Wetlands Nick Baker's Wild West


Wetlands

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The wetlands of the West.

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Soggy, but beautiful.

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Sometimes threatening, perhaps, but they are home

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to some of our rarest and, I think, most precious wildlife.

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I'm Nick Baker and I'm going to be bringing you the very best

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that nature has to offer from right here in the West Country.

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I've lived and worked here as a naturalist for three decades

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and I'm convinced the wildlife here is as compelling and beautiful

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as anywhere I've travelled.

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On my journey across this wonderful landscape,

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I'll be catching up with great wild spectacles.

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Tracking some intriguing insects.

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And most stunning birds.

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Join me as I explore my Wild West.

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HUM OF DISTANT BIRDSONG

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These are the Somerset Levels -

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the heart of this beautiful county.

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Stretching from Taunton in the south to Glastonbury in the north,

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they are fast becoming a naturalist's paradise.

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But they're also important farming country.

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And this reserve at Catcott is something of a jewel in the crown -

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a wetland haven with the emphasis on the word "wet".

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Just in the shadow of Glastonbury Tor,

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it's home to thousands of waders and wildfowl,

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some of them severely threatened.

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This was once intensively managed farmland.

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Over the years it was drained and ploughed,

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making the peat shrink back.

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Somerset Wildlife Trust, who run the reserve, allow the fields here

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to flood and they carefully control the levels.

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Then they dry it off in the spring in time for the breeding season.

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BUZZ OF BIRDSONG

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Now, all you need is a couple of minutes in the hide

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or behind one of the blinds by the water's edge here

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to see just how special, how magical this place really can be.

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I don't think there's anywhere else in the South-West

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where you can see this number of birds so close.

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The birds are really utilising all the different types of habitat here

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and the different food sources.

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This teal has completely upended itself

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in the search for every last bit of nutrient.

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The drake is dabbling.

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Its bill is vibrating across the surface.

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Its tongue is sucking in water through grilles in the beak

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which filter out small plants and animals.

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These shoveler are wintering on the Levels as well, and it's using

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its large, unmistakable spatulate bill to sift through the water.

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This species is under some conservation threat,

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so places like this are vital.

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Open stretches of water like this obviously are very important

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as a feeding place, but they also provide a certain degree of security

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from ground-based predators, and while they're out there,

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they can take care of their plumage as well, which is very important.

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Like these widgeon.

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They're keeping their feathers in tiptop condition,

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and when they get close, you can get a really good view

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of the wavy patterning on the drake.

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The technical term is vermiculation, worm-like patterns.

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They're on the lake in their hundreds

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and their distinctive call rings out throughout the day.

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Lapwing too abound.

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Look at this beautiful bird with its iridescent bottle green sheen.

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You can see why its other name is the green plover.

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Once a common West Country sight, they're now a red-listed bird,

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under severe conservation threat

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with breeding numbers in massive decline.

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The dramatic floods of 2013 and '14 impacted not just on local farms,

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but also on some of the breeding birds.

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Now, all this winter rain and flooding is a bit of a double-edged sword.

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At the moment, the birds are rather enjoying it.

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It's rather good for them.

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But, if these high water tables linger on into the spring

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into the breeding season, then it limits the number of places

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that the birds can actually breed on the Levels.

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And also, significantly, all the creepy crawlies,

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all the invertebrates they feed on, in this waterlogged soil

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will have drowned, so there'll be nothing.

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Even if they do manage to get a nest off,

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there'll be nothing to feed their chicks with.

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And there's another problem - rush.

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It abounds here,

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and while it provides a bit of cover for the birds when they're nesting,

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too much favours the approaching predators, like foxes.

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And they've worked out about 10% cover is about right.

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And they must be estimating correctly,

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because the last couple of breeding seasons have seen

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an increase in numbers, with waders doing particularly well.

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WATER SPLASHES

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REEDS RUSTLE IN WIND

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It's all about water management here.

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On one side of the lake, the Trust have dug out

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and recreated traditional Levels habitats - fen.

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Once there was a lot more

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of this mix of open-water ditch and reed bed.

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Now it's relatively rare,

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as over the centuries the Fens were drained.

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Putting it back has been a huge effort by the Trust.

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We literally had to drain all the water out of the site.

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We had to remove a lot of the vegetation.

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And the reason for this is we had to actually rebuild

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and re-stabilise the whole system.

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The banks were gone.

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They were degraded. They were leaking.

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They were crumbling, so we've had to secure this for the future, really.

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And whilst we had to go to such extreme lengths, we also

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actually started to build and create islands, opened up channels.

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We levelled the land to a variety of heights,

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gradients and angles to suit a huge suite of species.

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And already, 12 months on, you can see how well this is recovering.

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We've had marsh harriers hunting here.

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We've had bittern booming,

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great white egrets, little egrets, cattle egrets.

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A huge array of duck species.

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It's just bursting into life so quickly after we finished.

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And it's not just about the birds.

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These reed heads are covered in millions of gossamer threads

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spun by small spiders.

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These beasts use these filaments to ride warm updraughts,

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behaviour called ballooning.

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It allows them to travel vast distances, even across continents.

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But here in Somerset, this one has settled on a great reed maize head.

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It drops down and climbs up repeatedly on a piece of web

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ready for the off.

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All these invertebrates are great news for this stonechat,

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and it's in luck, with a caterpillar in its beak.

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Not a bad find in December.

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The ditches on the fen are already filling up with widgeon.

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These are roosting and having a great splash around,

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but suddenly other birds feeding on the grass fly back into the water.

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The reason - the unmistakable outline of a marsh harrier,

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a beautiful, sleek killer on the prowl for small birds.

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And I'm on the prowl, back to the main lake for perhaps

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the biggest spectacle the reserve has to offer.

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Now, this is a great spot to witness what has become a little bit

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of a local phenomena, and on a good day you can witness it

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over and over again, all day long.

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Absolutely breathtaking.

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Every so often, a vast flock of lapwing takes to the skies.

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Like the now famous flocks of starlings that circle over

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the moors here, they form ever-changing shapes in the sky.

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This could be a way of avoiding or confusing predators

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or it may just be a thing they do together as a species

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for social cohesion, if you like.

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Whatever the reason, it's hypnotic.

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In essence, what you've got here is a flooded grass

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and a flooded field, and it's easy, given the amount of rain

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and flooding we've had over this last winter,

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to take this sort of scene for granted.

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But, several centuries ago,

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the whole of the Somerset Levels would have been under water

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for nearly the entire winter period, as would have most of East Anglia.

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Now, of course, thanks to the activities of human beings,

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the draining of the landscape,

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scenes like this are incredibly rare,

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and that is bad news for many of the birds we've enjoyed

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and filmed today.

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Here, farming and wildlife are in balance.

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The fields would be grazed in summer

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and then allowed to flood next winter.

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Without places like this, red-listed birds like marsh harrier

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and lapwing would face a losing battle with a much stronger enemy -

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the all-powerful hand of man.

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That same hand is helping nature here,

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simply by using abandoned peat pits to recreate fen.

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What once was just a hole in the ground,

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when it fills up with water, swiftly turn into vital habitat.

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Here at Meeth in North Devon, these disused clay quarries,

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now gathering rainwater,

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are at the heart of a 150-hectare wildlife haven.

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The reserve is new to me, but I'm told I'm in for a treat.

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Now, you'd have to wait a long time for a train here at Meeth Halt,

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because the last clay wagon rolled out of here in 1982,

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and the last passenger service was nearly 50 years ago.

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But...

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jump off the platform and you are on the Tarka Trail,

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the cycle route that goes through North Devon

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and through the very heart of this nature reserve.

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And what a place this is,

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with something like 14 species of dragonfly recorded.

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All of them need water-filled ponds and ditches.

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And that water is here because of man's activities.

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Devon Wildlife Trust took over the site in January 2013.

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And for decades, this was a clay quarry.

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The "Boys from the Whitestuff" took millions of tonnes of clay

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out of the soil to make china goods like sinks, baths, and toilet bowls,

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and they left behind this absolutely enormous hole.

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This is Meeth Quarry itself.

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There's actually two holes in the ground here,

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but this one is the largest and it is massive.

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It's literally hundreds of metres across and over 50 metres deep.

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That's over 150 feet.

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While it's definitely not safe for humans to swim on,

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these little grebe chicks have no such issues

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as they play and squabble.

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It provides everything they need, even the fish.

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Now, at this time of year, a hot day in summer,

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there's not much more than these and a few Canada geese around,

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but come the winter and this should abound in wildfowl.

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But it's not just the water that's helping the wildlife here.

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Believe it or not, this stuff,

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the clay spoil left after extraction and dumped around the quarry,

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is fast becoming an important habitat in its own right.

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So, these big, gleaming, white spoil heaps of clay may seem

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pretty inhospitable environments,

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but pretty soon the tough, grassy sedges and rushes move in,

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and once they're in place, a whole bunch of other things soon follow.

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Like the pretty little bird's foot trefoil flower.

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Now, we're used to seeing it in meadows,

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but here it's thriving in an almost lunar landscape.

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It means it provides many insects with nectar,

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and in this case this ladybird might even find the odd aphid.

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There are rarer plants here too, like this southern marsh orchid.

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Now, all in all, it's not a classically pretty place.

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It's no Sissinghurst, but to me it's just as beautiful.

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Managing a nature reserve isn't about tidying things up,

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so the Trust have left plenty of things, like thistles,

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for these hungry goldfinches to take seeds from.

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Sometimes nature needs a little bit of creative neglect.

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There are plenty of great leafy walks and rides cut for butterflies

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and I'm on my way to another vital man-made water feature.

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Over here is where the wildlife's at. This here is a pond.

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It's got a bit of history, this pond, because it's an old settling pond.

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It's where the clay water was left for the clay to settle out

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before the water was discharged into the river.

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Nowadays it's more of a playground for the insects.

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The dragonfly bench on one side gives you a clue,

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for this is a dragonfly paradise.

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This four-spotted chaser is perching by the waterside.

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The males are really aggressive and they like to perch here

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ready to chase off any other males

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or other species that invade their space.

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The pulsing abdomen is its way of breathing.

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These green-veined white butterflies on the edge of the pond

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are also taking advantage of the damp conditions.

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They're imbibing salts from the wet piece of bark,

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using their long proboscis to take nutrients.

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This dragonfly is egg laying...

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when it's rudely bumped out of the way by another individual.

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Look at that.

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Great for dragonflies, but water and butterflies don't always mix.

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These guys have come into contact with the water and drowned.

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But death for one species is food for another.

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A pond skater is feasting on this green-veined white.

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The skater can walk on water

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and this pond is a vast, watery food trap.

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Now, one of the things I really like about this reserve

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are all the rides.

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They're not just footpaths to join up

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the different experiences and habitats.

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They're worthy in their own right.

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This one's got a lovely, sort of, shady quality to it,

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perfect for woodland creatures,

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and some of the more open ones act as suntraps

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and they're brilliant for all manner of insects,

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and there's one particular insect

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that's very, very special here on the reserve.

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It's a rare one and right where you'd expect it,

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on the woodland edge.

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It's a wood white,

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a species that's been vanishing from many of its former haunts.

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In fact, it's suffered a 60% decline in recent years.

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This place is absolutely heaving with dragonflies and damselflies

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and that's all you need - a sunny day in summer,

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a pond of dragonflies and damselflies -

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and, "Bang", gone are three or four hours.

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The metallic beauty of an emerald damselfly,

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one of the larger damselflies.

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They like to perch on reeds, which is great camouflage.

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There's also a patch of this rare habitat, wet woodland,

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where tree roots are swamped by water.

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And this greater spotted woodpecker is busy.

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Now, it's not digging holes for nesting.

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It's actually pecking at the tree bark on this alder after grubs.

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Over the pond itself, an emperor dragonfly, the UK's largest,

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is aggressively patrolling its territory

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keeping away incomers but also snatching the odd insect.

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In the middle of a pond, a gathering of common blue

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and blue-tailed damselflies show us just how much life

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this pretty small area of water is supporting.

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My visit here is almost at an end.

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It pretty much takes a full day

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if you're to take in the whole reserve, but there are loads

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of short cuts if you only have a morning or an afternoon to spare.

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I'm on my way to a great viewpoint where you can really take in

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the full sweep of the reserve.

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From up here at the highest point of the reserve,

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you can really get a sense of the scale of this place.

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Now, it's already Devon Wildlife Trust's third largest reserve,

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and just beyond that line of conifer trees is Ashmoor.

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Now, if we can join those two nature reserves together, now we're talking

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landscape-scale conservation and that is where the future lies.

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It's great to report for once on a real success story.

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A place where wildlife isn't in retreat, but on the mend.

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Somewhere where man, having damaged the landscape

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in the first place, is actually putting something back.

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And that idea of landscape-scale conservation

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is really coming to fruition here on the Somerset Levels.

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With six large reserves within 20 miles,

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things here are beginning to connect up.

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That scale means that when wildlife faces a threat,

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it has somewhere to move.

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RUSH OF WINGS BEATING

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This is West Sedgemoor.

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Run by the RSPB,

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it's part of the largest inland haven for wetland birds in the UK.

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The reserve is some 700 hectares,

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all echoing to the sound of tens of thousands of birds.

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So, from this vantage point up here, you can look down on the Levels

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and you get a real sense of the beauty of the place.

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Rich patchwork of fields stitched together with dykes and ditches,

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and sprinkled liberally with hundreds, if not thousands, of wildfowl.

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But if you were to have come here in January 2014,

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it would have looked completely different.

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This whole landscape was completely under water.

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The floods were the worst here for at least 20 years, maybe longer.

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Huge amounts of rain, combined with surge tides,

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prevented the rivers from draining the land.

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That raised water levels to dangerous heights.

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Though it regularly floods here, these persisted for weeks on end,

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forcing over 250 households out of their homes.

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Now, back in January or February in 2014,

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I wouldn't be able to walk along here. I would be wading.

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The water level would have been up to chest height.

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In fact, a lot of the Levels,

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and quite a bit of the surrounding countryside,

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were so deep under water the area was inaccessible.

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The Levels are used to winter flooding.

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The silt the water deposits boosts nutrient levels in the soil.

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Now, that's good for farmers, and the water provides

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crucial habitat for the birds I've come to see.

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But the 2014 floods were simply overwhelming.

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The reserve is only open to pre-booked groups

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and has this barn-cum-hide as the main vantage point.

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And that's a clue as to how this place works.

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The RSPB are working with the farmers here

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so that both wildlife and agriculture can benefit.

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A hide like this one here gives you one of the few raised elevations

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which allows you to look down, or certainly look across,

0:20:140:20:18

these pools in front of us, teeming with birds.

0:20:180:20:21

And if you spend a bit of time here,

0:20:210:20:23

it's not long before you get a bit of avian action.

0:20:230:20:25

This is a female marsh harrier out hunting.

0:20:290:20:32

It's spending a lot of time hovering over the reeds

0:20:330:20:35

before spotting something and suddenly swooping down.

0:20:350:20:38

Maybe after sick birds hiding in the grass.

0:20:380:20:40

This time it comes up with nothing.

0:20:450:20:47

These birds will take small ducks, like these teal,

0:20:490:20:52

so every so often it throws thousands of them up into the sky.

0:20:520:20:56

LOUD BUZZ OF BIRDSONG

0:21:010:21:04

NICK LAUGHS

0:21:040:21:06

Oh, it's a continuous game of cat and mouse out there,

0:21:070:21:10

or, should I say, raptor and duck.

0:21:100:21:11

Or raptor and corvid.

0:21:130:21:15

These crows are a bit more feisty with potential predators.

0:21:150:21:18

They mob the luckless harrier and it scarpers.

0:21:180:21:21

This place is all about water.

0:21:310:21:33

Not enough and the land dries out,

0:21:330:21:35

making it of little use for wildlife.

0:21:350:21:37

Too much and it becomes unfarmable.

0:21:370:21:40

The RSPB works with the local drainage board

0:21:450:21:48

to control water levels here.

0:21:480:21:49

Warden Harry Paget Wells showed me how a few turns of the wheel

0:21:490:21:53

on this sluice releases hundreds of gallons.

0:21:530:21:55

The idea is to keep the reserve wet in the winter

0:21:570:21:59

to favour all those feeding birds,

0:21:590:22:01

but let it get drier in the summer to aid grazing.

0:22:010:22:04

Come on, man, faster.

0:22:050:22:07

NICK LAUGHS

0:22:070:22:08

'But holding water at higher levels than the surrounding areas

0:22:080:22:11

'has attracted criticism.'

0:22:110:22:13

There are those that are saying that some of the water management

0:22:140:22:17

you're doing here was responsible or contributed to the flooding

0:22:170:22:21

and the devastation of those floods.

0:22:210:22:23

Yeah.

0:22:230:22:24

I mean, the Internal Drainage Board commissioned some research into that

0:22:240:22:27

from some hydrologists, and basically the result that

0:22:270:22:30

they came back with was that it's insignificant.

0:22:300:22:33

It's such a small volume of water that we're talking about here

0:22:330:22:36

compared with the massive volumes that occurred during the flooding.

0:22:360:22:41

So, we are only talking about making a difference of

0:22:410:22:44

less than a centimetre.

0:22:440:22:46

And of course this place is pretty unique and it's very important

0:22:460:22:49

for the wildlife that you're managing it for,

0:22:490:22:50

but how did the wildlife cope with the flooding?

0:22:500:22:53

Obviously it was too deep here.

0:22:530:22:54

We're talking about a water level up here, so things like widgeon

0:22:540:22:58

and teal, they moved to other areas where the floodwater was shallower.

0:22:580:23:02

They're dabbling in shallow water round the edges of floods.

0:23:020:23:05

That was the sort of thing that they were looking for.

0:23:050:23:07

Other species actually increased in their numbers here.

0:23:070:23:10

Things like pintail which can feed in slightly deeper water

0:23:100:23:13

with their long necks, dabbling upturned in the water.

0:23:130:23:16

So, you know, we had far more pintail here

0:23:160:23:18

than we've ever had before, feeding in slightly deeper water.

0:23:180:23:22

And the birds are certainly back in numbers during my visit.

0:23:260:23:30

The marsh harrier's back, diving repeatedly on the reeds

0:23:320:23:35

after elusive mammals and small birds.

0:23:350:23:37

She's not having much luck today.

0:23:370:23:39

It manages eventually to throw a few scared widgeon into the air.

0:23:450:23:49

These teal are feeding on seeds floating in the water,

0:23:540:23:57

they'll also take grubs from the grass on the water's edge.

0:23:570:24:00

And these shoveler are using their spatulate bills to sift seeds

0:24:080:24:11

and invertebrates from the water.

0:24:110:24:12

You can just see on the bill of this drake

0:24:200:24:22

the small combs they use to filter out the food.

0:24:220:24:24

What a resplendent bird.

0:24:280:24:30

Time for take-off, as yet another bird of prey comes in.

0:24:360:24:39

Vast flocks of widgeon and golden plover land,

0:24:430:24:46

get spooked and then take off again.

0:24:460:24:49

Eventually the widgeon return to nibble on aquatic plants

0:24:530:24:56

on the fringes of the lakes.

0:24:560:24:57

What a place this is.

0:25:020:25:03

But it's not all about the birds.

0:25:070:25:09

Now, it might be difficult to appreciate,

0:25:120:25:15

as I squelch my way across these fields,

0:25:150:25:18

but it's the flooding here on the Levels

0:25:180:25:21

that creates some of the best hay meadows you could possibly imagine.

0:25:210:25:26

All the nutrients from the floodwaters create

0:25:260:25:28

high productivity, many hay-cuts

0:25:280:25:31

and also, of course, great fodder for the dairy and beef stock.

0:25:310:25:35

And these grasslands are also pretty good for the wildlife.

0:25:350:25:38

In winter, these lapwing are plucking worms and insects

0:25:410:25:44

from the grass and mud.

0:25:440:25:45

In spring, they'd be breeding here

0:25:450:25:47

and the chicks need grassy cover to hide from predators like foxes.

0:25:470:25:50

But at the moment, it's airborne predators they need to worry about.

0:25:520:25:55

A hen harrier, a seriously endangered bird,

0:25:550:25:58

rarer than the marsh harrier.

0:25:580:25:59

A flock of lapwing take off.

0:26:040:26:06

So, do you go with the rest and use up valuable energy,

0:26:060:26:09

or, like this one, risk staying on the ground?

0:26:090:26:12

But when a top predator like a peregrine falcon appears,

0:26:200:26:23

it's a no-brainer.

0:26:230:26:25

They all take to the skies.

0:26:250:26:26

The falcon manages to separate off one lapwing,

0:26:280:26:31

dives...

0:26:310:26:32

and misses.

0:26:320:26:33

Then tries again...

0:26:370:26:38

and misses again.

0:26:380:26:40

Before flying right over our hide.

0:26:400:26:42

Danger over, the lapwing head back to the muddy grass

0:26:570:27:00

to take more fuel on board.

0:27:000:27:01

This place is pretty special.

0:27:080:27:10

Nearly all the species of bird we've seen and filmed today

0:27:100:27:13

are threatened in one way or another,

0:27:130:27:15

either directly, birds such as the hen harrier,

0:27:150:27:18

or indirectly, due to habitat loss, birds like the lapwings.

0:27:180:27:21

But what we've got today here is a very special habitat.

0:27:220:27:25

This is what happens when conservationists and farmers work together.

0:27:250:27:30

And with plans to improve drainage management on the Levels

0:27:320:27:35

and a new sluice at Bridgwater,

0:27:350:27:37

let's hope this precious landscape and the people who live in it

0:27:370:27:41

can be protected in the future from all the weather can throw at it.

0:27:410:27:44

Now, there's something really exciting happening

0:27:500:27:52

here on the Somerset Levels, I think.

0:27:520:27:54

Yes, there's the problems of coping with climate change

0:27:540:27:57

and much wetter weather, but overall the farming community

0:27:570:28:00

and nature conservation seem to be working well together.

0:28:000:28:03

That gives me pause for thought.

0:28:030:28:06

So many of the wonderful places I've been to in this series

0:28:060:28:09

are a bit out on a limb.

0:28:090:28:10

Like the Isle of Portland,

0:28:100:28:12

a fragile jewel with rarities like the beautiful silver-studded blue

0:28:120:28:15

or the tiny patch of woodland at Millook in North Cornwall.

0:28:150:28:19

A few acres of ancient wood full of rare lichens and mosses

0:28:190:28:22

are surrounded by pasture.

0:28:220:28:24

But here in Somerset, nature and people are reconnecting at a landscape scale.

0:28:250:28:30

This place is sustainable and has some kind of a future.

0:28:300:28:33

We need more places like this.

0:28:330:28:35

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