Movie star otters and pipe-smoking bears: the fabulous animal films of David Cobham

The man who filmed Tarka the Otter has a new creature to save. David Cobham talks about the soaring life and tragic death of a hen harrier named after Bet Lynch - and relives his tussle with a runaway bearFlap, flap, flap, flap - glide. There's a moment reading Bowland Beth when suddenly you're airborne, flying above dark moorland, fixing a bird's eye on the human-dominated world below. That's exactly David Cobham's intention - because his new book goes inside the mind of one hen harrier, the much-persecuted bird of prey teetering on the brink of extinction in England.Thanks to nest cameras, a satellite tag and eyewitness accounts from birdwatchers and scientists who monitored an individual bird called Bowland Beth, Cobham has created an unusually sharp dramatisation of her life - and her death in 2012, after being shot. While there's plenty of gripping incident, Cobham has rooted it all in fact, checking with zoologists if birds grieve (yes, some do) and avoiding anthropomorphic flights of fancy. "I've kept my feet on the ground," he says with a smile. Continue reading...