‘It’s a special place’: Somerset Levels star in new David Attenborough series

Dawn breaks and four-spotted chaser dragonflies take to the air above the Somerset Levels, skimming the reed beds and dark, peaty water.

They are agile flyers but still a target for the hobbies, nimble falcons that have migrated from Africa to the south-west of England for the spring and summer, and swoop in to grab the insects in their talons, ending up with soggy tail feathers but a good meal.

This scene may prove to be one of the most memorable in Wild Isles, the new Sir David Attenborough series beginning on Sunday, which gives the epic Blue Planet/A Perfect Planet treatment to the flora and fauna of the UK and Ireland.

A hobby hunts for dragonflies on the Somerset Levels. Photograph: BBC

There will be no lions, herds of wildebeest and grasslands that seem to go on for ever but, the BBC argues viewers will realise that places such as Somerset are as rich in their own way as the Serengeti.

During a brisk walk on the RSPB’s Ham Wall reserve on the Somerset Levels this week, where the hobbies v dragonflies shots were filmed, Chris Howard, one of the series producers, explained why the comparison was not as outlandish as it might at first seem.

“We don’t have huge herds of grazing animals, we don’t have lions or cheetahs but this is rich and diverse ecosystem. It’s a special place.”

The four-spotted chasers won’t emerge until next month and the hobbies are still winging their way here but even during this cold, wet snap, the Levels were bursting with spring life.

The eerie booming call of male bitterns, rarely seen herons, were echoing across the marshes; great white egrets built nests in the reed beds; a male marsh harrier displayed high above the reserve.

Bird spotters hurried past to get a glimpse of two rare visitors – a glossy ibis (another heron-like bird) that had arrived from south-west Europe and a lesser scaup duck blown in from North America.

Howard, who spent three years working on Wild Isles, said filming in the UK had presented challenges. The weather for one. “When you go to the Serengeti or the Arctic you know pretty much what you will get. Not so here,” he said. There tends to be more red tape in the UK and Ireland than many far-flung locations. “You get more of a free rein in some other places,” he said.

Simon King, who captured the hobby and dragonfly images. Photograph: BBC

Then they had the challenge of finding animal behaviour to film that had not been seen before. So the bitterns of the Levels did not make the final cut because another BBC show, Springwatch, had covered them extensively. “There’s a misconception that this series might have been easier,” said Howard. “Actually it may have been the hardest.”

Simon King, the camera operator (and Serengeti veteran) who filmed the hobby sequences – which will be seen in episode four – spent countless hours over four springs and summers capturing the scenes.

“It is one of the most astonishing feats in the natural world,” he said. “The dragonflies are diving, twisting, bouncing off the water surface but this glorious, mercurial falcon has the ability to grab this insect and it all takes place in the blink of an eye.”

He wanted to film as low as possible so took to the shallows. “In April it’s not warm and I sometimes had to stuff water bottles down my waders to keep things working.”

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King, 60, grew up on the Levels and has seen disastrous changes owing to intensive agriculture and industrial-scale peat extraction but he remains optimistic that there can be a bright future, a key message of the Wild Isles series. “We have the potential to restore this nation not to its former glory but to a future glory. We can do things differently,” he said.

The Levels are a good example of what can be done. Steve Hughes, the site manager at Ham Wall, explained how after the site was passed to the RSPB in 1994 after decades of peat extraction, it created pools and reed beds in an attempt to attract the bittern, which was threatened with extinction in the UK.

In 2008 bitterns bred for the first time and there are now 40 or 50 booming males in the area. The egrets, the dragonflies, the hobbies all came along too. Hughes raised an eyebrow at the Serengeti comparison. “But creating these large-scale landscapes will help restore some of what has been lost,” he said.

Julie Merrett, senior reserves manager at Natural England. Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/The Guardian

Ham Wall is part of the newly designated 6,140-hectare (15,000-acre) Somerset Wetlands National Nature Reserve stretching from the marshes around Glastonbury to the edge of Bridgwater Bay. As well as reed beds and marshes, it features wildflower meadows, shady, wet fern woods and salt marsh.

“We’re thinking big, trying to create these larger wild areas,” said Julie Merrett, the senior reserves manager in Somerset for Natural England. She hopes other birds will be tempted in such as the white-tailed eagles, which have been re-introduced to the Isle of Wight, and expects beavers will find their way on to the Levels.

She is delighted the Attenborough series will draw attention to UK and Irish landscapes and wildlife. “I’ve been wanting them to do this for ages,” she said. “People don’t know that they have at home. We have brilliant places here we that we need to value more.”