“I was born and bred in Sudan, North Africa, and there we don’t have many trees,” Hamza Yassin recalled as he described his journey to the remote spot that is his home in the Arnamurchan peninsula. “I moved to the UK when I was eight. Coming here you could immediately see the greenery. In Sudan once summer hits everything goes yellow and when it rains everything goes green. All we could think of was that England is green. Why is it green? We were expecting snow.”

The Strictly Come Dancing star was in his element, when my collaborator, Anna Deacon visited him for our book, For The Love Of Trees. We were interested in the then-emerging wildlife presenter because of what he might have to say, for our book, For The Love of Trees, about trees as a habitat for other wildlife – in particular, birds. In response, he told us the startling story of the larch he was filming and photographing just behind his home.

The Herald:

Hamza Yassin in Ardnamurchan, copyright Anna Deacon

Seven years previously, Yassin had moved to the peninsula, drawn by a passage he had read in a book about a golden eagle living in a larch there. Initially, he had lived in his car, whilst filming wildlife in the area, and on the islands of Muck and Rum. After several years, he recalled, he came across “a very old remnant of the nest”.

“I thought, Oh my God I’ve found the tree this book described. Then, a year later, I was doing my regular walk of the area and I thought I’d go and check out this larch tree. I started to climb up towards the nest, and then I heard the cu-cu-cu-cu noise.”

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Yassin recognised that sound, not as a golden eagle, but a white-tailed eagle. “A pair had taken over the golden eagle nest and built it up. The nest was about the size of a double-bed mattress.”

White-tailed eagles were, for decades, extinct in Scotland, and have only recently been reintroduced through the work of conservationists like Roy Dennis – so this seemed all the more remarkable a find.

Yassin enthused about trees like the giant larch those eagles had nested in. “These big, old trees that are able to house golden eagles and whitetail eagles take a long time to grow. A tree like the one they’ve nested in is between 150 and 200 years old. You can’t just plant one of them today.”

He patiently filmed those white-tailed eagles. When Deacon visited, he was awaiting the emergence of the young from the nest – but what was remarkable was that he took time away from that passion project to be photographed by her and talk to her children. He offered for them to have a go with his drone, let them look through his huge camera lens and inspired them about the wildlife in Scotland – even allowing them to interview him for a school project.

“I tend to find all the animals I need – the Scottish big five of the red deer, the golden eagle, the white-tailed eagle, the capercaillie, the pine marten – near trees,” Yassin observed. “Trees are such an important part of life. People talk about regeneration of the land, but there is a certain amount of wilderness that we will never achieve in our lifetime. It’s great that we are replanting, and we need to replant as much as possible, all broadleaf plantations, not conifer plantations.”

This interview was conducted for the book For The Love of Trees by Vicky Allan and Anna Deacon, published by Black & White

The Strictly Come Dancing semi-final will air live on Sunday, December 11, at 7.15pm and the results show will air the following day on Monday, December 12 at 8.15pm

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