Highlands: Scotland's Wild Heart

The Scottish Highlands cover twenty thousand square miles of rugged coastline, lochs and mountains, and are home to a thriving wildlife. With summer's relentless sun, the overwhelming nature of the autumn and winter season, and the unpredictability of spring, the Scottish Highlands are plagued with extreme seasons that only the toughest can survive.

An exploration of summer, the most intense of all the seasons in the Highlands. Animals are in a great race to raise their young to independence before the nights close in and the storms of autumn arrive. Some, like otters and pine martens, are single mothers working ceaselessly for their young, while others, including golden eagles, work in pairs to look after the chicks. Most spectacularly of all, young guillemots on Handa face a leap for life as they tumble to the sea from 400ft cliffs.

It's a still, clear autumn day in Glen Affric in the North West Highlands. The forests are flushed with gold, but it's a shallow beauty that marks the beginning of the Highlands' longest, darkest and most overwhelming season.

The Highlands may appear a wild and unforgiving place, but for millennia people have lived alongside wild animals here, sharing the same weather, seasons and landscapes. For many years, the impact of humans on the landscape has been damaging, with forests cut down, seas warming and many iconic species like the wolf and bear vanishing.