from its form, from its nest.

And then you reach down and you can touch and feel

the shape of the hare.

You can feel their warmth.

♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES)

Superstitions apart,

it is something very special

to see these beautiful creatures on an island, off an island,

off the far edge of Europe.

Birds can fly to Rathlin,

but creatures of the Earth had to find another way.

♪ (MUSIC BUILDS TO STOP)

But maybe they're not creatures of this Earth.

In Irish mythology, witches turned into hares

so they could creep up on cows

and steal their milk and butter.

And shadowing the cows in these fields,

is a very strange beast indeed.

The Golden Hare of Rathlin.

♪ (MAGICAL SOUNDING MELODY)

The very first Golden Hare was seen here in the 1970s.

Some jumble of genetics has given Rathlin

a truly unique animal

found nowhere else on the planet.

And there's something so regal and noble about any hare,

but to see a Golden Hare standing on its back legs,

almost sizing you up

and those striking blue eyes are just fantastic.

A blonde bombshell of Rathlin Island.

And just for that moment you have that connection

and then they're gone.

♪ (MUSIC QUIETENING)

(FLAPPING)

(ROPE KNOCKING ON BOAT)

During both world wars,

these northern waters became critical shipping lanes

between America and the Allies in Europe.

German U-boats lurked everywhere.

Huge numbers of ships were lost

as torpedoes and bad weather took their toll.

♪ (MYSTERIOUS MELODY ON PIANO)

The Lochgarry was a troop transport ship

that sank in 1942

when she hit rocks off Rathlin.

23 lives were lost on that day.

Further west, HMS Audacious lies more than 60 metres down.

She hit a German mine in 1914.

Her giant guns, now silent.

These wrecks are a magnet for marine life.

Coal fish, Catshark and lobster take every advantage

of the countless nooks and crannies on offer.

In death, the ships bring new life to these waters.

(WATER LAPPING)

Saying goodbye to the northwestern end of Rathlin.

Saying goodbye to the little jumplings.

I'm really happy to have the first island under my belt

and to have the summer sun in my face,

it's just a great, it's a great start.

That's if the wind picks up and I actually start to move.

So I can eventually leave Rathlin Island behind me.

At the rate I'm going, I'm probably gonna end up

in Scotland rather than in Inishtrahull.

Inishtrahull is my next island

and lies just off the most significant landmark

on this entire stretch of coast.

Malin Head - the northern tip of mainland Ireland.

Legend has it that the waters off Malin Head

would fill with so many sea serpents

that you could walk over their backs to the islands offshore.

In recent years there have been curious sightings here,

suggesting there could be some truth

behind this massing of monsters.

♪ (GENTLE MELODY PLAYING)

Once hunted to the edge of oblivion,

some old friends have returned.

(MUFFLED SPLASH)

I've seen many strange animals in my life,

but these giants have swum

straight out of prehistoric times.

Basking sharks have hardly changed in 35 million years,

so they must be doing something right.

Basking sharks are the second biggest fish on the planet.

And they survive on some of the smallest life

in the ocean - plankton -

sieving 2,000 tonnes of water an hour

through their giant gills.

I've been trying to swim with basking sharks for years,

and every year, they've eluded me.

I've always been a day too late.

And it's unbelievable when you see

how incredibly large they are.

In spring, they appear like phantoms off the west coast

and then slowly work their way northwards through the summer.

slow being the operative word.

But very occasionally, for reasons unknown,

they get notions.

They head for the sky.

♪ (MUSIC BUILDS)

This breaching behaviour is very rarely seen

and, like so much about them, little understood.

♪

It was always thought

that basking sharks overwintered out in the deep Atlantic.

But recent research has cast new light

on their hidden lives.

Many spend the winter just off Ireland,

but in black water down a thousand metres or more.

Others head west to America,

or south to Africa and beyond.

Inishtrahull is coming up on my port side

and with it has come the wind.

And along with it, a decent swell,

so I'm kind of surfing and sailing at the same time.

Woo, this is fun.

(CHUCKLING)

Oh my God. Woohoo.

Wahey!

The rocks that make up Inishtrahull

are a third as old as the planet itself.

1.6 billion years,

the oldest rocks in Ireland.

(BIRD CHIRPING)

On a day like today I couldn't think of a nicer place to be,

but in the heart of winter, the darkness, the wind,

the wildness,

it must have been a raw rock to live on.

So the last island I was on, Rathlin,

it's still got that manicured feel

because people are living on it.

And funny, when you're walking through

the little houses around here and they're just crumbling away,

you can see that as soon as people leave,

nature takes over and bit by bit

our mark on the landscape just begins to fall away.

It just starts to feel wild.

Until 1929, up to 80 people lived on Inishtrahull,

scraping an existence through farming and fishing.

Today Inishtrahull is deserted.

(BIRDS CALLING)

Sometimes I think we look for wild places,

but realistically there's very few wild places left.

You know, the touch of humans are everywhere

and I'm starting to think now that it's not wild places,

it's people-less places,

places where there are no humans.

That's what makes it different.

That's what gives us that strange, I suppose wild magic.

(BIRD CALLS ECHOING)

(SPLASHING)

These are Eider ducks -

source of those most famous of all feathers - Eider down.

Eiders are Arctic birds,

found all around the world at northern latitudes.

I love their calls -

it's like they're constantly surprised to see each other.

(COOING, EXCITED CALLING)

In spring, the gaudy males display

for the attention of the ladies,

fighting rivals and showing off their wares

to the far less colourful females.

(LOW, FUNNY CALLING)

A fleeting affair, and the job is done.

(BIRD SQUAWKING)

Because these islands are uninhabited,

there's no ground mammals like rats or foxes

to predate the eggs and that's why they choose

these out of the way places.

♪

They have this really cosy eider down

underneath their breast feathers.

She plucks these feathers from her breast

just to line her nest.

I think when any of us think of being in a nest,

we think of something that's really comfy and cosy,

but there's nothing as cosy I'd say,

as being in an eider duck's nest.

Literally these ducklings

have the bed of a king underneath them.

Mother duck will sit on the eggs for nearly a month

and won't feed in that entire time.

She may leave briefly to get a drink,

maybe once a week.

Otherwise she just sits tight,

minding her precious cargo.

Through thick and thin.

(WATER SPRAYING)

Like imagine sitting in one place for nearly a month,

without eating. That ultimate sacrifice

to hold back, to give the next generation

the best chance of survival. That to me is really beautiful.

(WAVES CRASHING)

Coming to this island has been like a pilgrimage

but also a waiting game,

waiting to see the ducklings when they hatch.

And for that you just need patience.

And ever since I've been a child,

that's one thing that nature has taught me

and that is just patience.

(WAVES CRASHING)

At nighttime myself,

when I'm lying by the ocean,

it's the most beautiful lullaby.

And that's exactly the lullaby

that these eider ducklings are listening to

as they develop within the shell.

(ROARING AND CRASHING OF THE OCEAN)

♪

This is a remote island,

but on the horizon is a reminder

that the surrounding waters are a strategic highway

between east and west.

A huge nuclear submarine from God knows where,

is heading out to sea.

(HARP PLAYING SYNCOPATED TUNE)

These little guys, as soon as they hatch,

they're able to swim and they're even able to dive.

That's no good to you if you're sitting on dry rock

or on grassland, you need to get down to the waves.

You need to get down there as soon as possible.

♪ (MUSIC RESUMES)

The first day of these little ducklings' lives

is their most challenging day.

And almost ironic when you think

that the safest place for those ducklings

is in the crashing waves down below.

(SQUAWKING)

When they're in the open, that's when they're most vulnerable

to predators from the air, to black-backed gulls.

(LOUD, ANGRY SQUAWK)

But to watch that really careful procession

down through these rocks

to reach those crashing waves is something to behold.

And I really hope she makes it because she has put the time in.

(GULL CRYING)

♪

They tend to nest in small, loose colonies,

and when all the ducklings are hatched together,

they form these little nurseries.

(COOING)

They're the cutest little sight when you see them all together,

a whole raft of ducklings.

A little playschool amongst the waves,

learning about life.

(GENTLE MELODY ON VIOLIN)

(OCEAN ROARING)

Such a lovely end to my time in Inishtrahull

to watch the sun going down over the Tór Rocks -

the most northerly part of Ireland.

Ireland is a pretty small place,

barely 500 kilometres top to bottom.

But it's remarkable the difference

that 500 kilometres makes.

Up here feels almost Arctic to me.

It's midsummer and the sun both rises and sets

in open sea to the north.

There's just three or four hours of darkness

and even then it's not complete darkness.

Sail into the setting sun

and the next stop is Greenland.

At certain times of the year,

the night skies here can come alive

with the northern lights.

♪ (LULLABY MUSIC)

A very different world for a southern lad like me

a long way from home.

(WATER LAPPING GENTLY)

(BOAT ROCKING)

A whole pod of dolphins just skipped right under the boat.

♪ (MELLOW MUSIC)

♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES)

♪ (MUSIC FADES)

This boat is a Galway hooker -

a classic traditional boat that for hundreds of years

was used to transport goods along Ireland's west coast

and out to the islands off-shore.

She was built in the late 1800s.

140 years old and doing very well

for such an old girl.

It's like sailing through a picture.

And you rarely get days like this,

where you've got sunlight, the perfect wind...

It's consistent and it's even blowing in the right direction

and I'm getting a straight line into Tory.

Tory Island, the furthest of all the inhabited islands

off the coast of Ireland.

♪

In ancient times, Tory was a pirate's den,

ruled by a one-eyed God king called Balor of the Evil Eye.

It was on this magnificent crag - Tor Mór,

that he imprisoned his only daughter Eithne,

for a Druid's prophecy foretold that if she had a son,

he would kill Balor.

Today part of the headland is still called "Dún Bhaloir" -

Balor's fort.

(BIRDS CRYING)

(SHARP-WHISTLE LIKE CALLS)

Walking down these laneways

and you're just bathed in bird song.

Meadow pipits, skylarks, red shanks, lapwings.

It's almost like a warm duvet of sound around you

on a summer's day.

(DETERMINED TRILLING)

First settled 4,500 years ago,

today around 120 people live on Tory.

While tourism is one of the islanders' mainstays,

peak holiday season is a while away yet.

But some important visitors have arrived.

And their annual stay has made Tory internationally famous.

They've flown from Africa

and will spend the next four months on Tory

before heading south again for the winter.

Elusive in the extreme...

.. you'll be lucky to catch a glimpse.

But you will always hear them.

(CREAKING-LIKE CALL)

(CREAK-CREAK)

Once their calls echoed

the entire length of Ireland's Atlantic seaboard.

But no more.

(CREAKING NOISE)

The Corncrake is now threatened with extinction In Ireland.

Once, so many came here, they were uncountable.

But like all of these little local populations,

they're on an absolute knife edge.

13 males made it this year...

to try and find a female

and ensure the survival of their kind.

(CORNCRAKE CRYING)

Night and day this male calls for a mate.

But have any made it out of Africa alive?

His hard work finally pays off -

a female appears.

With an elaborate display, and some choice gifts,

he tries to woo her.

So rare and elusive are these birds here,

that as far as we know, this is the first time

their mating behaviour has ever been filmed on these islands.

♪ (MAJESTIC MUSIC)

Once mating has taken place,

the male moves on to search for other partners,

while the female is left to fend and nest for herself.

(DISTANT TRILL OF OTHER BIRDS)

(RUSTLING)

Mowing fields with modern machinery

is one of the main reasons for the Corncrake's downfall.

In past times, the hand-cutting of meadows

later in the season allowed the birds

ample time to nest and rear their young.

And one thing we've really learned from the Corncrake,

and particularly in the initiatives

in trying to protect them - is that agriculture and nature

don't have to be mutually exclusive.

We just have to think of our agriculture in a different way

and understand and believe that this isn't our land,

that we're actually sharing it with nature.

And I suppose it's really important

that we can still hear these birds because,

it reminds us of what we had and what we can have again.

(CORNCRAKE CALLING)

(DISTANT BIRD SOUNDS)

(WATER LAPPING)

I'm just coming up along the Donegal coast

and there's a whole flock of Gannets

and they are just like daggers spearheading into the ocean.

(SPLASH)

And it is spectacular,

the way they fold back their wings

to make themselves so aerodynamic

and then they just spearhead into the water.

The perfect 10 out of 10 Olympic dive every single time.

(GANNETS CALLING)

(CALLING GATHERS PACE)

(SPLASH)

The place is just fizzing with life and you can...

.. you can just sense it in the air.

And then you just sail through it and out the other end

and it's just calm, deep blue again.

♪ (UP-TEMPO TECHNO MUSIC)

It's great to finally finish

the first leg of my journey

after coming along the north coast

and in the top northwest part of the country.

So heading south,

and getting closer to Cork and closer to home all the time.

The one thing that is instantly recognisable

when you get to the north Mayo coastline

is that this is big country.

♪ (UP-TEMPO TRADITIONAL MUSIC ON FIDDLE)

And it's made all the more spectacular

when you have the full weight of Achill Island laid out

across the sea before you.

And the most spectacular part

are the cliffs of Cruachán mountain over 2,200 feet high.

The highest cliffs in the country.

This is Mayo's best kept secret.

♪ (DESCENDING NOTES ON FLUTE)

Achill, the largest Irish island of all.

A true Atlantic fortress.

Before the Great Famine of the 1840s,

almost 5,000 people lived on Achill.

Today barely half that number

lives in small settlements and isolated houses

concentrated along the south and east coasts of the island.

Most of Achill is farmland,

open bog and high mountains.

(GULL CRYING)

Achill may be magnificent,

but it's also bare.

The island was once covered in native forest,

but over thousands of years, that was completely cleared,

leaving the vast open hills and bog lands we see today.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

But tiny pockets of deciduous woodland still exist here -

planted by wealthy landowners in the 1800s.

(BIRDSONG)

There's a real magical contrast

when you leave the windswept landscape of the island

and you enter this other world.

It's great.

The lovely rolling notes of wood pigeons

and the melodic calls of blackbirds and wrens.

But then suddenly, the atmosphere changes...

(CAWING)

.. and the songs become alarm calls.

Those initial calls to let everyone know

in the woodland that the predator's nearby.

(TRILLING, CAWING)

And then she just appears,

bursts onto the scene, this ball of energy.

But you only get a glimpse because,

one thing about stoats is that they're always on the move.

And every so often they'll stop to get a better vantage point.

And the first thing that you spot

are those beautiful alert eyes,

black shiny pools of mischief.

♪ (LIVELY, PUNKY TRADITIONAL MUSIC)

This mother is collecting moss

to keep her kits warm somewhere deep underground.

♪ (MUSIC RESUMES)

But they'll need more than moss to keep them going.

I've been watching her now for several hours

and every so often she returns back with another prey item,

another sacrificial victim.

A wild Irish stoat like this

has to use every tool in its toolbox.

They've somehow adapted to use

all the skills that a hunter must have.

They can climb trees to steal eggs and nestlings.

They can swim. The only thing they can't really do is fly.

And even at that they can jump huge distances.

And it's all the more poignant when you think

how little woodland like this we have left,

that these little pockets

where these animals have been marginalised over centuries

are so, so important.

These guys have been pushed to the very extremes to survive.

And these are the survivors.

They just need a little help from us

and they'll do the rest themselves.

♪

(DISTANT SOUND OF BREAKING WAVES)

I think the Irish language found itself in this landscape.

It evolved here in places like this for millennia.

Like even this place, Keem Bay is "An Choim" in Irish,

which is a hollow in a mountain,

which perfectly describes what this natural amphitheatre is.

Keem Bay, often voted one of the world's most beautiful.

But it's a bay with a dark side.

(BIRD CALLING)

For millennia, sharks have been coming to this particular spot.

But humans took advantage of this,

and this quiet, serene looking bay

for decades became the scene

of the most successful basking shark fishery in the world.

Over 9,000 basking sharks were killed here over 15 years,

during the 1950s and 60s.

During the height of the basking shark fishery here in Keem Bay,

there were 45 people employed over three crews.

Each one of them had a hut and they fished 24 hours a day,

right through the night.

(DRAMATIC, MOURNFUL MUSIC)

The focus of the crew was to control the head,

to keep away from the tail

because that's where the power was.

That's where the huge trashing of a fish

that was 30 foot long, 4 tonnes in weight

could upend a boat in no time.

One old fisherman described how

once the eyes of the shark rolled back

and turned white, that the job was done.

(GUNSHOT)

The awful violent end of an animal

that is so quiet, so serene,

and that knows no predators in these waters - except man.

And after a few decades,

the population completely collapsed

and the fishery disappeared.

The last one was only killed here in 1984.

It's amazing how we as a species

have this sense of a God-given right

to take from the environment what we want.

And when we single out one particular species

like the basking shark because of its valuable oil to us,

that we can almost hunt them to extinction.

Despite the fact

that for decades these sharks were hunted,

they still come back to this place.

Nature has this amazing way of wiping the surface clean,

of cleaning itself of that history.

The curve of the coastline, the high cliffs,

whatever it is that draws in the plankton in here,

every summer like clockwork, the sharks return.

(GULLS CALLING)

♪ (MUSIC)