Autumnwatch USA
BBC Two’s Autumnwatch is spreading its wings and flying across the Pond to the USA to find what its series producer reveals here will be a wealth of amazing sights… with some surprises along the way.
‘Watch’ producer Chris Howard previews the wild delights of New England in the fall
Why do we, as a nation, love autumn so much? Where spring is showy – flushed with new arrivals and bright verdancy – autumn is more subtle: a final flourish of colour as the countryside fades to brown, and a flurry of summer visitors fleeing for warmer climes. Likewise, the harsh realities of winter are yet to set in. The great flocks of wildfowl and starlings are only just starting to build, and the desperation of the coldest and hardest season is yet to bite.
Yet there is clearly something about the year’s latter months – because the Autumnwatch programmes are some of the most popular we make each year. I think that’s because it’s the most poetic and emotional of seasons – felt rather than seen; loaded with ephemeral moments sensed at a deeper level. Autumn is a subtle tweak in the quality of the light; a shift in the wind that signals change. But try filming those moments, those feelings, those smells. Of the three ‘Watches’ we make each year, Autumnwatch is the most challenging to bring to the screen. So, for the past 12 years the team has been experimenting with new ways to pin down this nebulous season. The search has taken us all around the country. We’ve visited Westonbirt Arboretum in the Cotswolds as the leaves changed to amber and fiery red, and watched huge flocks of geese through the mist at WWT Slimbridge near Gloucester. We’ve broadcast from the highest reaches of Scotland and from the BBC Bristol car park, across programmes ranging from single one-hour specials to eight-week marathons. Autumnwatch has always been on the move, changing and adapting to tell the story of this complicated and ever-shifting season.
And now we’re roving farther than ever before. This year we head to the USA to explore ‘fall’ in New England – a spectacle billed as the greatest autumn on Earth.
As summer recedes, the lush greens of the region’s forests give way to the scarlet and crimson of maple and red oak, while birch and elm glint with gold and mountain maple glow in deep orange hues. The transformation begins in mid-September in northern Maine, seeping south over the following weeks through New Hampshire,
“Autumnwatch has always been on the move, adapting to tell the story of this ever-shifting season.”
Lesser spotted leaf-peeper
We’re not the only ones who are drawn to enjoy the fiery fall hues of New England. Each year millions of tourists, who are known locally as ‘leaf-peepers’, make a pilgrimage to enjoy the vivid-coloured foliage. Yet this spectacle bears little resemblance to the late-succession forest (undisturbed for a long period of time) that greeted the region’s original Pilgrims – the first European settlers who landed here almost 400 years ago.
Slow-growing evergreen trees such as white pine, hemlock and spruce were much more common then, while oak and beech were the predominant broadleaf species in those ancient forests. The maples, renowned today for their blazing autumn foliage displays, comprised just 11 per cent of the region’s trees in the early 17th century, compared with 31 per cent today: they are one of the first tree species to sprout readily in a clear-cut area and grow quickly.
It was the actions of settlers that drove these dramatic changes in arboreal habitats. New England’s forests were the riches that fuelled the great American experiment. Their timber was logged in vast quantities and sent back to 'Old England' for the shipbuilding trade, and their animals trapped and exported for their valuable furs. By the mid-19th century, up to 80 per cent of New England’s forests had been felled,
the land put to work in agriculture. Just 200 years ago, a visitor would have been met with the sight of vast swathes of empty farmland, punctuated by small pockets of trees.
But the farms didn’t last. Lured by the promise of even greater wealth in the west, many settlers abandoned New England; undisturbed, the trees began to return, and the familiar mix of hardwood forest began to take shape – the ‘classic’ New England vista, 400 years in the making but less than 200 years old.
Fascinating fauna
Autumnwatch is about more than colourful leaves, and luckily New England has charismatic fauna that delivers just as much screen gold as its renowned flora. Many of the species we hope to feature have a familiar ring to them.
Mammals often prove to be the stars of Autumnwatch, not least red deer, seen (and heard) on the series rutting on Exmoor and Rum. New England has its rut, too – but this one is supersized. Moose, the largest and heaviest member of the deer family, also rut in autumn. The males, huge creatures reaching over 2m tall at the shoulder and with palmate antlers spanning an equal 2m, gather at scrapes and wallows to battle for access to receptive females. Despite their size, though, moose are among the most challenging of our target species to capture on film; they’re able to thread their heavy headgear through the thickest of foliage and disappear without a trace into the forest.
Squirrels are also Autumnwatch favourites, and we have covered the battles between our native red squirrel and invasive American greys in the UK many times. In New England, though, there’s a twist. Here, reds and greys live side by side; in fact, locals consider the reds to be the pests, gnawing their way into attics and destroying anything in their way.
On top of those two athletic rodents, New England boasts another four species of squirrel: woodchuck, two species of flying squirrel and – certain to emerge
as one of the stars of the show – the cheeky chipmunk. A much larger rodent being reacquainted with Britain also appears: the beaver, although here in its North American form rather than its Eurasian.
Transatlantic connections continue through the cast list. New England is home to stoats and weasels galore, but also American mink, martens and a large mustelid called the fisher – one of a few animals known to be able to tackle and eat a porcupine. The red fox is joined by grey fox and coyote among the canids. Some types of animal aren’t familiar at all in the UK, of course: the bobcat, a reclusive inhabitant of the forest, and black bear.
A host of larger-than-life characters will add an extra dimension this year. Some are physically imposing – with huge numbers of black bears living alongside the human population, and a coastline that is home to humpback whales and a seal population that is attracting great white sharks in unprecedented numbers. Others are real characters, smaller but bound to make an impact; porcupine with a taste for nibbling fresh wires, and raccoons that are so adaptable they have spread from their forest homes to almost every corner of New England – causing mayhem along the way and more than likely to do so with our camera kit too.
Supersized birds
Birdfeeders should bring cardinals, blue jays and chickadees, and the chance to experiment with different takes on our popular regular feeding experiments. Barred owls and pileated woodpeckers are supersized versions of their tawny and greater-spotted cousins in Europe, while bald eagles patrol the skies. In ponds, common newts are replaced by their eastern cousins, who have a striking orange juvenile stage called a red eft, and common toads become massive American bullfrogs. There are some creatures, such as the snapping turtle, that you’d never expect to spot in Britain.
So, with a world-renowned sylvan spectacle and a list of animals as long as your arm, how do you go about setting up an Autumnwatch across the Atlantic? We needed to identify locations, accommodation, offices and other facilities.
What we didn’t realise is what every film crew needs is a porcupine and a banana. Earlier this year Lucy, one of our most experienced producers, travelled to New England to find somewhere that could tick all of our boxes. And it was at the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center that she met the prickly rodent in question. Squam Lake is a beautiful spot in New Hampshire, flanked by woodland, ponds and meadows, but it also has serious scientific credentials and staff with a deep knowledge of local wildlife. The centre’s team is led by a Scot, Iain Macleod, who has lived in the region for over 30 years and is even a ‘Watches’ fan.
The centre is also an educational institute; as part of this work it takes in and rehabilitates native animals, working
with them to educate visitors about the wonderful creatures that live in the woods.
One such temporary resident was a porcupine – and it stole Lucy’s heart. One lunchtime she had the pleasure of feeding him his daily banana – and the video of that moment has become legendary in the office, the soft nasal bleats he emits as he tucks in softening the hardest of scientific hearts.
Lucy had found the beautiful forests. The meadows and ponds were bustling with life. There was expert advice on tap, plus a banana-eating porcupine. But, so far, there was no single vista that screamed ‘New England in the autumn’.
Biff comes up trumps
Fortunately, a few miles down the road on the lake’s southern shore, Lucy stumbled across a summer camp. In peak season it is packed with America’s youth, but in late October it was deserted – except for the caretaker, a welcoming soul called Biff. After just 30 seconds, Lucy knew we had our location.
A traditional 19th-century cabin at the top of a hill offered a readymade studio, complete with props and a fire pit for that traditional Autumnwatch look. The veranda provides sweeping views of Squam Lake, and there was easy access to the lakeside via a small beach on the shoreline. Cabins dotted around the camp were perfect for offices and work spaces – and it’s all surrounded by rich forest, great habitat in which to rig our cameras. Between the camp and the Science Center we had found our home for the autumn.
We’ve done our best to time filming to capture the most magnificent autumn colours, but predicting ‘peak fall’ is not an exact science, and we could be a week or two off in either direction. We’ve tried to maximise our chances of filming the wildlife, spreading our cameras over two locations and working with anyone who will pick up the phone to get the latest intelligence on where animals might be.
We’ve done this enough times to know that nothing is certain – and that whatever we plan, and whatever we think we will get, we could be wrong. This most fickle of seasons is waiting to surprise us once more. And that, after all, is the joy of Autumnwatch – wherever it may be.
FIND OUT MORE Watch Lucy’s video of a porcupine tucking into a banana: www.discoverwildlife.com/porcupine-video
“This most fickle of seasons is waiting to surprise us… that is the joy of Autumnwatch.”