Halcyon River Diaries is an entirely fresh approach to natural history programme making: a four-part documentary series made by a family for families, and an engaging and original mix of wildlife and observational documentary.
Following the success of My Halcyon River (BBC2 Natural World), and filmed and produced by award-winning wildlife cameraman Charlie Hamilton James, it is an intimate look at the wildlife of a typical English river, as seen through the eyes of a family who live beside it and love it.
Charlie is a wildlife cameraman; he spends most of his life travelling the world filming exotic species in incredible locations. But this year Charlie, his wife Philippa, and their sons are on a mission closer to home; they want to get to know the wild neighbours who live along the river next to their house, by making an intimate film diary of their lives. The results are full of surprises and often hilarious.
In this programme they discover the secret life of the nocturnal otter on British rivers and film unique behaviour of a river otter hunting at night.
The boys recreate the river bed in an old tank to investigate the family life of the stickleback. This works brilliantly for the film diary, until all the fish start disappearing, but just who is eating them?
Conservationist Philippa launches a search for the fastest declining mammal in the UK, the water vole. What she finds causes both joy and concern.
And the cameras reveal what the life of an ordinary mallard mum is really like, as one night she frantically tries to protect her ducklings from being eaten.
