Watership Down (film) envisioned, Watership Down, where the rabbits settle in with Hazel as their chief. They befriend an injured black-headed gull, Kehaar, who offers to survey the local area for does. The rabbits return to Nuthanger Farm to free the does; Hazel is shot by a farmer and presumed dead, but Fiver has a vision and follows the apparition of the Black Rabbit of Inlé (the rabbit equivalent of the Grim Reaper) to his injured brother. Kehaar returns and while removing buckshot pellets from Hazel's leg, reports of Efrafa, a large warren with many females. Holly, who encountered Efrafa, begs them not
Watership Down obituary of Collings, to accept "a book as bizarre by an unknown writer which had been turned down by the major London publishers; but," she continued, "it was also dazzlingly brave and intuitive." Collings had little capital and could not pay an advance but "he got a review copy onto every desk in London that mattered." Adams wrote that it was Collings who gave "Watership Down" its title. There was a second edition in 1973. Macmillan USA, then a media giant, published the first U.S. edition in 1974 and a Dutch edition was also published that year by Het Spectrum.