0:00:05 > 0:00:08Britain is an island nation.
0:00:08 > 0:00:12The sea is in our history and in our blood.
0:00:12 > 0:00:17The British have a great affection for the sea, of course. A seafaring nation,
0:00:17 > 0:00:19we go to the seaside for our holidays.
0:00:19 > 0:00:23People are drawn to the sea just to look at it.
0:00:23 > 0:00:29For centuries, Britons have travelled the oceans, as fishermen, explorers and traders.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35This brought us into contact with sea birds,
0:00:35 > 0:00:40both on the high seas and around our coasts.
0:00:42 > 0:00:47Coastal communities established deep relationships with these birds, living off their meat,
0:00:47 > 0:00:51their eggs and a host of other vital commodities.
0:00:53 > 0:00:58Even in the middle of the 20th century, sea birds were still being exploited for food.
0:00:58 > 0:01:02There was a sense that this was something that was given to them
0:01:02 > 0:01:08in a bountiful providence, and it was there to harvest, and it would be wasteful not to harvest them.
0:01:08 > 0:01:12Sea birds slipped into our literature
0:01:12 > 0:01:14and our fashion.
0:01:14 > 0:01:18They transformed Victorian agriculture
0:01:18 > 0:01:21and created monumental family fortunes.
0:01:21 > 0:01:25But how much longer will they shape our culture?
0:01:26 > 0:01:32The story of our relationship with sea birds is an ancient and turbulent one,
0:01:32 > 0:01:35like our relationship with the sea itself.
0:01:35 > 0:01:42It's an untold chapter in the history of our rise and fall as a seafaring people.
0:01:53 > 0:02:01Of all our birds, sea birds are the most enigmatic, the most remote from our daily lives.
0:02:01 > 0:02:04There is something
0:02:04 > 0:02:07remarkable, wonderful and extraordinary about sea birds.
0:02:07 > 0:02:10I think it's to do with mystery.
0:02:13 > 0:02:15So birds that inhabit the sea
0:02:15 > 0:02:19acquire something of the...charisma of the sea.
0:02:22 > 0:02:28A lot of them make a noise that sounds like something the other side of the world that we know.
0:02:28 > 0:02:30Extremely lonely,
0:02:30 > 0:02:33extremely beautiful,
0:02:33 > 0:02:36with a kind of forlornness about it.
0:02:36 > 0:02:38BIRD CRIES
0:02:39 > 0:02:44Much of this wild magic comes from the way they live their lives.
0:02:45 > 0:02:49I think there's a powerful sense of the other about sea birds.
0:02:49 > 0:02:55For most of the year, they're out at sea, and then for a period from...
0:02:55 > 0:03:01April through till early July they're breeding on cliffs, sometimes extremely remote.
0:03:11 > 0:03:13Britain's 12,000 miles of coastline
0:03:13 > 0:03:18are one of the best environments for sea birds anywhere in the world.
0:03:18 > 0:03:22Because of the North Atlantic drift and the continental shelf
0:03:22 > 0:03:27and our rich seas, our sea birds are spectacular.
0:03:27 > 0:03:30This is really our sort of Serengeti.
0:03:37 > 0:03:39Some seven million sea birds,
0:03:39 > 0:03:43of two dozen different species, nest on our coasts.
0:03:55 > 0:04:01They do have these phenomenal sea bird cities on our towering sea cliffs.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04They're bustling with activity,
0:04:04 > 0:04:07marvellous smell comes wafting up the cliff,
0:04:07 > 0:04:12which bowls people over when they first come to the edge of the cliff.
0:04:14 > 0:04:19One can probably see ten to a hundred thousand birds
0:04:19 > 0:04:22at every moment of the day,
0:04:22 > 0:04:26and it's a kind of overwhelming abundance of life,
0:04:26 > 0:04:29and that's part of the British landscape.
0:04:40 > 0:04:44Today, these wonders are largely out of sight and out of mind.
0:04:44 > 0:04:48But it was the sheer abundance of our sea bird colonies that
0:04:48 > 0:04:52originally made them so important and irresistible to our ancestors.
0:04:56 > 0:05:00That story starts on the remotest islands in the British Isles.
0:05:02 > 0:05:03St Kilda.
0:05:05 > 0:05:08It's a place that looms out of nowhere for you.
0:05:08 > 0:05:14You've got all this empty ocean, and suddenly there it is, Atlantis.
0:05:14 > 0:05:18This cluster of islands and stacks lies off the Outer Hebrides,
0:05:18 > 0:05:20far out in the Atlantic Ocean.
0:05:20 > 0:05:23Every summer more than a million sea birds
0:05:23 > 0:05:26come ashore to these rocky outcrops to breed.
0:05:26 > 0:05:32St Kilda is a particular stronghold for our largest sea bird, the gannet.
0:05:42 > 0:05:45It could have been designed by an Ancient Egyptian.
0:05:45 > 0:05:46It looks like an Egyptian god.
0:05:46 > 0:05:52It's just the most magnificent, beautiful, elegant bird.
0:05:52 > 0:05:56And in the air it's a war machine.
0:05:57 > 0:06:00It has this incredible way of fishing,
0:06:00 > 0:06:04which is suddenly to dive vertically downwards,
0:06:04 > 0:06:07and plunge into the sea for herring or mackerel.
0:06:09 > 0:06:12And once one goes in, and if there is a shoal of fish,
0:06:12 > 0:06:15then they all come piling in.
0:06:20 > 0:06:24It was these sea birds that sustained a unique population,
0:06:24 > 0:06:26known as the "bird people of St Kilda".
0:06:29 > 0:06:34Their lifestyle was captured on film in the 1920s.
0:06:34 > 0:06:37The most remarkable hunter-gatherer community in the UK,
0:06:37 > 0:06:42until the middle of the 20th century, was the inhabitants of St Kilda.
0:06:42 > 0:06:47A small, Gaelic-speaking community that lived in crofts
0:06:47 > 0:06:52on the edge of this huge mountain on Hirta.
0:06:53 > 0:07:00Essentially, their entire lives were bound up in what they could harvest
0:07:00 > 0:07:04of wild birds from the cliffs and ledges
0:07:04 > 0:07:07around this incredible set of islands.
0:07:07 > 0:07:10St Kildans looked to sea birds
0:07:10 > 0:07:13to meet almost all their subsistence needs.
0:07:13 > 0:07:20They wore gannet necks and body parts as shoes, very short-lived shoes.
0:07:20 > 0:07:26Their medicine was derived from the oil found in the stomach of the young fulmars.
0:07:26 > 0:07:32They stored eggs in peat ash, which would last for months at a time.
0:07:35 > 0:07:39And the St Kildans had to find ways to preserve the eggs and meat,
0:07:39 > 0:07:44because the birds were only ashore for a few months each spring and summer.
0:07:44 > 0:07:51Islanders from Lewis were still using similar preserving techniques in the 1960s.
0:07:51 > 0:07:54They would take the corpses of these things
0:07:54 > 0:07:58and keep them in little stone bothies called cleats.
0:07:58 > 0:08:04And the wind would blow through and dry this meat to a type of biltong.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07And that would see them through the lean times, until they could
0:08:07 > 0:08:10start harvesting the birds again in the spring.
0:08:11 > 0:08:14The meat of the young gannet, known as the guga,
0:08:14 > 0:08:17was a staple part of their simple diet.
0:08:18 > 0:08:22I would describe guga as almost the food of the gods.
0:08:22 > 0:08:25There's something wonderful about it.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29The only way to properly cook it is to boil it.
0:08:29 > 0:08:33You know, mainlanders would probably deplore the taste of the food.
0:08:33 > 0:08:37It tastes like a piece of chamois leather dipped in oil,
0:08:37 > 0:08:44but I think it tastes like salt-mackerel-flavoured chicken.
0:08:44 > 0:08:47Although thousands of birds were killed each year,
0:08:47 > 0:08:51this had little or no effect on their populations,
0:08:51 > 0:08:55because the islanders took only what they needed to survive.
0:08:55 > 0:08:58None of the species which they harvested,
0:08:58 > 0:09:01as far as we know, ever went extinct.
0:09:01 > 0:09:04In a curious way, they were custodians.
0:09:04 > 0:09:10They had a deep impulse to preserve the goose that laid the golden egg,
0:09:10 > 0:09:12and...and they did.
0:09:17 > 0:09:20Ultimately the modern world encroached on St Kilda,
0:09:20 > 0:09:23undermining the hunter-gatherer tradition.
0:09:23 > 0:09:28The population declined due to disease and emigration.
0:09:28 > 0:09:33So in 1930 the surviving islanders decided to evacuate,
0:09:33 > 0:09:36abandoning St Kilda to the birds.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51It was only the remoteness of St Kilda
0:09:51 > 0:09:55that allowed the bird people's culture to survive for so long.
0:09:56 > 0:10:02Other coastal communities had given up the hunter-gatherer lifestyle centuries earlier,
0:10:02 > 0:10:06heralding a long, dark chapter in our dealings with sea birds.
0:10:08 > 0:10:12Those who went out to sea to make their living as fishermen and seafarers
0:10:12 > 0:10:17encountered sea birds in their true element, the open ocean.
0:10:18 > 0:10:20Here, far from home,
0:10:20 > 0:10:26one bird in particular made a deep and lasting impression on them.
0:10:26 > 0:10:27The albatross.
0:10:32 > 0:10:34I think when you're sailing,
0:10:34 > 0:10:38when one of these magnificent birds with a seven-foot wingspan,
0:10:38 > 0:10:40an albatross, suddenly appears,
0:10:40 > 0:10:43and it appears out of the sky,
0:10:43 > 0:10:45and it doesn't move its wings.
0:10:45 > 0:10:50I mean, it just tilts, glides,
0:10:50 > 0:10:54and it's exploiting the up currents from surface of the sea and so on.
0:10:54 > 0:10:58So just occasionally one little flap, and then it's off again.
0:11:00 > 0:11:03All those explorers who set off from Britain
0:11:03 > 0:11:06on sailing boats going around the world,
0:11:06 > 0:11:09in these vast areas where they saw nothing,
0:11:09 > 0:11:14suddenly this incredible bird appeared on their horizon
0:11:14 > 0:11:18and came up beside their boats and followed them through the storms.
0:11:18 > 0:11:23And they must have felt a real attachment, I think, to albatross
0:11:23 > 0:11:28and would have come home and told about this bird that tracked the oceans with them.
0:11:30 > 0:11:35This mysterious tendency for the albatross to track sailing vessels
0:11:35 > 0:11:39gave rise to the pivotal scene in a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
0:11:39 > 0:11:44a poem that has entrenched the albatross in our popular culture.
0:11:46 > 0:11:50The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner is certainly one of the most famous poems in the English language.
0:11:50 > 0:11:54Which is a very interesting thing to say for one reason immediately,
0:11:54 > 0:11:57which is that it's a very long poem.
0:11:57 > 0:12:01The poem describes a relationship of a seaman with an albatross.
0:12:03 > 0:12:07The Mariner's ship is blown off course in a huge storm,
0:12:07 > 0:12:10ending up in the icy wastes of Antarctica.
0:12:10 > 0:12:14Then, miraculously, an albatross appears.
0:12:15 > 0:12:18At length did cross an Albatross,
0:12:18 > 0:12:20Through the fog it came
0:12:20 > 0:12:23As it had been a Christian soul
0:12:23 > 0:12:26We hailed it in God's name.
0:12:27 > 0:12:29It's a symbol of whiteness,
0:12:29 > 0:12:32of conscience, of souls, of Christianity.
0:12:32 > 0:12:34And it's big, like an angel.
0:12:34 > 0:12:37It's more than a bird, it's a flying symbol.
0:12:40 > 0:12:44This enigmatic bird leads the ship back into warmer waters,
0:12:44 > 0:12:48saving the sailors from certain death.
0:12:48 > 0:12:53Then, inexplicably, the Mariner shoots the bird with his cross-bow.
0:12:53 > 0:12:56His shipmates are horrified.
0:12:57 > 0:13:03One of the common bits of folklore about all maritime sea-going communities
0:13:03 > 0:13:10was that the souls of lost mariners entered the bodies of sea birds
0:13:10 > 0:13:13such as petrels, albatross, shearwaters.
0:13:13 > 0:13:17And so killing these birds was in some sense taboo.
0:13:17 > 0:13:21Thus the Mariner brought bad luck upon his shipmates.
0:13:21 > 0:13:25The wind dropped and the ship was becalmed for days on end.
0:13:25 > 0:13:31Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink
0:13:31 > 0:13:33Water, water, every where
0:13:33 > 0:13:36Nor any drop to drink.
0:13:43 > 0:13:49It's about the needless nihilism of the Mariner himself,
0:13:49 > 0:13:54who slays the albatross and brings disaster on his boat and his crew,
0:13:54 > 0:13:56all of whom die except himself.
0:13:56 > 0:14:01And he is destined to travel throughout the rest of his life,
0:14:01 > 0:14:06repenting and telling the tale of his terrible destruction of this bird.
0:14:13 > 0:14:17The poem speaks to the casual destructiveness that would characterise
0:14:17 > 0:14:21our relationship with sea birds until the late 19th century.
0:14:24 > 0:14:30Coleridge's Mariner was a familiar figure during Britain's heyday as a maritime power.
0:14:30 > 0:14:35At its height, thousands of ships were travelling the trade routes of the North Atlantic.
0:14:35 > 0:14:41These mariners drove to extinction an extraordinary, flightless bird,
0:14:41 > 0:14:46the great auk, Britain's equivalent of the dodo.
0:14:49 > 0:14:52Alas, I've never seen a great auk,
0:14:52 > 0:14:59but I imagine it as a huge, northern hemisphere penguin
0:14:59 > 0:15:01with an upright posture.
0:15:01 > 0:15:07And the two most striking features are the white splash on the face
0:15:07 > 0:15:10and that very large daggered bill.
0:15:10 > 0:15:14It was the largest of the auk family.
0:15:14 > 0:15:17Puffins are auks, puffins, razorbills, guillemots.
0:15:17 > 0:15:20And it is really, was, a giant razorbill.
0:15:21 > 0:15:26The great auk bred across the North Atlantic in an ark of islands from Newfoundland
0:15:26 > 0:15:30through to Iceland and Greenland and further south to Orkney and Shetland.
0:15:30 > 0:15:33It was perhaps, at one stage,
0:15:33 > 0:15:37one of the commonest birds that has ever lived on the planet.
0:15:37 > 0:15:44Common it may have been, but the great auk had one major disadvantage over other sea birds.
0:15:44 > 0:15:45They didn't need to fly,
0:15:45 > 0:15:50and through the years their wings became small,
0:15:50 > 0:15:55so that made them very vulnerable to predation by people.
0:15:55 > 0:15:59This vulnerability became all too apparent
0:15:59 > 0:16:06when the trade routes opened across the North Atlantic, between Britain and her colonies in the New World.
0:16:06 > 0:16:11When the first whalers and fishermen went to the Davis Strait,
0:16:11 > 0:16:13between Greenland and Newfoundland,
0:16:13 > 0:16:17they were living on cod, because that's what they were catching all day.
0:16:17 > 0:16:22It must have been wonderful to be able to take a nice, big, fat, juicy bird like a great auk.
0:16:22 > 0:16:26Hungry mariners, based on the British colony of Newfoundland,
0:16:26 > 0:16:34sailed out to sea bird islands where the great auks bred alongside their smaller relatives, guillemots,
0:16:34 > 0:16:36which still survive today.
0:16:36 > 0:16:40Here they found huge numbers of great auks, there for the taking.
0:16:40 > 0:16:46It was perfectly possible to put a sail down, get your men ashore,
0:16:46 > 0:16:49get them to drive the birds onto the sail
0:16:49 > 0:16:52and then just tip them into the boat
0:16:52 > 0:16:54and have people in the boat to club them.
0:16:54 > 0:16:59Then you could salt them and that would keep you going for the rest of the time you were out there.
0:16:59 > 0:17:04However many they killed, there were masses of others there.
0:17:04 > 0:17:12Over time, the great auk became even more valuable as a commodity for its feathers,
0:17:12 > 0:17:14which were used to stuff pillows and bedding.
0:17:14 > 0:17:20The feather bed industry, in really quite a short space of time,
0:17:20 > 0:17:25caused such huge destruction amongst those populations
0:17:25 > 0:17:29with these birds just being rounded up,
0:17:29 > 0:17:32driven into stone enclosures and then just pulled out, clubbed,
0:17:32 > 0:17:36dumped into boiling water to get the feathers off quickly.
0:17:36 > 0:17:41And this was done on a huge, industrial scale.
0:17:41 > 0:17:44By the end of the 18th century, the great auk population
0:17:44 > 0:17:47was in a state of collapse on its main breeding grounds.
0:17:47 > 0:17:51As a result, great auks were very rarely seen
0:17:51 > 0:17:55at the edge of their range, in places like St Kilda.
0:17:58 > 0:18:04There's a horrifying account of three men in St Kilda,
0:18:04 > 0:18:08who went out to a small island just off St Kilda.
0:18:08 > 0:18:11They came round a corner and saw this huge bird.
0:18:11 > 0:18:13That was the last auk in Britain.
0:18:16 > 0:18:19And the St Kildans caught and captured it.
0:18:19 > 0:18:26They had never seen such a bird before, and they believed it to be a witch.
0:18:27 > 0:18:33And they decided, instead of eating it, to imprison it for a couple of days.
0:18:34 > 0:18:40On about the third day, lo and behold, a mighty storm arose.
0:18:42 > 0:18:46And the bird shrieked continuously.
0:18:48 > 0:18:52The men became convinced that the bird had supernatural powers.
0:18:52 > 0:18:58And that it had brought the storm and they would never get off the islet as long as the bird was alive.
0:18:58 > 0:19:02So they went out and bashed it, clubbed it to death.
0:19:06 > 0:19:09Such was the demise of Britain's last great auk,
0:19:09 > 0:19:13the only British bird to go extinct in historical times.
0:19:13 > 0:19:18And yet Victorian bird experts could not accept that this was really happening
0:19:18 > 0:19:22to a once abundant species.
0:19:22 > 0:19:27It is a measure of a kind of senseless abuse of the sea.
0:19:27 > 0:19:30It's the way in which we think the sea is limitless.
0:19:30 > 0:19:34And therefore we cannot believe that these resources are finite.
0:19:37 > 0:19:43We now know that the world's last great auk was killed in Iceland, in June 1844.
0:19:44 > 0:19:48But a decade later, two egg collectors still harboured the hope
0:19:48 > 0:19:50that a few individuals may have survived.
0:19:50 > 0:19:54A couple of British ornithologists,
0:19:54 > 0:19:57John Whalley and his friend, Alfred Newton,
0:19:57 > 0:20:03decided to make an expedition to Iceland to try to settle the question either way.
0:20:05 > 0:20:10The Iceland trip was fruitless, and the men returned home empty-handed.
0:20:10 > 0:20:14Later, Alfred Newton wrote an article on the great auk,
0:20:14 > 0:20:18which caught the eye of the well-known novelist, the Reverend Charles Kingsley.
0:20:20 > 0:20:25He actually read Newton's very poignant account of the destruction of these birds,
0:20:25 > 0:20:32and the hope expressed by Alfred Newton that there might still just be a few pairs alive.
0:20:32 > 0:20:37It was a vain hope, but it provided the inspiration
0:20:37 > 0:20:41for a memorable scene in Kingsley's most famous book, The Water-Babies.
0:20:41 > 0:20:45The child hero, Tom, encounters the last great auk,
0:20:45 > 0:20:48or as it was also known, the garefowl...
0:20:49 > 0:20:56And there he saw the last of the garefowl, standing upon the all alone stone, all alone.
0:20:58 > 0:21:04Perched on a rocky outcrop, the elderly bird recounts the story of her species' demise.
0:21:04 > 0:21:10"If you had only had wings", said Tom, "then you might have all flown away too."
0:21:20 > 0:21:25Kingsley was writing in the midst of an unprecedented population explosion.
0:21:26 > 0:21:32So to keep pace with demand for food, Britain's farmers needed to dramatically increase production.
0:21:32 > 0:21:33Remarkably,
0:21:33 > 0:21:37it was sea birds that would fuel this agricultural revolution.
0:21:37 > 0:21:39At this point,
0:21:39 > 0:21:41in the mid-19th century,
0:21:41 > 0:21:43there was a fairly severe shortage of fertilisers.
0:21:43 > 0:21:45We just weren't keeping enough cattle
0:21:45 > 0:21:50to fertilise the land sufficiently, just with dung.
0:21:50 > 0:21:53So you needed to try to find other sources.
0:21:53 > 0:22:00Whoever came up with a solution to the fertiliser shortage was going to make a fortune.
0:22:00 > 0:22:03That man was a merchant called William Gibbs.
0:22:10 > 0:22:16Gibbs sunk much of his wealth into the Tyntesfield estate, on the outskirts of Bristol,
0:22:16 > 0:22:21turning it into one of the grandest houses of the Victorian age.
0:22:21 > 0:22:28The source of Gibbs' fertile fortune was far less glamorous, according to a rhyme of the day:
0:22:28 > 0:22:32"Mr Gibbs made his tibbs, selling the turds of foreign birds."
0:22:35 > 0:22:42Tyntesfield was built on a foundation of guano - the droppings of millions of sea birds.
0:22:44 > 0:22:49Of all the stories of abuse of a natural resource,
0:22:49 > 0:22:51guano is probably the most extreme.
0:22:57 > 0:23:02The guano didn't come from British sea bird colonies,
0:23:02 > 0:23:06but from thousands of miles away, off the coast of Peru.
0:23:06 > 0:23:11The particular feature of Peru was that the Humboldt current,
0:23:11 > 0:23:15coming up from the south, was a very cold current,
0:23:15 > 0:23:17with upwellings of cold water.
0:23:17 > 0:23:20And this supported a huge plankton population.
0:23:20 > 0:23:24That then supported a huge fish population, in particular anchovies.
0:23:24 > 0:23:29And the fish population then supported this absolutely gigantic bird population.
0:23:29 > 0:23:34And millions of birds just on the one island at any particular time.
0:23:36 > 0:23:42The main guano-producing birds were the Guanay cormorant and the brown pelican.
0:23:42 > 0:23:47Over centuries, their droppings had accumulated to extraordinary depths,
0:23:47 > 0:23:49forming mineral-rich mountains.
0:23:51 > 0:23:57Peruvian guano was widely recognised at the time as certainly the best fertiliser anywhere.
0:23:57 > 0:24:01Because it was a natural product, and it had all the main plant foods,
0:24:01 > 0:24:03nitrogen, potash, and phosphate.
0:24:06 > 0:24:11Gibbs had negotiated a deal with the Peruvian government, giving him a monopoly on the guano trade.
0:24:11 > 0:24:15But he still faced a problem - how to get the stuff back to Britain.
0:24:15 > 0:24:20In many respects, it was an extraordinary thing to do.
0:24:20 > 0:24:23You were taking guano, literally from the other side of the world,
0:24:23 > 0:24:25very dangerous and difficult voyage,
0:24:25 > 0:24:31around some of the stormiest seas in the world, Cape Horn, of course, and then right across the Atlantic.
0:24:33 > 0:24:37Once the guano arrived in Britain, Gibbs sold it in vast quantities
0:24:37 > 0:24:40to farmers desperate for an efficient fertiliser.
0:24:42 > 0:24:45Guano gave a massive boost to the nation's agricultural output.
0:24:45 > 0:24:50And it made William Gibbs the wealthiest commoner in England.
0:24:53 > 0:24:59This was in sharp contrast to the men actually mining the guano in Peru.
0:24:59 > 0:25:03The workforce was organised by Peruvian landowners,
0:25:03 > 0:25:07and relied on slaves, convicts and, by the 1850s,
0:25:07 > 0:25:10foreign indentured labour.
0:25:10 > 0:25:14They took Chinese coolies from the Far East,
0:25:14 > 0:25:17building them into contracts they knew nothing about.
0:25:17 > 0:25:21They got to these desolate equatorial islands,
0:25:21 > 0:25:25and the conditions were completely appalling.
0:25:25 > 0:25:32There are few photographs of this period, but an impression of the environment the coolies worked in
0:25:32 > 0:25:35can be gained from early 20th-century footage of Peruvian labourers.
0:25:40 > 0:25:45And the guano, once it was loosened up from the solid rock that it formed on the island itself,
0:25:45 > 0:25:49became a noxious powder that blistered your lungs and your nose.
0:25:53 > 0:25:57The normal amount the Chinese labourer had to remove was about five tonnes,
0:25:57 > 0:26:03but sometimes eight tonnes a day, and he had to do everything from the original pickaxe,
0:26:03 > 0:26:05separating the manure from stones,
0:26:05 > 0:26:12carrying the stuff to the edge of the cliffs, and then great canvas chutes into the boats below.
0:26:20 > 0:26:26Given the lack of regard for the human labourers, it's not surprising that there was no concern at all
0:26:26 > 0:26:27for the birds producing the guano.
0:26:27 > 0:26:33Their nest sites were destroyed by the mining, and they were subject to continual disturbance.
0:26:33 > 0:26:36The birds disappear from the islands.
0:26:36 > 0:26:40The whole question of conservation, of holding on to the bird population
0:26:40 > 0:26:42didn't really come until the 20th Century.
0:26:44 > 0:26:47They were typical of the boom-bust pattern of maritime harvest.
0:26:47 > 0:26:51It was one of the most grotesque dashes for growth,
0:26:51 > 0:26:54regardless of the consequences, that there has ever been.
0:26:57 > 0:27:03The wanton destruction to man and bird in South America went largely unnoticed back in Britain.
0:27:09 > 0:27:16But by the 1860s, the welfare of sea birds at home could not be so easily ignored.
0:27:16 > 0:27:19For the first time, voices were about to be raised
0:27:19 > 0:27:23against the unbridled exploitation of British sea birds.
0:27:27 > 0:27:32The majority of our sea bird colonies are on remote rocky islands,
0:27:32 > 0:27:36like the Bass Rock, off the east coast of Scotland...
0:27:39 > 0:27:42..and the Farne Islands, off Northumberland.
0:27:44 > 0:27:48The isolation of these places offers the birds some protection
0:27:48 > 0:27:53from terrestrial predators, both man and beast.
0:27:53 > 0:27:56But there are a few sea bird colonies on the British mainland,
0:27:56 > 0:28:01such as the cliffs of Bempton and Flamborough Head, in Yorkshire.
0:28:03 > 0:28:07These cliffs are a favourite haunt of the kittiwake.
0:28:09 > 0:28:12The kittiwake is a very delicate gull.
0:28:12 > 0:28:15It's also a gull which tells you its name -
0:28:15 > 0:28:21when you go to the colonies, there it is, shrieking away, "Kittiwake! Kittiwake!"
0:28:24 > 0:28:30It has these wings that are black ended, as though they've been dipped in black ink.
0:28:30 > 0:28:36The thing that makes kittiwakes different from just about every gull
0:28:36 > 0:28:42is that it breeds on narrow cliff ledges, so it's relatively safe from terrestrial predators.
0:28:42 > 0:28:45So with a black-headed gull,
0:28:45 > 0:28:48if a predator like a fox or hedgehog comes into the colony,
0:28:48 > 0:28:52all the birds fly up and mob that predator and try and drive it away.
0:28:52 > 0:28:56Kittiwakes, on their narrow cliff ledge,
0:28:56 > 0:28:58never do that mobbing because there is no value in it.
0:28:58 > 0:29:05This tendency to sit tight made kittiwakes very vulnerable to human hunters.
0:29:09 > 0:29:14At Bempton and Flamborough Head, local people had always harvested the sea birds for food.
0:29:14 > 0:29:21But by the Victorian period, this had escalated into an intensive, commercial use of birds,
0:29:21 > 0:29:25their eggs, and, in the case of kittiwakes, their plumage.
0:29:29 > 0:29:32They would catch the bird, presumably with nets,
0:29:32 > 0:29:36and they would cut their wings off, the bits that they wanted,
0:29:36 > 0:29:38and throw the bird, wingless, back into the water.
0:29:38 > 0:29:44The wings were used by hat makers in Paris and London and New York.
0:29:44 > 0:29:48The people that were harvesting the sea birds at Flamborough at that time
0:29:48 > 0:29:53were doing it for profit. There was a sense of manifest destiny,
0:29:53 > 0:29:57that this was something that was given to them in bountiful providence,
0:29:57 > 0:29:59and that it was there to harvest,
0:29:59 > 0:30:02it would be wasteful not to harvest them.
0:30:02 > 0:30:06Harvesting the kittiwakes, though cruel,
0:30:06 > 0:30:08was at least commercially justifiable.
0:30:08 > 0:30:13But now they became targets for a very different element of British society.
0:30:13 > 0:30:15HORN BLOWS
0:30:15 > 0:30:21The burgeoning middle classes, who aspired to the leisure activities of the aristocracy.
0:30:21 > 0:30:26Once the railways made access to these coastal locations easier,
0:30:26 > 0:30:33hunting parties came to these sea bird colonies to shoot these birds,
0:30:33 > 0:30:37which were so easy to shoot, because they sat so tightly on the nest.
0:30:37 > 0:30:45Boarding so-called pleasure boats in Scarborough, groups of men would sail towards the colonies of birds.
0:30:45 > 0:30:49And then they would be taken underneath the cliffs,
0:30:49 > 0:30:54and would blaze away at the parent birds, sitting on eggs...
0:30:54 > 0:30:57GUNFIRE
0:30:59 > 0:31:03..killing as many as they could, because the size of the bag
0:31:03 > 0:31:05was presumably the measure of the success of the sport.
0:31:05 > 0:31:08And it was having a devastating effect on breeding numbers.
0:31:08 > 0:31:15But the activities of these shooting parties didn't go unnoticed.
0:31:15 > 0:31:19And it was the sight of large numbers of dead, dying birds,
0:31:19 > 0:31:23and chicks whose parents had been killed left in the nest,
0:31:23 > 0:31:25that started to upset people.
0:31:25 > 0:31:33One person who took exception to this slaughter was the ornithologist Alfred Newton - the same man
0:31:33 > 0:31:39who 13 years earlier had searched unsuccessfully for the last great auk.
0:31:40 > 0:31:41By the late 1860s,
0:31:41 > 0:31:46Alfred Newton was Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge.
0:31:46 > 0:31:52He'd realised what had happened to the great auk a generation earlier,
0:31:52 > 0:31:55he saw that there was a danger of it happening again.
0:31:55 > 0:31:58To publicise his concerns,
0:31:58 > 0:32:01in 1868 he made a calculatedly emotional speech
0:32:01 > 0:32:06to the British Society for the Advancement of Science.
0:32:06 > 0:32:12At the present time, I believe there is no class of animal so cruelly persecuted
0:32:12 > 0:32:18as the sea-fowl - that a stop should be put to this wanton and atrocious destruction of a species
0:32:18 > 0:32:21I think none of my audience will deny.
0:32:22 > 0:32:30Just as Newton had hoped, his sensational speech was picked up by the press and widely reported.
0:32:30 > 0:32:35And for the first time, the issue touched a nerve with the British public.
0:32:35 > 0:32:38There was a sense developing that this slaughter
0:32:38 > 0:32:41on the cliffs was somehow to Yorkshire's shame.
0:32:41 > 0:32:46And a combination of local landowners and MPs
0:32:46 > 0:32:48and members of the clergy got together
0:32:48 > 0:32:53and in 1868, formed an association for the protection of sea birds.
0:32:53 > 0:32:58As a result of their work, a bill for the preservation of sea birds
0:32:58 > 0:33:01was presented to Parliament the following year.
0:33:01 > 0:33:07And they came up with a fascinating strategy, and it is based on utilitarianism,
0:33:07 > 0:33:11in a way, this idea that the birds were useful.
0:33:11 > 0:33:15They did two things - when the fishermen of Bridlington were coming home on foggy days,
0:33:15 > 0:33:20and they couldn't see the cliffs, the cries of the sea birds alerted them to the presence
0:33:20 > 0:33:24of the cliffs. The birds were, in other words, the Flamborough pilots.
0:33:27 > 0:33:31And the second argument was that the sea birds flew inland
0:33:31 > 0:33:35and harvested pests on agricultural land.
0:33:35 > 0:33:38And those two arguments carried the day.
0:33:42 > 0:33:50The Sea Birds Preservation Act came into law in June 1869 - the very first act of Parliament
0:33:50 > 0:33:52protecting British birds.
0:33:52 > 0:33:57This marked a turning point in the history of our relationship with sea birds.
0:33:57 > 0:34:03By the late Victorian era, a new sensibility towards birds and other wildlife was beginning to emerge.
0:34:03 > 0:34:06We had finally begun to appreciate birds
0:34:06 > 0:34:11not just for how we could exploit them, but for their beauty, and for our delight in them.
0:34:16 > 0:34:24And yet where sea birds were concerned, we still knew so little about their real lives.
0:34:24 > 0:34:26One of the wonderful things about sea birds
0:34:26 > 0:34:29is that they are essentially very mysterious.
0:34:29 > 0:34:32Aspects of their behaviour are very, very little understood.
0:34:32 > 0:34:37Although much was already known about the birds of our countryside,
0:34:37 > 0:34:41it was only in the 20th century that science would
0:34:41 > 0:34:44begin to unravel some of the mysteries of sea birds.
0:34:44 > 0:34:50One man who pioneered their study was the Welsh naturalist Ronald Lockley.
0:34:50 > 0:34:55As a young man, he hadn't set out to be a sea bird scientist.
0:34:55 > 0:34:59In fact he was rather a dreamer, with an entrepreneurial streak.
0:35:05 > 0:35:10In 1926, Lockley took a lease on an uninhabited island called Skokholm,
0:35:10 > 0:35:13off the southwest coast of Wales.
0:35:14 > 0:35:18When Lockley turned up on Skokholm,
0:35:18 > 0:35:20his initial plan was to make a lot of money.
0:35:20 > 0:35:22And he wanted to do this by
0:35:22 > 0:35:25breeding giant chinchilla rabbits,
0:35:25 > 0:35:29which are a sort of giant, fluffy version of a wild rabbit.
0:35:29 > 0:35:34Unfortunately, there was an indigenous rabbit population eating the grass
0:35:34 > 0:35:37required by his chinchillas.
0:35:37 > 0:35:40He tried to exterminate all the rabbits on Skokholm and failed.
0:35:40 > 0:35:43He tried all sorts of ways. In fact, he tried cyanide gas,
0:35:43 > 0:35:46it is all quite a grim story.
0:35:46 > 0:35:49His experiment failed completely,
0:35:49 > 0:35:54because the market for rabbit skins for fashion completely crashed during the Depression.
0:35:54 > 0:35:59But Lockley's interest in sea birds was directly born out of this failure.
0:35:59 > 0:36:02While trying to trap the indigenous rabbits in their warrens,
0:36:02 > 0:36:09he kept catching a strange, burrow-nesting bird instead - the Manx shearwater.
0:36:09 > 0:36:13The Manx shearwater is like a tiny albatross.
0:36:13 > 0:36:18It's a true sea bird, spending most of its life on the sea.
0:36:19 > 0:36:23It's a bird that needs to come ashore only to breed,
0:36:23 > 0:36:29and it lays a single white egg in a burrow, like a rabbit hole, that it digs itself.
0:36:29 > 0:36:31And it comes ashore just at night.
0:36:31 > 0:36:38Under the cover of darkness, these ungainly creatures feed their young,
0:36:38 > 0:36:41calling to each other all the while.
0:36:42 > 0:36:46When he first heard this strange cacophony, it took Lockley by surprise.
0:36:46 > 0:36:49BIRDS CALL
0:36:54 > 0:37:00Until this time, no-one had attempted to study the behaviour of Manx shearwaters,
0:37:00 > 0:37:03or indeed any other sea birds, in detail.
0:37:03 > 0:37:07Lockley became enthralled with these mysterious creatures, and devised
0:37:07 > 0:37:13imaginative experiments to study the most intriguing aspects of their behaviour.
0:37:13 > 0:37:17One of the things he was fascinated by was the navigational
0:37:17 > 0:37:24capacity of the shearwaters. And in one of these experiments, he took a bird from Skokholm to Devon,
0:37:24 > 0:37:27and released it, and within a few hours, the bird
0:37:27 > 0:37:29was back in its nest burrow.
0:37:29 > 0:37:34And then he took this further, and they took a bird to Venice...
0:37:39 > 0:37:42And it was about a 900-kilometre journey overland.
0:37:42 > 0:37:46But of course a sea bird such as a Manx shearwater would almost certainly
0:37:46 > 0:37:51have taken a sea route, which was a hugely circuitous route
0:37:51 > 0:37:55through the Straits of Gibraltar, and then up through the Atlantic,
0:37:55 > 0:38:00and I think it took 17 days, and a journey of something in the region of 4,000 kilometres.
0:38:03 > 0:38:10What it reveals is the puniness of human travel efforts.
0:38:10 > 0:38:13You know, this is a bird that has to find its way
0:38:13 > 0:38:18across the open ocean, by itself, feeding and travelling for days.
0:38:18 > 0:38:24I think that's what captivates us in part about sea birds in general,
0:38:24 > 0:38:30is the way in which they treat the open ocean, this featureless landscape, as home.
0:38:32 > 0:38:38Ronald Lockley's legacy goes beyond his discoveries about shearwaters.
0:38:38 > 0:38:44On Skokholm he also created the UK's first bird observatory, in 1933.
0:38:45 > 0:38:50But he had to leave his island paradise after the outbreak of the Second World War,
0:38:50 > 0:38:54when it was commandeered by the armed forces.
0:38:57 > 0:39:01The sea blockade and food shortages of wartime
0:39:01 > 0:39:04meant that despite protection laws, sea birds were back on the menu
0:39:04 > 0:39:07for the first time in a generation.
0:39:09 > 0:39:13Shags were eaten in the war, and cormorants were eaten in the war.
0:39:13 > 0:39:16In fact, most birds would have been eaten in the wartime.
0:39:16 > 0:39:22They shot shags on Fair Isle, and they sent them to London for food.
0:39:22 > 0:39:25But instead of shags, they called them black ducks.
0:39:25 > 0:39:30So, by the end of the war, shags were very scarce, and as
0:39:30 > 0:39:32soon as they saw a boat, they were in flight.
0:39:34 > 0:39:38But this use of sea birds for meat was short-lived.
0:39:38 > 0:39:43In the post-war period, our contact with ocean-going sea birds would diminish.
0:39:43 > 0:39:47Gradually, Britain's maritime power waned,
0:39:47 > 0:39:52and fewer people made their living at sea. The end of the war
0:39:52 > 0:39:56also brought a scientist to Britain who would demystify our commonest
0:39:56 > 0:39:59sea birds - Niko Tinbergen.
0:39:59 > 0:40:05Tinbergen is one of the great pioneers of animal behaviour studies in the field.
0:40:05 > 0:40:09He saw that the kinds of experiments that had been going on, which involved
0:40:09 > 0:40:15looking at animals in cages, and in captivity, was pretty pointless, because he thought that animals
0:40:15 > 0:40:20in captivity would not display the kind of behaviours that they would in the wild. So, what he did was
0:40:20 > 0:40:24take animal behaviour studies into the field, and it was very ground-breaking.
0:40:24 > 0:40:29For this kind of work, it is not enough to pay occasional visits to the birds.
0:40:29 > 0:40:33We must live with our animals literally day and night.
0:40:33 > 0:40:36Tinbergen grew up in the Netherlands,
0:40:36 > 0:40:41where, as a teenager, he became interested in nature study.
0:40:41 > 0:40:46But his career as a zoologist was interrupted by Nazi occupation of his homeland,
0:40:46 > 0:40:52and he was imprisoned in a concentration camp for his political views.
0:40:52 > 0:40:55This experience was to shape his later research.
0:40:55 > 0:41:02Having been kept in prison left its mark on him, because he was so passionate
0:41:02 > 0:41:06about getting out onto the cliff tops, getting away from
0:41:06 > 0:41:09his Oxford laboratory
0:41:09 > 0:41:12then getting out into the field.
0:41:12 > 0:41:18Leaving the dark memories of the Netherlands behind, Tinbergen moved to England after the war.
0:41:18 > 0:41:23And he came to Oxford and set up an animal behaviour study group here.
0:41:23 > 0:41:25I was lucky to be one of the first members of that group.
0:41:25 > 0:41:31Gulls became the major focus of his study group at Oxford.
0:41:31 > 0:41:38One of Niko's principles in studying birds was to always go for the most common birds.
0:41:38 > 0:41:44The more common and populous a bird is, the easier it is to study.
0:41:44 > 0:41:47And he loved gulls because they were common.
0:41:47 > 0:41:50GULLS CALL
0:41:50 > 0:41:56Tinbergen's research on gulls was popularised through a bestselling book,
0:41:56 > 0:42:01The Herring Gull's World, and a successful TV film made with broadcaster Hugh Falkus.
0:42:01 > 0:42:03The beginning of it is great.
0:42:03 > 0:42:07He starts off shaking his fist at the camera and scowling to show aggression,
0:42:07 > 0:42:09which everyone understands.
0:42:09 > 0:42:10When I do this,
0:42:10 > 0:42:15you know at once what I mean - the angry face,
0:42:15 > 0:42:18the clenched fist convey a mood of aggression.
0:42:18 > 0:42:22It's a simple form of communication.
0:42:22 > 0:42:24It's about a gull colony,
0:42:24 > 0:42:26and how gull colonies are always just at the edge of chaos
0:42:26 > 0:42:28and aggression.
0:42:28 > 0:42:32There's murder, there are chicks being eaten, it's just a complete disaster zone.
0:42:32 > 0:42:35This is a great bird city.
0:42:35 > 0:42:38This is a city of thieves and murderers.
0:42:38 > 0:42:42There are all potential killers and eaters of their neighbours' chicks.
0:42:44 > 0:42:46But social life in bird city is made possible
0:42:46 > 0:42:48by a highly complex system of communication -
0:42:48 > 0:42:54a language comprising posture, movement, colour and sound.
0:42:54 > 0:42:57He showed that there were very,
0:42:57 > 0:43:00very precise patterns of behaviour and signals,
0:43:00 > 0:43:03which gulls knew and understood, which basically kept the
0:43:03 > 0:43:05colony from tipping into total chaos.
0:43:05 > 0:43:09And I think if you look at the way in which this is presented in the programme,
0:43:09 > 0:43:12it's very clear that Tinbergen himself was very worried
0:43:12 > 0:43:17about the way that humans were going, and he thought that in the future, overpopulation, crowding,
0:43:17 > 0:43:22it was all a bit like a gull colony, it was going to be a disaster for us.
0:43:22 > 0:43:27So he saw this as being a kind of lesson for humanity - how to negotiate these primal instincts.
0:43:28 > 0:43:34By the late '60s, the way we thought about the natural world was changing.
0:43:34 > 0:43:38Tinbergen's work reflected the ecological anxieties of the era,
0:43:38 > 0:43:45as well as revealing the habits of sea birds to the viewing public.
0:43:45 > 0:43:48And yet, as we became a nation of land lovers,
0:43:48 > 0:43:53sea birds became even more remote from our daily lives.
0:43:53 > 0:43:57They were increasingly out of sight and out of mind.
0:43:59 > 0:44:03Overnight, one event would change all this.
0:44:08 > 0:44:14If there was one moment in our history when sea birds truly invaded the national consciousness,
0:44:14 > 0:44:21it was the Torrey Canyon disaster of March 1967, off the end of Land's End.
0:44:21 > 0:44:28'Saturday March 18th, and the Torrey Canyon, a giant tanker on charter to British Petroleum,
0:44:28 > 0:44:34'goes aground on the treacherous Seven Stone Rocks between the Isles of Scilly and Land's End.
0:44:34 > 0:44:37'On board, 120,000 tonnes of crude oil.'
0:44:40 > 0:44:44The Torrey Canyon was the 13th largest ship in the world
0:44:44 > 0:44:47and she was rushing to get the tide at Milford Haven,
0:44:47 > 0:44:51and Captain Rugiati decided - against all established thinking,
0:44:51 > 0:44:57which was to go round to the west of the Isles of Scilly and swing round into the Bristol Channel -
0:44:57 > 0:45:01to cut the gap between the Scillies and Land's End
0:45:01 > 0:45:07and, overnight, he managed to run aground this enormous ship on the Seven Stones reef,
0:45:07 > 0:45:11The next morning, the people of Britain woke up
0:45:11 > 0:45:17to the first-ever massive environmental catastrophe on their coastline.
0:45:17 > 0:45:20'At once, oil began to spew from her.
0:45:20 > 0:45:23'In no time, there was an ominous slick of oil eight miles long.'
0:45:23 > 0:45:31The Torrey Canyon was the first environmental disaster to unfold in the television era.
0:45:32 > 0:45:39Perhaps the most powerful images of the Torrey Canyon disaster were not what we might have expected.
0:45:39 > 0:45:43It wasn't the broken ship lying on the Seven Stones reef.
0:45:43 > 0:45:50The most powerful images were sea birds covered in oil that were being washed up on Cornish beaches.
0:45:50 > 0:45:54These were pitiful images that said an awful lot to us
0:45:54 > 0:45:59about our mastery and domination over the natural world.
0:45:59 > 0:46:04They certainly were emotive and people reacted to them.
0:46:04 > 0:46:12The sea bird centres in Cornwall were inundated with box-load after box-load
0:46:12 > 0:46:14of, sadly, doomed-to-die sea birds.
0:46:16 > 0:46:20Chief Inspector Gardner, you've got a lot of birds...
0:46:20 > 0:46:27One man on the frontline was Tony Soper, a young broadcaster and naturalist.
0:46:27 > 0:46:30We had no idea how much damage this was likely to cause,
0:46:30 > 0:46:36but in West Cornwall, they had a big problem with guillemots especially.
0:46:36 > 0:46:40Any number of outfits were trying to clean these things up.
0:46:40 > 0:46:44People were setting up rescue stations right, left and centre -
0:46:44 > 0:46:47especially hairdressing salons
0:46:47 > 0:46:51because of course they had the little showers for doing people's hair
0:46:51 > 0:46:55and they were putting detergent on these birds,
0:46:55 > 0:47:00which got the oil off very effectively but left them without any grease and they couldn't fly.
0:47:00 > 0:47:06So an awful lot of birds were put back in the sea totally unable to manage.
0:47:06 > 0:47:11A disaster on this scale required decisive action from the government
0:47:11 > 0:47:14and the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, waded in.
0:47:14 > 0:47:18He of course was viewing this not only as our national leader,
0:47:18 > 0:47:22but also somebody who was intimately involved with the Isles of Scilly.
0:47:22 > 0:47:28He'd holidayed there since the 1950s, it was his own personal paradise.
0:47:28 > 0:47:34In an effort to spare the beaches and the sea bird colonies from the oil,
0:47:34 > 0:47:38Wilson's government made the controversial decision to bomb the stricken vessel.
0:47:41 > 0:47:45Hundreds of bombs, and even napalm, were used to ignite fuel in the hull
0:47:45 > 0:47:48in the hope that it would all burn off.
0:47:51 > 0:47:55Harold Wilson went to the top of St Martin's,
0:47:55 > 0:47:59one of the islands on the Scillies, and stood there with the people of the Isles of Scilly
0:47:59 > 0:48:06and watched the aircraft come roaring in and dropping incendiary bombs on this vast supertanker.
0:48:08 > 0:48:11But even after the ship was sunk,
0:48:11 > 0:48:14large quantities of oil made its way to the shore
0:48:14 > 0:48:16and a clean-up effort was required.
0:48:18 > 0:48:24It was BP at the time and they poured masses of detergent on the beaches,
0:48:24 > 0:48:28right, left and centre, all the way along the beaches on this oil,
0:48:28 > 0:48:31which, in the long run, was a mistake.
0:48:31 > 0:48:39In the aftermath, the nation reflected on how ill-prepared it had been for such a disaster.
0:48:39 > 0:48:45There was a powerful realisation in government that there was no overarching administrative body
0:48:45 > 0:48:48to deal with an environmental disaster like this in Britain.
0:48:50 > 0:48:56The ensuing Royal Commission on Pollution eventually led to important changes in government.
0:48:58 > 0:49:02And in a way, the Torrey Canyon disaster of 1967
0:49:02 > 0:49:07led to the first-ever Department of the Environment within government,
0:49:07 > 0:49:11anywhere in the world, here in Britain.
0:49:11 > 0:49:15For a few weeks in 1967, environmental disaster
0:49:15 > 0:49:19propelled sea birds into our national consciousness.
0:49:19 > 0:49:26Soon after, scientists launched the first sea bird census to take stock of Britain's breeding colonies.
0:49:36 > 0:49:40But sea birds might easily have slipped from public view once again
0:49:40 > 0:49:45were it not for a dramatic change in the behaviour of one group of birds.
0:49:45 > 0:49:48For better or worse, this change would bring more of us
0:49:48 > 0:49:53into direct contact with sea birds than ever before.
0:49:53 > 0:49:55The poor old herring gull.
0:49:55 > 0:50:00There's no herring gull that's seen a herring in the last 50 years!
0:50:00 > 0:50:02They live off other things now.
0:50:07 > 0:50:09Most people encounter sea birds today
0:50:09 > 0:50:11because of some shock-horror about
0:50:11 > 0:50:15gulls eating the Flake from your ice cream in a city centre.
0:50:15 > 0:50:18They're not exotic, they're not the other any more,
0:50:18 > 0:50:23and they're a problem when they get out of their own sphere.
0:50:23 > 0:50:27Keep to the ocean but don't invade my other territory.
0:50:27 > 0:50:32Two species have moved inland - the lesser black-backed gull
0:50:32 > 0:50:35and its paler-winged relative, the herring gull.
0:50:35 > 0:50:38They're obvious birds, they're big birds,
0:50:38 > 0:50:44and they're getting about their business in an obvious way.
0:50:44 > 0:50:48We see courtship, we see them nesting, laying eggs,
0:50:48 > 0:50:52feeding their young, and during that process they become quite aggressive.
0:50:52 > 0:50:59And that's a shock to us because in our little lives in the cities, we don't expect that sort of behaviour.
0:50:59 > 0:51:03That doesn't happen here, it happens on TV or out in the country.
0:51:03 > 0:51:11As a young sea bird researcher, Tim Birkhead had first-hand experience of a gull attack.
0:51:11 > 0:51:13This gull came down,
0:51:13 > 0:51:16making this terrible wheezing noise,
0:51:16 > 0:51:17put both feet out,
0:51:17 > 0:51:19hit me on the back of the head,
0:51:19 > 0:51:23and vomited and defecated simultaneously,
0:51:23 > 0:51:29- so I got vomit down the front of my head and gull- BLEEP - down the back of my neck.
0:51:29 > 0:51:32It left me feeling sick for the whole day.
0:51:32 > 0:51:38Not the defecation bit, just the whack on the back of the head was so unexpected.
0:51:42 > 0:51:46Nesting seagulls will attack any bird or mammal
0:51:46 > 0:51:50that invades their territory because they're protecting their young.
0:51:50 > 0:51:57Our contemporary dislike for gulls in our towns and cities is in stark contrast
0:51:57 > 0:52:01to the way we used to feel about them when they lived at the coast.
0:52:11 > 0:52:16If you think of the opening signature music to Desert Island Discs,
0:52:16 > 0:52:19the wailing of gulls is the soundtrack of the sea.
0:52:19 > 0:52:24The child with their bucket and spade, the sound of seagulls in the background -
0:52:24 > 0:52:28it's part of a repertoire of recreational holiday life in Britain.
0:52:28 > 0:52:33That wonderful laughing call of the herring gull,
0:52:33 > 0:52:37throwing back its head and making that extraordinary noise.
0:52:37 > 0:52:41That's the image most people have of gulls.
0:52:47 > 0:52:49Or at least, it used to be.
0:52:49 > 0:52:56Ironically, our efforts to solve a major pollution problem inadvertently created the conditions
0:52:56 > 0:53:00that would encourage gulls to settle inland.
0:53:00 > 0:53:06The Great Smog of 1952 killed many thousands of people.
0:53:06 > 0:53:10The government's response was the 1956 Clean Air Act,
0:53:10 > 0:53:14which prevented the burning of household waste.
0:53:16 > 0:53:22So in the following decades, ever-increasing quantities of rubbish
0:53:22 > 0:53:26were hauled off to landfill sites, providing a bonanza for the gulls.
0:53:26 > 0:53:31We've got massive landfill sites on the edges of our cities,
0:53:31 > 0:53:38which is a great food source for them and they've taken advantage of that. They're victims of our excess.
0:53:38 > 0:53:42Gulls are the most adaptable of all sea birds
0:53:42 > 0:53:48with extraordinarily catholic tastes, but their scavenging behaviour doesn't endear them to us.
0:53:50 > 0:53:55The gulls are exploiting as a food supply human waste,
0:53:55 > 0:53:58to which we ourselves feel some feelings of disgust.
0:53:58 > 0:54:02They became in a sense a kind of metaphor for human waste
0:54:02 > 0:54:06and I think that's part of why they attracted so much hostility.
0:54:06 > 0:54:13Gull populations in some British cities have grown to the point where they are now considered vermin.
0:54:13 > 0:54:17And yet we only see part of the picture.
0:54:17 > 0:54:24We have a sense of gulls being ubiquitous and commonplace but in fact,
0:54:24 > 0:54:29one of the most frequent nesters on people's roofs has declined substantially.
0:54:29 > 0:54:33Up to 50% of all herring gulls have gone in the last 50 years.
0:54:35 > 0:54:42This is because the original, coastal colonies of herring gulls have collapsed due to lack of food.
0:54:42 > 0:54:49Fishermen no longer lay out their catches on the harbour side, nor gut fish at sea.
0:54:49 > 0:54:53Over-fishing has also reduced the gulls' food supply.
0:54:53 > 0:54:57Herring gulls have survived until now because they are truly exceptional.
0:54:57 > 0:55:02They've adapted from being sea birds into urban birds.
0:55:02 > 0:55:06But other species of sea birds may not be so lucky.
0:55:06 > 0:55:12We are not managing the marine resources in Britain well, or Europe,
0:55:12 > 0:55:14and the sea birds show us that.
0:55:14 > 0:55:22Sadly for us, our best-loved sea bird is one of the species now in decline.
0:55:26 > 0:55:32Even though most of us have never seen a puffin, we feel we know this comical little bird.
0:55:32 > 0:55:37The model for countless children's toys, and the inspiration
0:55:37 > 0:55:40for the world's most celebrated series of children's books.
0:55:40 > 0:55:43It's like a toy animal, really.
0:55:43 > 0:55:49You just look at it and you simply cannot believe that this is the real thing. It cannot be a real bird.
0:55:49 > 0:55:51How can it exist like that?
0:55:52 > 0:55:59The puffin's predicament provides a salutary warning for the future of our relationship with sea birds.
0:55:59 > 0:56:03The iconic view of a puffin is this bird
0:56:03 > 0:56:07with this incredibly bright bill coming ashore,
0:56:07 > 0:56:14running up to its burrow with all these little fish, head to tail, arranged through its bill.
0:56:16 > 0:56:22Puffins feed these nutritious little fish, sand eels, to their growing chicks.
0:56:22 > 0:56:29In recent years, many chicks have starved to death because of a shortage of sand eels.
0:56:29 > 0:56:36This is partly due to over-fishing and also down to a more serious long-term problem - climate change.
0:56:38 > 0:56:42Sea temperatures are rising and it means that species that support
0:56:42 > 0:56:45our sea birds - sand eels - are heading north.
0:56:45 > 0:56:49They want that cooler water and what will follow them? Our sea birds.
0:56:49 > 0:56:53In the last ten years, climate change has already contributed
0:56:53 > 0:57:00to a significant fall in the total number of sea birds breeding in Britain.
0:57:00 > 0:57:05And if we lost our sea birds, we would not be just losing
0:57:05 > 0:57:12colonies of birds, we'd be losing a whole part of our heritage, a whole part of what makes Britain Britain.
0:57:14 > 0:57:19Arguably, we have lost much of this heritage already.
0:57:19 > 0:57:23As our dependence on sea birds gradually diminished,
0:57:23 > 0:57:26we developed a deeper aesthetic appreciation of them.
0:57:26 > 0:57:33But at the same time, their cultural relevance to us began to recede.
0:57:33 > 0:57:37We may have protected sea birds and learned more about them,
0:57:37 > 0:57:42but now our mismanagement of the seas threatens their very future.
0:57:43 > 0:57:47So today, they float in our peripheral vision,
0:57:47 > 0:57:52as ghostly reminders of the seafaring people we once were.
0:58:03 > 0:58:08Next time, in the final episode of Birds Britannia, we explore the extraordinary impact
0:58:08 > 0:58:10the birds of the British countryside
0:58:10 > 0:58:14have had on our nation's history and culture.
0:58:17 > 0:58:22From nightingales in poetry, to grouse on the Glorious 12th...
0:58:25 > 0:58:28..these birds have not only shaped our rural landscape,
0:58:28 > 0:58:33but also defined what the countryside really means to us.
0:58:55 > 0:58:57Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd