>> Funding for this series has been provided in part by the following.

authentic Ireland travel experiences for over 55 years.

Your Celtic story starts here.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ away from laughter, music, heritage, and the arts.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> On the west coast of Ireland, reaching out into and beguiling landscape -- Kerry the kingdom.

♪♪ ♪♪ We follow this spellbinding landscape through the course of one magical year, discovering how its wildlife has adapted to live in this rugged and diverse region.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Bird chirping ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] >> Winter in Kerry goes on for a good six months, I think.

Feels like that, you know?

When it -- when it eventually wakens up, it is, ah, it's such a relief.

It's just like I'm waiting and waiting and waiting, and then spring happens, and here we are.

And it's just gorgeous, you know?

Spring is like the arrival, and I can feel it building.

It's like the quickening.

If you put your head up against a tree, you can hear the surge of water in the spring coming up through the roots, you know?

in the spring of Here we go again, you know?

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Hen harriers are like ghosts moving through the landscape.

And there's such elegant, graceful gliders.

♪♪ And they really are part of the landscape.

They fit the landscape, and the landscape fits them so well.

Something that has been here since time immemorial.

♪♪ One of my earliest memories as a young lad, actually, one of my earliest memories in life would have been going out watching hen harriers with my dad.

In particular one day, and I was sitting behind him on a grassy bank, having great fun watching and waiting for hen harriers to come in.

♪♪ In particular the sky dance of the male hen harrier, it's just absolutely out of this world, is stunning and spectacular and something that I hope that everybody gets to see in their lifetime.

It's one of the most amazing spectacles in all of nature, let alone Irish nature.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ The male contrasts so beautifully against the bright yellow grass.

♪♪ Absolutely stunning.

Real sign of spring.

♪♪ Then you have the female.

She is a beautiful bird altogether.

She's got these lovely patterns underneath her wings, and the white band where her tail meets her body.

That's a really distinctive of the female hen harrier.

It's amazing, actually.

of years, people thought that there were two different species completely.

They didn't realize that there were actually one of the same bird.

They very much are one of the same package alright.

There's the male and the female with their early season courtship.

Getting all set up for the season ahead.

So she obviously gets to determine the nest location.

And it's a crucial decision in the breeding season, obviously, because it's going to determine how safe they are.

♪♪ They look to find the safest nest location they can because their nest on the ground, so they're vulnerable to predators.

♪♪ ♪♪ To get any young reared is a triumph against the odds.

Because more and more, I guess, these days we're not seeing them.

You know, in most cases the nesting attempts are ending in failure, unfortunately.

And it's always kind of conscious of using that word failure because it's not failure of the birds themselves.

I guess it's because of the -- the landscape, the way it's set up against these ground nesting birds in today's modern world.

♪♪ ♪♪ And so fingers crossed for this pair to have a successful breeding season.

♪♪ >> While the future of the hen harrier is contained in a handful of eggs cradled in a grass nest, on a few magical nights, a breeding spectacle on an altogether different scale takes place.

[ Insects chirping ] >> Kerry is a wonderful, wonderful county for wildlife.

It has so many unusual and rare species packed into just this one county.

So in April everything is kicking off.

Insects are coming out of hibernation.

The dawn chorus is starting to ramp up.

But one thing that's really special is a visit to this fabulous corner of Kerry, hugging the coast to listen to this unique orchestra of sound created by the Natterjack toads.

[ Toads chirping ] Natterjack toads are the only toad species that is native to Ireland, and they're native in Ireland only in County Kerry.

Toads, like all creatures, have ancestors that evolved in the water.

All life began in the water, and they haven't really broken their link with that.

So although they've crawled literally out of the soup onto land where they spend most of their time, they still need to go back to the water in order to complete Their name, actually, Natterjack comes from this sound.

They're said to be nattering.

And what's happening really is that the males are declaring hi, girls, here I am [chuckles] and this is my spot.

Go away to the other males.

And what they're actually doing is breathing and pushing air forwards and backwards over their larynx to create that very characteristic croaking sound.

[ Toad croaking ] So sometimes if I'm early enough, I might just lie out on the grass and they'll just walk right past, intent on getting to the disco, essentially to start beating their chests and declaring where they are and getting down to the business of the night.

And then if a female is receptive, she'll allow the male to embrace her, and he will fertilize eggs as she lays them.

And she lays these long strings, two meters perhaps, with several thousands of eggs.

♪♪ And of course, when those eggs hatch, they're tadpoles.

And then those tadpoles undergo a metamorphosis to become the toads.

And it's only when they mature that they literally crawl out onto land.

So it kind of speaks to the evolution, as it were, that it hearkens back to their distant ancestors, and they're still very related to that.

♪♪ Natterjack toads are actually very rare creatures.

They're probably the rarest of our native animals.

And there's evidence from their genes that Natterjack toads have been in Kerry for about 10,000 years.

So since the ice retreated.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> As the toads breeding pools gradually fall silent for another year, in the woods, Ireland's largest carnivore is just starting to stir.

[ Birds chirping ] >> As you walk through oak woodland, you get a sense of it's very ancient and that all life forms around here have been here a long time.

So there's a lot of animals that call this place home.

The magic, I think, is just the feeling that you get when you walk around.

A feeling of, like, an ancient place, a feeling of like this is not my place.

♪♪ Badgers live in this magical, nocturnal world, and they're always in children's books, coming out from their magical little homes and getting up to all sorts of mischief in the forest at night.

Their true nocturnal animals and they don't have great eyesight, which would be typical of animals that live in burrows.

♪♪ Down here there's a little hole and it's an entrance into a badger's nest.

It's like their front door.

♪♪ There could be like, 100 meters of tunnels, 200 meters of tunnels.

There's a whole world in under here.

♪♪ ♪♪ I've been coming a while now, and I've only seen the adults.

Coming and going in and out of the set, feeding on the wild garlic.

♪♪ The cubs have been underground for the last two months feeding.

♪♪ And I'm dying to see the young cubs emerge for the first time and stick their noses out.

♪♪ ♪♪ infrared technology.

It's an excellent way to observe badgers and learn more about their breeding behavior and their biology.

And it's given me a glimpse into the life of cubs.

♪♪ >> So it's the middle of April now, and cups are probably eight weeks old.

>> They're so tiny.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ That's amazing.

You would never see this without infrared.

♪♪ Wow.

♪♪ The little black eyes, little stripey faces, like perfect miniature versions of their parents.

♪♪ They're funny the way they scurry around.

It's amazing to see them going about their business like nobody's watching.

♪♪ I feel like I'm intruding in their lives, but it's a very important tool to use to learn about their interactions between the generations and to learn more about their breeding behavior and their biology.

♪♪ Scent plays a pivotal role in maintaining badger territories, so they will scent mark everything, including each other.

And they do this thing where they line themselves up back to back and they rub off each other.

So they have little glands under their tails, and they're excreting this special scent that's only unique to their family unit.

♪♪ Even though the female is mating now, she won't actually give birth for nearly a year.

And it's not because she's going to be pregnant all those months.

She's only going to be pregnant for two months, and that's due to delayed implantation.

She might mate with other badgers as well as this badger, and she can hold multiple embryos in her womb.

And then hopefully she'll give birth again in February next year.

And that's timed for when there's an abundance of food.

This strategy to hold on to the embryos is to produce the most genetically diverse cubs.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Part of the magic of Kerry is the constant shifting of light.

In the summer, the light is filtered through the leaves and it's beautiful.

♪♪ ♪♪ I lived out in the Dingle Peninsula, and I remember I'd look out my window in the mornings and it'd be raining on one side of the window and the other side would be sunny.

Even though it might drive us a bit mad, you just never know what's going to happen.

It's kind of part of the magic of Kerry, really.

♪♪ It's always wetter here than most places because of the topography, because of the mountains.

The clouds hit the mountains and they rise and then they release.

And that's why it's so lush.

♪♪ Everything is tactile and soft.

There's a huge amount of nourishment that comes from being in a natural place like this.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] >> When I walk up the mountains in Kerry in the summer, it's so beautiful and vibrant.

The main reason I'm up here in the mountains in summer is because I want to see little red deer calves.

♪♪ Oh, God, the face on that.

Their noses are huge and their eyes are giant.

Like, they're, oh, they're so cute.

♪♪ ♪♪ The ears are very keen to surviving because that little calf there is so vulnerable.

And it needs to hear So they're amazing, though, those ears.

♪♪ ♪♪ So historically, these animals have been living in forests.

They're woodland species, and the dappling or the spots that you can see on the calves would be very good camouflage for woodland light, the dappled light through the wood.

♪♪ Deer need a lot of wood in their diet, and they get that from browsing in the woodlands.

And the problem when we have a lot of deer here and no natural predator, they can and they are overbrowsing and completely ring-barked trees, which means that they can destroy a whole forest by constantly grazing.

♪♪ There are two types of deer here in Kerry.

You've got the red deer, the native Irish species, and then you've got the sika from Japan, which has been introduced.

Both species of deer will damage woodlands.

♪♪ So if there's too many deer and they're eaten all of the young trees, well, that doesn't really bode well for the future of the forests.

So in a way, they've eaten themselves out of their natural home.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ So we want to bring our woodlands back to good condition to sustain a healthy population of our native red deer.

Unfortunately, the sika will have to be removed and they'll have to go.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Summertime, it's very busy.

It's all a go for hen harriers.

♪♪ This is the male bringing in the food now.

♪♪ And the female is just rising up to meet him.

It's something that I never tire of seeing -- the spectacular food passing hen harrier aerial food exchange, and it's one of nature's greatest spectacles.

It's absolutely stunning.

So the female now is bringing that back to the nest, And that's when we know that there's young chicks in the nest.

So that's always a great joy.

♪♪ Male will be seeing off any intruders like hooded crows or ravens or buzzards, even birds that are much, much bigger than him.

He's got a great, brave heart.

And he's going to defend his territory fiercely and make sure it is safe for him and his partner to rear their young.

♪♪ All of those hungry motes are also dependent on the male, while the female stays back at the nest and shelters them from the elements, and also protects them from predators.

So she won't go too far from the nest at all.

♪♪ The whole family is dependent on the male.

He's out there hunting.

He has to not alone provide food for himself, but for his female and also for the young chicks when they come out.

So he's gonna have to range across the landscape in search of food.

♪♪ If it's a good quality habitat locally, he might not have to go too far.

But if it's poor quality and if it's fragmented landscape, he's going to have to travel over hundreds of kilometers every day in search of food.

And that amount of food that he brings back to the nest, that's going to determine how successful the breeding season is for this young family.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ In watching these beautiful birds that I derive so much pleasure, but at the same time, so much heartbreak.

It's almost like being in love with someone, but knowing that they only have so long to live.

♪♪ One of the defining reasons for why I care so much about hen harriers is for what they stand for.

They are what would be called an indicator species.

And if hen harrier numbers are declining, so too are all the other birds.

♪♪ They are indicating the wider health of the ecosystem and the landscape, and indeed they are an indicator of how the landscape is managed and a way of life in these mountains.

I can't watch them and know what is happening to them and not try to fight for their future, you know?

Feel a sense of an obligation, I guess, to help at Kerry.

So places where I would have seen sky dancing hen harriers and what was great spirit there once upon a time, you're just looking at thin air.

You know, it's very, very difficult.

♪♪ >> If there ever was a spirit animal to represent this landscape, it would be the hen harrier.

Yet in less than a generation, we have watched their numbers crash catastrophically.

[ Birds chirping ] ♪♪ In Kerry, we have lost 70% of the breeding pairs in the last 20 years, and in other parts of Ireland we have lost them entirely.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Without urgent and concerted efforts, we risk losing the hen harrier altogether, and with them we would lose part of the soul of this land.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> So we're coming to the longest day of the year now, and it's still really bright, late at night when it's quiet and you can actually see badger cubs playing on top of the set.

♪♪ They play all sorts of games, like chasing, biting each other, and it's a very important part of their development.

They'll use all these skills in the wild then when they're trying to survive every night.

♪♪ ♪♪ A few generations living in this set to actually see them interacting is really wonderful to witness.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] When you're walking through the woodlands in Killarney National Park, you'll see food everywhere this time of year.

So badgers take advantage of that.

And the badgers are feasting themselves.

They're gorging themselves on anything that they can get their little paws on, because they have to put on weight to survive the cold winter months.

So they're taking advantage of the bounty, basically.

Badgers don't hibernate as such, but they do go into a period of winter lethargy where they're quite sluggish, and if the weather is mild, they still come out, they still forage and they patrol their territories.

But if the weather is cold, they'll stay below the ground for weeks at a time.

[ Birds chirping ] It's just so sad and so hard to believe that they're persecuted and culled in the thousands here every year.

It's hard for me to get my head around that.

To me, it just seems like such a violation.

>> Rigorous long term population studies have shown that culling badgers does nothing to mitigate the spread of bovine TB.

It is time to think again about how we live alongside these intelligent and fascinating mammals.

[ Birds chirping, grunting ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Skellig is the most fascinating place.

It's like being on a big ship.

Just rises from the ocean, you know?

And it's just, like, it is a wonder.

It really is a magnificence of nature.

♪♪ There is so much history, and there's a feeling in the rock of people that have lived here throughout the years.

And definitely you feel a presence of the spirituality of the place.

And the nature holds the memories.

I always feel that on the rocks.

I mean, look at them.

There's definitely -- they've seen it all.

They're just magical.

But also, it's not only that.

Like, there's so many different types of life happened here.

Not only the monks living here, also the lighthouse people living here, those children born here.

So there was life, birth and rebirth going on all the time.

[ Animals calling ] It can be very, very harsh.

It's a harsh rock.

I always find that this island is -- it's very -- it's rough, it's rugged, it's tough.

But it is powerful, really powerful place to be.

♪♪ What makes me want to come and live on Skellig, in the middle of the ocean is because of the bird life.

That's what really pulls me to being here.

I've been here on Skellig from April to October for 24 years, and living it with these incredible creatures, living among the puffins.

[ Laughs ] ♪♪ We have a lot of different nesting seabirds, all seabirds actually, bar a couple.

So we have 8,000 puffins on the island, and they're precious to us, little characters.

[ Puffin grunting ] ♪♪ So the puffins here on the Skellig, they come back from the North Atlantic Ocean every April.

They come in mass, in full, vibrant color, and they come back to exactly the same burrow, the same partner, ready for the mating season.

Well, the billing is more kind of an intimate way of communicating.

And they could do that for a very long time.

I think it's an affectionate thing.

They bill with their partner, but they also bill with the neighbors, too.

You know, there's a lot of flirtation going on, you know?

So the puffins here, they start laying their eggs around early May, and then the female or the male would sit on the egg for a good while, and then you can see the changeover.

You can see them popping out and then the female or the male coming back.

So they swap around and sit on the egg.

♪♪ ♪♪ They have that nesting instinct because they come here for the nesting season.

So they're building up their little nests and making their mark in their nesting spot.

They're constantly picking things up and bringing it into their little burrows.

And so they're making it a little bit cozy.

And also they love playing with things.

It's like their little toys, little twigs or bits of flower.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It takes the pufflings six weeks to hatch.

And it would happen from May.

And you see puffins coming back with like a beak full of sprats.

And they can carry about 10 of them in their beaks.

♪♪ ♪♪ When the pufflings leave the island for the first time, they go alone completely.

They leave their burrows.

Often they come from a very high place, and some of them get stuck on the path and they cannot get over the wall.

And if I find a puffling that has been stuck on the path, I pick them up and hide them for the day.

And then I wait until about 10:30 until it's dark and bring them down to the pier.

And I literally open up the box and they are absolutely ready to go.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] ♪♪ At the end of the season, of course, it's a very empty island without the puffins, and I'm very sad that they've left, but I just really also very relieved that they have gone and they're out in their own habitat in the middle of the ocean.

♪♪ ♪♪ The birds are really everything to me.

They're like my family here.

A strange thing to say, but they really -- I feel like I've just moved into their house, you know?

And when they leave in -- in August, it feels like for me that's time for me to go as well.

♪♪ >> Everything was busy and churning and playing in the summer.

Autumn is the abundance of the harvest.

♪♪ Down in Kerry they still have trees, trees that change color.

And you get all these wonderful rusts and oranges and expressions of beauty in the end of things.

♪♪ ♪♪ Like, everything we are comes from the earth.

♪♪ There's a huge network of fungi underneath the soil.

And the fruiting bodies are the mushrooms that we see above ground.

It's the little things that are so special here.

And occasionally you get to see a little bit of the magic.

And this is a puffball.

How cool is that?

>> As the year turns, there is a bite to the air.

The natural world has one last show in store.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> There's a stag right there, and [whispering] he's just sort of eyeballing me.

He's only 100 meters away.

It's absolutely terrifying.

♪♪ That stag is so beautiful.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> So it's autumn time now, and the stags and hinds are in peak breeding condition.

♪♪ The grasses are nutrient depleted at this time of year, and that's a trigger for the female deer to know now that they're at their peak and they're ready to breed.

So when the females come into season, when they're in estrus, that's what triggers the rut.

♪♪ ♪♪ It's one of my favorite places to come see red deer.

It's a very special thing that Kerry has, and it's one of the most wonderful spectacles in the natural world.

♪♪ [ Stag roars ] The roar of the stag is quite something.

[ Stag roaring ] It's a very deep, threatening kind of sound.

Females hear the roar, and naturally they want to breed with the most powerful, strongest roar because they're the biggest.

And they'll have better genes, you know, for breeding.

[ Stag roaring ] So the males are telling each other I'm strong, I'm big.

This is my domain here, and you better stay away from my females.

So the rut season, it's pretty intense.

It's quite like a three-week Ironman contest.

♪♪ [ Stag roaring ] ♪♪ They're constantly putting the skids on other younger males trying to take over.

And they will go into battle if they need to.

And these battles can sometimes be fatal.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Seemingly not to be outdone by the exuberance of the red deer rut, the landscape itself produces its own final rush of color before the nights draw in.

>> The seasons have a familiarity about them.

We've all experienced them before, so it is a little bit like meeting up with somebody that you haven't seen for a while when you get that feel of autumn.

But also I love the change of the seasons, so it's like looking forward to seeing a friend.

♪♪ One of the things I absolutely adore about kind of wilderness and especially peatlands in the autumn time is that you get these stunning displays on the mountainside with this huge range of colors.

And for us, it's a spectacle to enjoy.

Of course, the plants are not doing it just to look pretty.

It's part of what they need to do to survive in this habitat, to be able to recycle their -- their nutrients.

So what they're doing is they're withdrawing the good stuff, and they're bringing it back down to the base of the plants, and they leave these colors behind in their above ground parts.

But what they're leaving behind is all their rubbish, essentially.

But those rubbish compounds have beautiful colors in them.

So you get these straw colors and oranges and sometimes purples and yellows and browns.

If the sun hits these places at the right angle, it really is a luminous, almost fiery kind of -- kind of effect.

So you just get this stunning display of art in nature.

♪♪ ♪♪ So the movement of the year, from spring to summer to autumn to winter, is something you're very conscious of as an ecologist.

And I suppose on a philosophical level, it kind of teaches you something, you know, that whatever's going on on a particular day, You just got to keep going one foot in front of the next.

And nature's outside the door doing the same thing, and there's a comfort in it.

So whatever is going on from day to day stresses of life or the pressures of life, you know, life will go on.

The sun will go down and it will get up again tomorrow.

♪♪ >> Seasons have so much to teach us.

They're only here for a moment, like, it's fleeting.

Everything just passes.

And that's what happens with us.

And we only notice that when we start to slip into autumn and winter.

It's a fleeting moment in our lives, just like the seasons.

In each section of our lives is very particular and very important.

♪♪ Spring is youth and birth, and then summer is, you know, all those years when everything is just wonderful, and then you start to head downhill in the autumn, and then you're into the stark beauty of winter, which has a kind of a relief in the death of everything.

Luckily for nature, the seasons get to do it all again the next time around.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Woman vocalizing ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Woman singing in Irish ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> For those who feel a connection to Ireland's landscapes and people, through ancestral roots, ancient culture, or wild nature, "Kerry: Tides of Time" and its free companion booklet are available from Silver Branch Films.

With stunning imagery, maps, lore and behind-the-scenes stories from the filmmaker, they offer deeper reflections on the people and places that shaped this land.

A beautiful way to share Ireland's story with someone who holds it close.

♪♪ >> Funding for this series has been provided in part by the following.

authentic Ireland travel experiences for over 55 years.

Your Celtic story starts here.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ away from laughter, music, heritage, and the arts.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪