Episode 1 Nature's Top 40

Hello. I'm Chris Packham and welcome to a brand new series, Nature's Top 40.

It's a countdown from 40 to one of the UK's greatest wildlife spectacles.

We've been out scouring the countryside for the very best shows

that our birds, our mammals, our insects and our plants put on.

Before I tell you what's straight in at number 40, here's a flavour

of some of the things you really should see once-in-a-lifetime.

-Whoa!

-Hold on to your hats for a roller-coaster ride of the very best of British wildlife.

-Ow!

-Goodness me!

-Myself and three other wildlife experts have devised

a chart like no other, packed with thrills and spills.

What a brilliant spectator sport.

We've taken ideas from listeners to BBC local radio and TV,

added a few of our own and ranked them in order of brilliance.

You would think it doesn't get any better than this,

but believe me it does.

Scored for size, sheer numbers, rarity and wow factor,

these are the 40 wildlife spectacles we think you can't afford to miss.

So here we go. Here's the first of our spectacles. And what about her!

It's a story that has got epic journeys, a smattering

of hanky-panky and, above all, these creatures can sing.

At number 40, it's our amazing amphibians.

"Ah, toads," I hear you think. What are they doing in the top 40?

This is an animal that fully deserves its place. I mean, just look at this!

But before we get down to this little songster, here's his remarkable cousin.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the resident of Toad Hall,

aka Bufo bufo or, to me and you, the common toad.

Aren't they wonderful little critters?!

Look at him sitting in the palm of my hand there.

The first thing you notice, completely unlike common frogs,

check out the skin - it's a warty all over.

The warts, particularly behind their eyes, have what's known as a parotid gland and that houses

toxins or venoms that come out when he's picked up in the mouth of a dog

or a fox or something like that and he's dropped pretty soon afterwards, let me tell you.

The other incredibly characteristic thing about him is he's totally dry.

Not wet, not slimy in the slightest.

That's because this little beast spends 10 months of the year away from water.

He's in your garden, in the woodlands feeding away, hiding

under stones and roots, only coming down to the water behind me to breed.

Lastly, look at his lovely little golden eyes.

Aren't they brilliant?

Toad in the hands certainly beats the toad in the hole.

But something beats both of those, a real toad spectacular, only happens at night.

Common toads actually migrate. It's a perilous journey each spring as they head for fresh water to breed.

It's made more dangerous as many ancient migration routes now involve crossing busy roads.

But help is at hand, with volunteers who get them to their breeding grounds safely.

After you put them in the bucket, how far have they got to get down to the breeding site?

About 500 or 600 yards to get down to the water courses in the bottom of the valley.

How many are likely to be down there?

We get about 1,000 a year,

so at some time, most of the 1,000 will be down in the reens.

They'll all tend to mate together over a period of a few days,

so it's like a mass orgy of mating and spawning when it happens.

Thanks to the Clevedon Toad Patrol near Bristol, and others working

with the charity Frog Life, thousands of amphibian lives are saved each breeding season.

TOADS CROAK

That croaking you can hear is the males, and they use that for two reasons.

One is when they're on the back of a female to say, "Get away,"

to the other males that are coming near. The other reason is, if a male accidentally jumps on

another male's back, it's like, "Please, get off now. "I'm not a female."

Terrific!

Make sure you grab those, Andrew.

This is fantastic. Look at the difference.

Andrew, here, has got a really small male. Look at the size difference!

This is a female. They're much larger.

Look at the size of her belly, her flanks. She is gravid.

Her flanks are absolutely chock full of eggs waiting to be fertilised

by a little fellow like this when they're down in the ponds.

Safely across the road, the toads can now get down to the serious business of mating.

Come on, lad. Don't stop now. There we go. There we go.

Well done, young fella!

Males arrive at the ponds first and wait for the females.

They climb on to their backs and cling on for dear life

using their nuptial pads on their fingers for extra grip.

It's a posture known as amplexus.

Sometimes there's huge competition for females,

resulting in a seething mass of writhing bodies.

This is the end result -

strings of toad spawn with up to 600 eggs laid.

But only a few will make it to adulthood to repeat the cycle all over again.

This is our second and much rarer species of toad.

Some call it the natterjack.

Although, up in Merseyside, they call him the Bootle Organ or the

running toad, because wait till you see how fast he moves. Look at that.

That's because this little critter runs after his insect prey.

Isn't he wonderful?!

Incredibly distinctive because they're much smaller than common toads,

but their most distinguishing feature of all is,

look right down between his eyes all the way down to near his hind legs,

there's a big yellow stripe.

Like a Do Not Park Here sign, I suppose you could say.

What's really impressive about these is their vocal abilities.

CROAKING

This is the sound of the tropics right here in the UK.

It's the male natterjack that are making that noise.

It's the breeding season and the males emerge from their hiding places at night to give it some welly.

Natterjacks are a protected species as habitat loss has meant numbers are low.

But there are still hot spots on the coastal heaths and dunes

in Lancashire, Cumbria and the Solway Firth.

The sound is something else,

but seeing how they do it is stunning.

On warm, still nights, the male inflates his throat sack

and forces air over the vocal chords, making them vibrate.

That loud ratchet sound can be heard up to a mile away.

It's a calling card to bring the females in.

The natterjack toad, a bubblegum-blowing singing sensation.

Great song from the natterjack, but I'm a fan of the common toad.

A bit more accessible. I'll tell you something remarkable about them.

They can live to be 40 - four zero - years old.

This little toad could live to be 40, nearly as old as me!

We're gonna stick with small animals now.

They might be tiny, but they're nevertheless impressive.

Iolo Williams is getting to grips with these master house builders.

Scurrying in at number 39, it's the humble northern hairy wood ant.

This forest contains one of the most magnificent structures known to the animal kingdom.

It's got living accommodation, road links, food stores.

It's even got solar panels.

It's a massive insect city right in the middle of the countryside.

As a result, these nests can be enormous.

Just like this one.

This is much more than a simple community of animals.

It's a thriving and busy metropolis.

Welcome to the amazing world of the northern hairy wood ant.

This is Coed y Brenin forest near Dolgellau.

It's here you'll find some of the UK's biggest ants' nests because these northern hairy

wood ants are master builders, and these ants really are hairy.

Although, you'd need a microscope to see the hairs over their eyes.

As you can see, this structure is made from woodland debris - leaves,

pine needles, twigs - all weaved together to form this massive mound.

But there's more to this thing than meets the eye.

You could say these ants are pretty smart,

because what you've got here is the perfect natural heating system.

Today, the air temperature is a fairly chilly 12 degrees.

But with some high-tech equipment, I'm going to find out just how warm it is deep inside this nest.

This is an infra-red thermometer and if I point it at the nest here -

the southern facing bit of the nest, which is the warmest bit - I can tell you that it's 13 degrees.

But, here I have a digital thermometer with a deep probe.

If I put that right into the heart of the nest, incredibly,

the temperature there is 25 degrees.

The ants will sometimes, on really hot days, bring the eggs

up near the surface where it's at its warmest

so that metamorphosis is speeded up and they develop that much faster.

Amazing creatures.

Graham Stringer, you're a man who knows his ants.

I've got to say this is probably one of the most impressive ants nests I've ever seen.

Yeah, me too. I think it's probably the biggest nest that we've got in Coed y Brenin.

There's quite a lot of activity at the minute with the workers bringing in bits of material,

bits of food back to the nest and actually building up the thatch and doing repairs as they go along.

It must be, what, three metres wide?

It is. It's huge.

They're busy little things. There's definitely a movement of ants

going down that way following a path along here. It's completely bare.

It is. It's almost like a motorway supplying a city.

Have they eaten everything around here?

Probably over time, it's been trampled with passage backwards and forwards over the years.

The path keeps going all along there and then just about here, it forks

and some of them are going up and coming back down from this tree.

That's the ants heading up to the canopy where they milk honey dew

from the aphids which feed up there on the leaves.

It's very sugary, just a by-product from the cellulose which the aphids feed on.

So they're more or less farming them?

Yes. Like dairy farmers running a big production.

There are nests dotted all over the forest,

but they favour woodland edges where they get full access to the sun.

We've seen the biggest. Now, have a look at the busiest one.

This nest is in the perfect location.

It's underneath some branches, so it's sheltered from the rain.

And yet, it's facing the full force of the sun.

On surface, it's an amazing 33 degrees.

Because of that, the ants are all swarming over it in their thousands.

They're acting like little solar batteries.

They'll absorb the energy of the sun and they'll take that back into the nest with them.

These ants, one of the biggest in Britain,

they have a fearsome reputation.

And quite right, too, because they have got huge mandibles.

There's one here trying to cut his way through my skin at the flesh.

Luckily for me, though, the mandibles are not big enough to penetrate.

But if I was a caterpillar, by now, I'd probably would have been cut in half.

If the jaws don't get you, these tough guys have another weapon.

They can squirt formic acid from their sting.

They position their bottom between their legs, take aim, and fire away.

And if you annoy enough of them,

the volley of acid can turn a piece of litmus paper red.

So there we have it! Super structure, fantastic insect.

To the northern hairy wood ant, I say...

..respect!

Iolo was actually one of our judges.

He's famous for being a pretty obsessive bird watcher, so it's good to see him getting into ants.

Please don't think that we're going to be totally obsessed with creepy-crawlies, because we've had

plenty of other suggestions from local radio stations.

We asked for your favourites and they flooded in via the web and from television, too.

Here's one that came in time and time again - otters.

Just look at them! They're absolutely fantastic.

So how did we decide what got into our charts?

Iolo, myself and the two other judges from Scotland and Northern

Ireland gave everything a score, and you can find out more about all of that by logging on to our website:

Did the otter make it? You'll have to wait and see.

But one that didn't make it was the fantastic chough, despite the pleas for listeners to BBC Radio Cornwall.

Apparently, there weren't enough of them.

Wasn't my opinion, I have to say.

Anyway, let's get on to something that did make it into the charts.

At number 38 is one of my favourites, which should have been higher up the charts.

Look get this fantastic landscape.

These are the hills above Princes Risborough in Buckinghamshire

and I've come here to see one of my favourite natural spectacles.

Now, it's not big, but it's very clever.

A little bit later on when the natural light comes down, the little lights will come out

and nymphomaniac neons will be climbing up in the grass.

Little street walking street lights will be glistening.

Sparks will fall from the moon. It's a fairyville here.

It's a place where a little bits of magic can really turn you on.

I'm talking about glow-worms.

Not worms at all, but a beetle related to fireflies.

It spends almost two years as a lavae, feasting on slugs and snails

and once it pupates and emerges as an adult, it stops eating altogether

and starts glowing.

That's what I'm looking for with the help of John Tyler.

John, a bit of a fool's errand really, isn't it?

Well, there's not much chance of seeing them during the day,

but they will be under here, waiting to come up after dark.

If you can't see colours, it's worth looking for glow-worms.

-It's going to be half 10, isn't it?

-I think so.

-That's a clarion call for the pub.

-I think so.

-Come on.

# Never, never knew what the night would bring... #

Must be nearly time, John. What is the time now?

Well, it's...ten past ten. So, yes, any time now, I think.

It's getting nice and dark.

We didn't go to the pub though, you know. Look at this.

Red helleborine. Species of orchid, and I photographed it

on my mobile phone, so look at the size of this smile!

Red helleborine and glow-worm in the same night!

The potential is an order of magnitude unknown to naturalists the world over!

I'm really, really pleased, John.

Imagine a glow-worm on a red helleborine...No, lets not go there.

Shall we have a look round?

Apart from a few faintly glowing fungi and a millipede,

this is the only creature in Britain that can turn on its own light.

-John.

-Yep, there's one.

-What about that?

-Another one round here, just lighting up now.

What a little sweetie.

Bang on cue.

Absolutely. Another one down here.

They're all starting up now, aren't they?

Yeah. Hopefully all they need are males to turn up.

The wingless female uses her light to attract a male to mate

and once that happens, she immediately grows dull again.

I can't remember seeing this many this close together.

It's not a vast site and yet in total there must be thousands of them, I should think, here.

Come on then, let's kneel at the altar.

The glow worm's light is produced by a chemical reaction between two substances -

luciferin and luciferase and it's incredibly efficient.

98% of its energy is produced as light.

A typical electric light bulb only manages 5%,

the rest being wasted as heat.

-I read that even the eggs glow though.

-Yeah, every stage glows.

The pupae glows, the eggs glow. Everything.

In fact it's reckoned that the glow first evolved in the lavae as a

way of warning off predators and it was only later that it was actually

used as a way of attracting a mate.

So the light is an attraction to males, but a warning to predators.

What about that? That's good strategy.

One thing that strikes me as a bad strategy, John,

is the fact that the females can't fly, so therefore they can't

move to lay their eggs in a new site, so they're pretty restricted.

Yes, once they're lost from a site they never find their way back

and even just a busy road would be quite an obstacle.

The females just don't move more than very often a yard or two

in their entire adult life.

I've got a book here which I bought in a second-hand bookshop years ago

and it was written by Henri Fabre. He's a great French entomologist

and it actually says in the book that the light is beautiful, calm

and white, but not very bright.

In fact it's the only bright enough to illuminate a few letters

of a word at any one time.

So the glow worm would need to crawl laterally across the page

for you to use it as a reading aid.

I have to say at the moment that to be quite honest,

he's absolutely spot on.

I can literally only read one word at the time, and this word is dim.

Henri Fabre called them sparks fallen from the moon.

Wordsworth, earth-borne stars,

and for countless generations, hundreds of years,

they've inspired poets and artists and romantics.

They are really very special.

Glow-worms, should have been higher, should have been higher,

but if you'd like to look after creatures like that

then you can, and you can do so by checking out our website:

Click on the Breathing Places link and you'll find out

how you can actually look after creatures that live near you.

Anyway, time now for our first mammal.

Loved by some, hated by others. Foxes don't naturally constitute

a spectacle, but some things they do are absolutely magic

and push them into our charts at number 37.

The fox.

Probably no other animal in Britain provokes so much emotion and debate.

You either love them or you loathe them, and certainly

people who keep livestock and game animals often see them as the enemy.

But today we're going to look at the pleasure these animals can bring

and the magical encounters people have with them

right on their own doorsteps.

If you live in the countryside this might be a familiar sight -

a fox at first light on the hunt for food.

Just occasionally, you might stumble across something extra special -

fox cubs playing outside their den.

Within months they will be off hunting themselves, but until then,

every day is party time.

Foxes are widespread and abundant, despite centuries of persecution.

One of the reasons for that is their opportunistic ability to adapt

to available food sources,

and it's that adaptability that's brought them right into the heart

of our towns and cities.

The urban fox has learnt to make full use of our man-made environment,

living right on top of us, scavenging for scraps.

Up and down the country they make themselves at home in our back gardens,

giving us front row seats for the daily show of fox family life.

For many residents this is such a joy a they lay on five-star

treatment for their outdoor guests.

So, Dot, what's on the fox a la carte menu for today?

Fresh chicken and pork with nuts and dog biscuit.

-I fancy a bit of that, actually.

-No, no, no.

I don't like the leg or the wing.

I like the breast.

Now Dot here is a city fox's real best friend, because

rather than leave them to scavenge around bins and things all winter,

every day she puts food out and gives them a helping hand,

and she even gets cubs in the spring.

-I'm not surprised, actually, if she's giving them fresh chicken.

-That's it then.

It looks fantastic, so we should go and put it in place really, shouldn't we?

Dot, why do you put it on the shed and not just somewhere down here on the patio?

I think it's cos it's got a flat roof and it's easily accessible

from where their den is.

Ooh, you need a big, tall stretch.

I'll tap the tin.

-A bit like ringing the dinner bell really, isn't it?

-That's right.

So, it's chicken a la Dot more than the bird feed that's

bringing in all sorts of wildlife.

I'm amazed, Dot, that they're going to come out in daylight rather than

evening dusk or very early dawn.

I don't think it matters to them, the time.

-I thought they were nocturnal, but I don't think they are.

-They just come when they're hungry?

Yeah. They come when they're hungry and supplement what food they catch.

So is this your top thing of the evening rather than sitting down

and watching a good show on the telly?

Yeah. I used to do a lot of knitting,

but now I do like to watch them, and it's not repetitive.

There is always something different to watch and...

it's just...therapeutic.

Light is fading, but still no foxes.

Dot assures me they come every day.

This was filmed from her bedroom window the week before my visit.

But so far tonight nothing, except time to kill.

-Look, Janet.

-That's them up on the roof.

-It is.

-Where they're not at the moment.

-Where they're not.

All right, I'm convinced.

I'm glad.

Into the front, round, pull up.

Dot consoles me with a lesson in the intricacies of knitwear.

Round, pull it through and you've done a plain stitch.

I don't actually know what's more thrilling -

watching you knit or watching an empty shed roof.

Just when I'm about to go knit crazy, in the twilight a head appears. Ooh!

-Come through the side entrance.

-The other side.

He's seen the food though.

Amazing how it suddenly appeared like that.

-See the little white tip on his tail?

-Yep.

-He's approaching very cautiously though, isn't he?

-He's not sure.

There's some chicken in there.

Go on.

You were right, Dot. He's taken one of the chicken legs.

-You said they'd go for the big pieces.

-Yeah, they do.

When he's finished that he'll probably come back for another.

Other foxes soon follow to take their share of Dot's plate of goodies.

I tell you what though, a lot more hesitant than I expected.

It does remind you that they're genuine wild animals, not pet dogs.

I think it's since the first one was one of the younger ones.

The older ones have got more use to us.

Here he comes again.

He's been, so he knows...

-He knows it safe.

-Yeah.

-He knows he's OK.

-I can't believe you get to see this every day.

Yeah, every day.

Some more than others.

Do you think we've seen two or three different ones there?

I think we've seen three different ones.

-They are all quite distinctive though, aren't they?

-Yes.

-All got different markings.

-I can see how you can start to pick them out.

I can see how this could get really addictive!

It is. It is really.

Because each day is a new and different experience.

-You never know what you're gonna get, do you?

-No, you never do.

-A bit like having an extended family, isn't it?

-Yes, it is.

Back again.

How would you feel if you didn't have them in your life any more?

Well, it would be a bit empty now.

I'd have to go back to watching telly.

Foxes, right up there in the beauty stakes, if you ask me, with tigers,

but if you want to get to grips

with one of Britain's most ferocious predatory mammals,

you've gotta go smaller and you've gotta go fast forward to weasel.

And just look at this. This is the best view of a weasel

that I've ever, ever had at the British Wildlife Centre in Surrey.

It's fantastic. Just look at it. You wouldn't want to be a mouse in here, I can tell you.

Sadly, these creatures didn't make it into our list,

but if you'd like to find out what did, join us again for another of Nature's Top 40.

Until then, goodbye.

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