Legends of Kingfishers, Otters, and Red-tailed Hawks | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

I became completely obsessed with them when I was seven. I have no idea why. I'm fairly obsessive person, and so all of my spare time as a teenager was spent sitting in my blind, taking mostly, in fact, almost all useless photographs of kingfishers. What if your superpower was that you could watch an animal for hours on end? You'd never get bored. In fact, the longer you watched, the greater your concentration became. That's what happened to National Geographic photographer Charlie Hamilton James.

They dive into the water and catch fish, but you know Britain is a fairly drab place most of the time. It has a drab selection of birds. I mean there's some wonderful birds, I'm not one of the little, but the kingfish is like a tropical bird because it's so bright and stunning. Kingfishers, these bright blue birds, change color in the light from an iridescent blue to a glistening green. It's actually not blue in the sense that there is no blue pigment in birds. It's the way their feathers are structured and the oils in them which reflects blue light and absorbs other waves.

Oh really? Yeah, so kingfishers aren't at, you know, they're not pigmented blue. So they're an almost electric blue. So they go from, you know, from black to green to turquoise to navy, depending on how the light's hitting them. Charlie could watch them from a riverbank in Bristol, England, until the rest of the world seemed to evaporate. He could watch them until he started to see the world through their eyes.

As a teenager, Charlie got so good at capturing images of these kingfishers that people started noticing. By the time I was 14 or 15, the BBC, you know, down the road knew about this kid who could work with kingfishers. Because they're so bright and colorful in the UK, we love them. We want them on TV all the time, and I very quickly became the go-to guy for kingfishers.

So you're the BBC's go-to guy and you're 14 years old? Like, I mean, that's pretty... Between sort of 14 and 16 it grew. But little did the BBC know that they had a teenage delinquent on their hands. In fact, instead of going to school, Charlie was playing hooky just to film these kingfishers.

I can't concentrate on anything. I'm not interested in school. To me, it was a horrific experience, and I hated every minute of it. My mom wasn't that bothered, so she kind of enabled me in that sense. I knew what I wanted to do; I wanted to film animals and take photos of animals. I didn't need to go to school to do that. I knew that, and I was doing it. Years later, Charlie is still doing it.

But how did a teenage photographer go from playing hooky to taking pictures all over the world? Peter Gwyn, and this is Overheard at National Geographic, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big weird beautiful world. This week, I sit down to talk with photographer Charlie Hamilton James. He talks about his unlikely journey and the kingfishers, otters, and vultures he's encountered along the way.

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More after this. When I was in my teens, I wanted to be a wildlife photographer, and I remember going to this annual competition, this global competition called the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, and meeting the other British wildlife photographers there and realizing that none of them had any money. So I decided that actually I don't want to do that; I want to do something where I can actually earn a decent living.

Right, so I transitioned my photography to wanting to work as a wildlife cameraman at the BBC. By my mid-teens, I kind of had Geographic magazines as this dream, but in the immediate, in the short term, I wanted to get into TV just because it was a more consistent way of making a living. When I was 14, I was working. The guy that created Planet Earth, Alastair Fothergill, was a researcher back then, and Alastair gave me my first jobs.

Then when I was 16, I got my first job working on the David Attenborough series. It was called The Trials of Life. David, David Edinburgh, as you call him. So that was my first sort of real assisting a cameraman to get these shots of kingfishers, these slow-motion shots of kingfishers diving into the water which everyone seemed to love on TV.

So you go from being this sort of, you know, precocious gifted teenager, you were just doing kingfishers, and then what was your next thing? Otters? You keep doing these American—don't do your American! I love it when Americans try and say otters because they say 'ottos.' No, no, no, otters!

So, when I was 16, I became equally obsessed with otters. I saved up my money and I applied for a grant from my school, a bursary from my school that I'd left in such disgrace because I think they had a soft spot for this kid who just—I just couldn't play by the rules. I hated authority. I couldn't play by the rules, but I think he had a kind of soft spot for me.

So they gave me, I think, 500 pounds of a travel bursary. I combined that with a load of money I'd earned and a couple hundred pounds my mum gave me, and I went off to the Shetland Islands, which is far the furthest most point of the UK, basically way up there in the North Sea, this little archipelago, and I spent six weeks walking the beaches photographing otters because I had become obsessed with otters.

So, wow! So like the kid who doesn't want to go to school gets money from the school to go shopping? That's pretty—that's a pretty ingenious plan you've worked out there. It was, it was. I was very lucky. I understand my privilege as a result, but I was very lucky because I chose otters and kingfishers, and they were the two probably, for all the animals filmed in the UK, those were the two animals probably in the highest demand. They were very difficult, both of them. Otters are really difficult to film, you know.

I remember in my mid-30s, I spent an entire year just working on kingfishers as an artist. Like half your life later, still being there. There were other years when I didn't, but I remember, you know, right just doing kingfishers or not. It was just relentless kingfishers and otters. So I was really lucky that I chose those two subjects to get obsessed with. We'll be back with more Charlie Hamilton James after this.

So what was your first assignment at Geographic? This was actually a major turning point in my career because I got this film commissioned by the BBC. I went off to start making, and they said, "Oh, we want this kind of cute, funny film about vultures." I got out to Kenya and Tanzania and realized that, you know, vultures are in catastrophic decline across the—certainly Africa and Asia.

You know, I really struggled to make a quirky, funny film about, you know, the fastest declining family of species in history. It's not—it’s hilarious! Yeah, so we made this film, and I sat there editing him and the executive producer, and I ended up just banging our heads against each other because I wanted to make a conservation film, he wanted a wildlife film.

In the end, he said, "You can have five minutes of conservation in it." I thought that was wrong—like fundamentally wrong. In the end, I got 15 minutes of conservation in it, so it was a compromise. You know, I look back and okay, well fair enough, he was probably right to an extent because who wants to be depressed and watch Sunday night TV for an hour? No one does anyway.

So Geographic came to me at the time, and I remember having a conversation with my editor for the story, who was Ken Geiger. He phoned me up and he said, "Hey, we're going to do a kind of quirky, funny story." Oh, okay, so I gave him my pitch, which is a very passionate pitch about what an amazing struggle this catastrophe that was going on, and he turns around and he said, "Oh my god, this is—we should do a big geopolitical story on this."

I said I want to work for these people. I want to work for people who are going to take on—and I don't want to diminish the BBC; they're amazing. But I just at that point thought, you know, I want to work for people who are going to tell stories like this because these stories need telling.

So what was it about vultures, you know, because you have, you know, you stated you have this notorious, you know, short attention span for things you're not interested in. So what did you find about vultures that kept you focused? I love anti-heroes. I made a film on hyenas many years ago for the BBC, and then I pitched vultures because people overlook hyenas, people overlook vultures.

If you want to get something commissioned, they’re perfect. They're very charismatic even though they're disgusting and ugly, but they are charismatic and they're, as a result, inherently interesting. What do you mean charismatic? How are they charismatic? Well, scared, have you ever heard of a thick knee?

No, this is the little plover that wanders around on the plains of Africa. Okay, but you've heard of a vulture? Yeah, yeah, because the thickness got no charisma and the vulture's got charisma. You're right! Awesome, look at that bird. It's amazing. Goddamn, it's ugly! Yeah, so they have this kind of anti-charisma, let’s say.

Okay, right. My job is to convince an audience that actually, look past the ugliness. These are incredible, you know, machines based on these amazing animals. Look at them, and that's a—it's a really lovely thing to be able to do, is to turn the tables on someone's received narrative on something. Right.

So did you have to come up with any sort of like duct tape inventions to get vultures? Yeah, absolutely! I mean the key shot was this kind of inside the carcass shot. If you can keep the frenzy going, because when vultures eat, it's a very slow process until they frenzy.

The moment they frenzy, they're—what does that mean? Instance! They are going absolutely crazy! You know, you got 50 vultures having a crazed fight over a carcass. If you can drive in, drop your camera, and get out fast enough, they come back in and carry on for it. Then they don't notice the camera!

Wow! Wow! But if you leave it two seconds too long, one vulture has to stop and then the whole lot stop, and that's it; it's all over. No one's going in. So there's this whole timing kind of thing there, yeah. It's just crazy! Like this—oh!

But the eventual shot was a really cool shot, and again, it tells you know, as I was talking about, what does it look like? What does it look like? It's this big—it's like it's in a zebra rib cage and it's a big foot of a vulture and a head coming in, and then all the way back it's got these different layers of vultures in the background, and you can see the sort of black and white of the zebra skin, and you know, you can see the planes in the background.

So, you know, you've got a story in one shot! Yeah, and you've got an immersive experience for the reader to open the magazine and wow, you've got this kind of what it's like to be inside that carcass with them.

So let me ask you about—you have a son, Fred. How is he now? He's like 19. He's 19? Wow! When I think we first met, it was right around the time that Fred had been diagnosed with a medical condition. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, I might cry, but I'll talk about it. The whole purpose of the whole process of this interview is to make you—all right! So okay, I'll tell you, but I know I'm—but I'm not kidding in the sense that it's an important event in your life. Yeah, it's the important event in my life I think, but it's also an incredible story, and I'll tell you the story because it still blows me away.

So Fred's one day, he's looking at his phone. He keeps moaning about headaches. He keeps moaning he's tired. He's always asleep. When I was just a teenager, you know, he's 16. Of course, he's lazy and tired. I was at that age. He's looking at his phone very closely all the time, I think. I wonder if he's, you know, needs his eye test, so I take him into town for an eye test, and the optician comes and gets me.

No, this is odd! He pulls me aside and says, "Has he got Lyme’s disease?" I don’t know, and he pulls up a picture of his optic nerves and he’s got impacted optic nerves, you know, that they're swollen on both sides. We're looking at, and he's—and I grew up in a medical family, so I'm like that can't be a brain tumor because it's bilateral. Normally, if you have a brain tumor, you just get one optic nerve swollen, but this was two.

Anyways, look, get them checked out. So the next day, my wife takes them off to the specialist, and this guy says this kid needs an MRI. Now they airlift him to Salt Lake. He goes off with his mum; I drive down; they take the thing out the next day.

So it is a tumor then? Oh, sorry, yes! It's a massive—well, it's not massive, it's the size of a peach—brain tumor in his right frontal cortex. Wow! And you know, on the scan, it’s just—it's just so—it’s this massive great blob in his head.

So for about four years, Fred's been asking me if he can become a falconer—falconer! And I'm saying no because I'm a miserable old git, as we've said. No! We move everywhere, life's too complicated, you're not having a falcon! He's over—he's just relentless.

After a couple of years, you think, all right, this isn't just a fad. The kid is genuine! He had read every single book; he was obsessed with falconry, and I recognized that obsession, but I couldn't facilitate it because I was, I guess, probably being selfish.

Anyway, he goes in, he has this brain tumor taken out. They take the whole side of his head off. He’s got his beautiful blonde hair, and they shave this thing. They just take the side of his head off, pull this thing out, put his head back together. He wakes up at like two in the morning off his head on morphine or whatever he’s—you know, he’s just off his head.

There’s a nurse at the end of the bed, and he wakes and goes, "Oh hi, my name's Fred. I'm a falconer!" And then he turns to me and Phillip and he says, "Dad, can I get a falcon?" And I said, "Fred, you can have whatever you want!"

Wow! So a couple of weeks goes by; we don't know what this thing is, what is this brain tumor, is it bad, is it good? We don't know what it is. The pathologies, they said, "Oh, we'll know next week." It's taken two weeks, three weeks, you know, it’s August, and it's the most horrifying experience as a parent to not know whether your kid's gonna die or not.

Yeah, and I'm walking into the grocery store one day, my phone rings. It’s Salt Lake, and they go, "Look, we're gonna tell you." And I'm like—because I knew the moment they said they were going to tell me what it was, and they said, "It's a low-grade glioma. It's not going to kill him. If it grows back, we'll take it out again."

And you know, anyway, Fred’s got to get a bird, I promised. So here’s the thing, America, there’s a lot of laws. I say to my American buddies, you’ve got a lot of laws protecting your freedom, right? Yeah, and actually, you know what? Great! So you should have a lot of laws protecting your falcons.

So Fred is allowed a couple of different birds; there are lots of falcons, hawks, and eagles and everything in the States, but he’s really only allowed a couple of them because he’s a novice. Yeah, you have to go through stages; you have to have exams. You know what I mean? So Fred is basically allowed a red-tailed hawk where we live.

Okay, so he has to—we build him this muse, this aviary. His friend Roger, who’s a master falconer and mentors Fred, Fred has to go and catch a red-tailed hawk once he’s built the aviary. You just don’t buy one; you don’t go down to the pet store and buy a red tail. No!

This is where I get—this is where the story gets really cool! Okay, he can catch a wild red tail, but it has to have been born that year. Right? It's called a passage bird. It's migrating south; you catch it in the fall; it's its first year; it's not an adult, it's never bred before.

These are the rules. This is—these are the rules! Okay? If you catch an adult, you have to let it go. Okay? So, to catch one, you get some mice from the mouse store and you put them in a thing called the bal-shakry, which is this trap, and you put them in a tank so the bird can’t get them.

But the bird flies down trying to get—so you basically drive around until you see a bird. You put this trap thing down, it's got these mice, the bird flies in, it gets its leg caught in a leg snare thing; it doesn't injure it or damage it—and then you run out and you pick the bird up, and then that's your bird. You then train from wild.

Okay, so Fred says to me, "Oh Dad, I want a female dark morph red tail." Right? Not really; you want a female dark morph passage red. So it's gotta be born that year; it’s gonna be a dark one.

There are light normal red tails and dark red tails; it’s like three different color morphs, and he wants a female. Yeah, of course you do! So they go buy some mice; him and his mom, the next day, we're gonna trap this bird for him and it's gonna be his bird for life, blah blah blah.

The next day, the neighbor phones up; she says, "Oh, you got an eagle stuck in your fence!" And Fred goes running up the garden, and it's a dark morph female passage red tail! Right? He picks it up! That's his bird! Wow! He doesn't even catch it one day. He just goes up the garden, there’s a bird on the ground, and he just—and it’s exactly what—and he just picks it up!

That's it! But how cool is that? Well, Charlie Hamilton James, thank you very much. Thank you!

To see some of Charlie's photographs, including his National Geographic stories on kingfishers, otters, and vultures, check out the links in our show notes. They're right there in your podcast app. You can also find his photographs on our Instagram feed at Nat Geo.

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Overheard at National Geographic is produced by Laura Sim, Brian Gutierrez, Jacob Pinter, Carla Wills, and Alana Strauss. Our senior editor is Eli Chin. This episode was edited by Robert Moleski. Our executive producer of audio is Duvar Ardellon. Our fact checkers are Michelle Harris, Robin Palmer, and Julie Beer. Our copy editor is Amy Kulzak.

Hansdale Sue sound designed this episode and composed our theme music. This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners. Whitney Johnson is the director of visuals and immersive experiences. Susan Goldberg is National Geographic's editorial director, and I'm your host, Peter Gwynne. Thanks for listening, and see y'all next time!

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