Reptiles and Amphibians Born to Be Wild

Across Britain, there's a hidden army of extraordinary people.

Don't look as fat as you should be. You haven't already laid some eggs somewhere?

They're hard-working, dedicated and very efficient.

GIGGLING

Did I say it was slippery?

They do it for love, not money.

Absolute beauty. They're all beauties, but this one especially.

Four different creatures, four amateur naturalists, four inspiring stories.

I've just been bitten, for my pains.

Reptiles and amphibians are linked with dark, dank places,

warts, witchcraft and sliminess.

Many people loathe or even hate them,

but a few stalwart individuals love them.

Chris Davis' lifelong passion for reptiles

has gradually taken over most of his time, and all of his Sussex garden.

It started when I was three.

My mother, with immense bravery, rescued me from a slowworm on our rockery.

I say immense bravery because although slowworms are totally harmless,

she was convinced it was a deadly poisonous snake

and chopped it into a million fragments with a spade.

Fortunately, we learned better very quickly.

And when I was 15 I saw my first sand lizard, and then the great love affair started.

Sand lizards are simply a gorgeous animal.

People who aren't familiar with them have been quite convinced this is some strange beast

escaped from the Amazonian jungle. They are out of this world.

In 1999, Chris began to build a sand-lizard empire in his back garden.

The object of this is simply to keep these animals as healthy as possible,

with a view to their breeding.

Unfortunately, sand lizards, as far as their young are concerned, are cannibalistic.

They don't differentiate between a small moving insect and a small moving hatchling lizard,

they're both food.

Chris needs to move pregnant or gravid females to a safer enclosure,

but first he has to catch them.

Of course, one of the problems

is trying to make sure I don't tread on any other lizards in the process.

She's very close to egg-laying, so she does need to be caught.

And...a spectacular miss! HE LAUGHS

Now, can we see anyone else?

Lovely young male clambering in the heather,

but I'm not looking for a male, I'm looking for a gravid female.

There's a young female down here, and obviously gravid, quite plump...

So...

HE CHUCKLES

She's not quite ready to lay yet. She will be laying,

probably, if this weather continues, within the next week, I think, yes.

I suddenly saw her,

and this is a much bigger female, when you look at the bulk.

Even though it's a larger animal, you can see she's really massive,

and she's very close to laying eggs.

Again, rather a beautiful animal, they're both beautiful animals.

I'll take these down to the egg-laying, Viv, and I've just been bitten, for my pains.

Chris' sand-lizard sanctuary was desperately needed.

The species was in dire straits.

People began to notice

that they weren't seeing sand lizards in the same numbers

as when they were children.

Their two specialist areas of habitat, which were dry lowland heath and coastal dunes,

were historically seen as being completely valueless.

One of the biggest dune complexes that used to support sand lizards

is now called Liverpool.

Conversely, one of the biggest lowland heath systems

which used to support sand lizards is now called Bournemouth.

By the mid 1970s, only three populations survived in England,

and they have disappeared from Wales.

Chris' pregnant females are part of a plan to reverse the decline.

The young will then be reared by me for a short while.

Release will take place, back end of August, early September, by which time they'll be equivalent in size

to one-year-old wild animals, which gives them a real kick-start in life.

Chris has reintroduced his home-grown sand lizards onto several local heaths.

To measure their survival, he checks the release sites.

Finding nine-inch-long lizards in a dense hectare of heathland is never easy,

and they'll melt away at sudden movements.

But at least they're not bothered by noise.

You can talk as much as you like, you can walk along singing songs if you felt like it,

the lizards wouldn't care less.

They're not great music critics, in any event.

Probably the best one of the lot was two years after we'd done our first introduction to Wales,

and I was looking around the release area and I saw a hatchling sand lizard.

Now, this was a magical moment,

firstly because this was the first of the lizards to breed in the wild, or the first product, for 50 years.

And secondly, because I knew I myself had bred all of their parents,

so the sense of accomplishment and pride was absolutely enormous.

There we are.

SHUTTER CLICKS

Mark for occasion. Truly magnificent beautiful animal.

Most nature lovers seeing their first male sand lizard in particular in full breeding colours

is a memory that stays in their mind for ever.

These wonderful green flanks with the silver lines down the back,

it makes for an incredibly exotic-looking animal.

Is the population doing well?

It's that simple, if we see a population deteriorating we know there has to be a cause,

and we look for that cause.

The surveys show that sand lizards are thriving.

For Chris, it's fantastic to see all his hard work pay off.

At long last there's this animal in such serious difficulty

which we're putting back into the countryside,

and to see it there and thriving, you really feel as if you're putting something back into the world.

Chris' lifelong passion has helped turn things around for sand lizards.

But other enthusiasts come to their favourite reptiles and amphibians

much later in life.

It was only after retiring that Richard and Phil King

were able to fully indulge their particular passion.

It all started years ago

with a small pond at their previous suburban home.

-Look at it.

-Minute, isn't it?

Newts suddenly appeared in it,

so we spent a lot of time watching them and became quite fascinated.

This was just the start of their passion for newts.

Richard and Phil moved to Herefordshire.

They put ordinary small garden ponds behind them.

Now, they have the space to create something really grand.

We wanted bigger ponds,

we had to get planning permission, and we had to get contractors in,

so it was a bigger exercise than the original little pond in the home garden.

18 months after we dug these ponds

we were doing some weeding round our patio beside the house,

and suddenly discovered a large newt creature we hadn't seen before.

What I noticed particularly that first time

was it has yellow-and-black striped toes, just like having yellow and black stripy socks on.

And this is so striking that you can't miss it, it's unmistakable.

I think many tales of dragons in the past were probably about great crested newts.

They look just like it!

The great crested newt is Britain's largest and most threatened newt.

To keep a protective eye on their pond's new residents,

Richard and Phil count the tadpoles and eggs.

They lay them on underwater plants,

so what we're looking for is the leaves of underwater plants that have been folded over,

and the egg is caught inside.

Earlier in the year we'd find a lot more, and these leaves would be under water.

-There's a folded leaf.

-Oh, have you got one? On water parsnip?

Let's have a look... Take it out...

It's empty!

Oh, no, there it is, it's a tiny little...just hatching.

Came out from under there.

There we are, he's gone back.

I like the way we call them "him" all the time!

-Oh, here's a folded leaf.

-Ah, yeah.

-Let's see what's in there.

Oh, look, now this would be a great crested.

It's white and it's quite large, that's a great crested newt egg.

Oh, look, oh, we've got a big one!

Yeah, that's definitely the great crested one.

That's three great crested newt larvae.

-There, put it back where it came from...

-Whoops!

It's great to know the newts are breeding,

but to check on the adults calls for a night shift.

It's not really dark enough yet,

but we'll have a look and see what we can find in the ponds.

This is where we normally find them, down here.

Have to be a bit careful of the mud, it's really slippery after the rain.

All very quiet at the moment.

Have you spotted anything?

No, nothing at all.

Come on, where are you?

-HE CHUCKLES

-(Nothing there.)

Well, perhaps they're not very active yet. They come out at night,

they're very inactive in the day, and come out in the evening

for finding food and finding mates and so on.

This is the time when they're most easily seen in the pond usually.

We have seen 18 in this pond.

-There's something.

-Is there? What sort of something?

We've got one!

Ah, can see his feet. You can see those yellow bands on the feet very clearly there.

-There's another one, a second one...

-Two...

-..just down there.

-Actually, that one's a male as well.

-Yes, there it is, there it goes.

-What's that?

-Where?

There's one, at the bottom there, can you see, on the bottom there?

(Where, where?)

-That one.

-Oh, that's a good view of it, isn't it?

-It is, isn't it?

-The stripy toes.

So that's number five to record along with the two tadpoles.

-There we are.

-So what are we, about ten o'clock, is it?

-Ten o'clock.

-Right.

-OK, then, thanks.

I think that's pretty good for this time of year.

SHE GASPS AND LAUGHS

Did I say it was slippery?

From small beginnings with one small pond,

Richard and Phil have really branched out.

But their zeal for helping newts hasn't stopped there.

They now have the whole county of Herefordshire in their sights.

In Herefordshire, there have been a lot of ponds

and a lot of them have newts, they won't be big populations,

and a lot of the ponds could be in much better condition.

And so we've identified five ponds for restoration.

One of them is at this local cider orchard.

Richard and Phil join the County Pond Officer, Darrell Hardy, to assess the work that needs doing.

The idea is to, as well as extend it,

take out most of that bulrush and at the same time de-silt it.

Five ponds now, but this is just the beginning.

Richard and Phil have high hopes for the future.

Ponds have been through a bad patch, but I think that hopefully they're coming out the other side.

This tiny dinosaur is a barometer of pond life.

Slimy, odd-looking and rarely seen by day, great crested newts are a curious obsession.

Richard and Phil love them.

One of our British reptiles is even harder to find, and to love.

In fact it's our most feared wild animal.

Learning to love this elusive creature made one woman an expert.

Sylvia Sheldon is 70 years old.

She lives in a cottage deep in the Wyre forest in Worcestershire.

It's extremely remote,

but it's the perfect spot from which to keep an eye on some of her neighbours.

I photographed my first adder in... I think it was 1978.

I just found them to be fascinating creatures.

SHUTTER CLICKS I was wary when I first started photographing them,

but then realised that they were very timid.

Lexy might be around somewhere.

My favourite adder is a female I call Lexy.

I first photographed her as a juvenile

eight years ago when she matured at five.

I witnessed her first mating,

and followed her progress through the summer. She's now ten.

This is her spot. If we're going to see her, she'll be in here.

Oh, there she is, there she is, there she is!

But she's going, going, going! Wait a minute,

I can see that she wants to dive, really... Oh, she's gone!

That was her gone. That was good, though, I'm sorry if you didn't...!

Sylvia knows more about the adders of the Wyre Forest than anybody,

so what does it take to study them?

You've got to be very stealthy.

They can't hear airborne noises

but they're aware of ground vibrations.

They'll pick up your movement very quickly,

so one has to walk stealthily, usually downwind of them,

because they pick up your scent very easily,

and you know when an adder has detected you scent-wise

because their tongue flickers in and out, and they quickly disappear into the vegetation.

This is no idle hobby for Sylvia.

In the early '80s a discovery she made rocked the science world,

and made her a well-respected adder expert.

I noticed all the head patterns were different.

I thought, "I'm bound to find two adders with identical head markings," but I never have.

This was pioneering work.

Sylvia was the first person to identify adders

from their individual head patterns.

The most distinctive head patterns are what I call horse-shaped,

a horse looking left or a horse looking right,

so it's a silhouette of a horse.

You also get rounded ones and pointed ones.

It became of more interest

when I knew I was looking at individuals,

rather than just another adder.

I was seeing who was mating with who, which female gave birth

to which babies, monitor babies through to maturity.

Being able to study the snakes as individuals fired Sylvia's interest in the adders even more.

So Sylvia started doing her own surveys.

In 1990 she gained a diminutive but determined assistant.

Alonsa, my grandson, was only five or six years old when he used to come out with me.

And although he was a little bit impulsive

and I used to try and get him to stay behind me, he wanted to be in front.

Over the years he's become very good at spotting adders,

and as he's got bigger and taller he can see them better than I can now.

She gave me a camera when I was ten, I photographed them and loved it,

they're a creature that got a lot of bad press, and when people say,

"Oh, it's a snake!" you can say, "They're not that bad",

and, yeah, it's different, I enjoy that.

-Oh, look, Alonsa, there's a sloughed skin.

-Yeah.

Sloughing is when a snake sheds its skin.

Because Sylvia knows them so well,

she knows who this male is without even seeing the actual snake.

I think he must be nine or ten years old now, yeah.

Once the females emerge from hibernation, the males start getting distinctly frisky.

They vie for dominance in a spectacular dance that Alonsa is lucky to have witnessed.

This happened so fast.

These two males came out of the blue and started right in front of me dancing,

it was fantastic, the dominant male pushing the smaller male to the floor.

And it can last two or three minutes, and it is very exciting.

They get as high as they can off the ground to push the other male down to the floor,

and once that male becomes subservient,

he slinks off and the dominant male then goes to his female to breed.

I still get a thrill every time I see an adder.

It's a thrill, it's great to see them,

especially because they are declining in numbers.

We had over 300 when we started doing surveys in the late '80s,

and we're now down to 100 adders.

I feel you've got to appreciate it while it lasts

in case the time comes when they become extinct.

MOTOR RUMBLES

Sylvia noticed that some types of forestry work

were actively damaging to the adders.

Because adders cannot burrow, they use existing holes.

If the machinery goes over those holes and compacts the ground

they cannot get out, so they are basically buried alive, suffocated.

SHUTTER CLICKS

Sylvia's dedicated work is having a positive effect.

Because of her expertise, she's now consulted about forestry work before it happens,

and adder numbers seem to be on the way back up.

The future for adders looked dire a few years ago...

..but I think over the past few years their requirements are being taken into account.

-THEY CHAT

-And her influence doesn't stop there.

Alonsa has been inspired by her passion

and now helps with the survey work and report-writing.

I'm very pleased that he's become as fascinated by the adders as I am, because it means

he'll follow on my studies, I hope.

Sylvia's love for adders has grown over the years, and now Alonsa is hooked too.

Having an animal on your doorstep means that you are perfectly positioned to study and protect it.

Sometimes just stumbling across a local creature

can be the start of something big.

CRICKET-LIKE CHIRPING

It was on a dark and damp misty marsh

that Richard Irvine made a discovery that would change his life.

You might wonder why I was wandering around at night in the dark, but that's what it is,

probably out with the dog and hearing this noise,

a sort of "barrup"-type noise, it's like crickets in the jungle.

It's not always easy to find out where the noise is coming from.

Richard has been living in Anthorn on the Solway Firth for 34 years.

He traded in a job in the city to become a farmer.

His sheep graze on the salt marsh at the edge of the estuary.

The strange noises he heard at night made it obvious there was something else living here too.

RAUCOUS CHIRRUPING

I just went to investigate it eventually.

I was totally surprised when I found out, because as you know

when you walk up to a toad it keeps quiet, doesn't it?

You see a toad there, and it's not making the noise when you see it, so it's quite surprising

to find a little toad like this making such a big noise.

Richard called English Nature,

who told him that they were natterjack toads,

Britain's rarest amphibian.

It was realised that the population was very small,

probably 20 or 30 toads, so the population was struggling.

Richard became fascinated by them.

This is a beauty, he's got a fantastic stripe right down his back,

lots of warts, and lots of different colours of brown and green and yellows.

The males also have little suction pads on the inside of their fingers

at the front, which is where they hold onto the females.

TOAD CHIRRUPS

Absolute beauty. They're all beauties, but this one especially.

Toads need somewhere to breed, that is a pond

which will hold water long enough so they have time to turn into toadlets,

and it was decided to actually physically change and improve their environment by digging new ponds.

The main string of ponds is a series of seven or eight

which runs down slowly, and the water now cascades from one pond down to the others.

We're not trying to farm the natterjacks,

but we are trying to make sure that some at least do survive.

Richard's sheep are unwittingly helping the plan to save the toads.

The best way to manage the surrounding habitat is grazing it,

so we get a tight short sward, like a lawn, and then they can travel,

because they move up to two kilometres from the breeding pond

during the winter to hibernate.

Spawn strings and tadpoles show that the toads are successfully breeding.

But not always in the right place.

This is what we call a suicide pond,

because the water in here will evaporate in about a week if it doesn't continue to rain.

And there are actually three strings in here,

which you can just make out.

They're probably about three days old.

You can see they're starting to change from round to oval

and they're turning into taddies, so there will be tadpoles in here.

We'll probably have to let these hatch out into taddies now,

then catch the taddies and move them somewhere else.

Not all the spawn will go on to develop into toads,

but Richard knows that his adult population is doing well.

Oh, there you are, four here...four little ones.

They don't start breeding until they're three years old,

so these are juveniles.

There's another one,

chubby little fellow, he must be doing rather well.

I'll just put this down there once we make sure that we're not going to squash anyone.

There we are, little chap.

By day the toads hide away,

but at night they really come into their own.

It's the males that make the noise, they compete for the females,

just go down there and sing away and the girls come along and choose the one they like.

RAUCOUS CHIRRUPING

You can see their little white heads.

Their bodies are floating in the water, and there's one there and one there.

25 years ago, the population was down to about 20 adults,

so when a toad called it was more or less an individual toad that you were hearing,

whereas now we've got a complete chorus of probably a couple of hundred toads down here.

ASSORTED TOAD CALLS

Counting toads at night is quite difficult, and of course they hide as soon as they hear you coming.

They tend to dive down to the bottom, making it very difficult.

We know we don't get them all, but it gives us a rough idea.

Nice one there.

You can certainly see the gold stripe right down his back beautifully, can't you?

There he goes.

13...14...

It's a fairly slow job,

and you just have to go around and shine a torch on them

and hope you don't count the same one more than once.

18 toads on this side of the pond, probably similar numbers the other side.

Seven or eight ponds similar to this. Could be a colossal number of toads, couldn't there?

Richard's care of the natterjacks has spawned a recovery in his toad population.

The best thing is that I'm here and they're here,

and I'm lucky enough to be able to look after them.

From idle curiosity about a strange noise,

the toads have become an important part of Richard's life.

They'd probably be very boring to everybody else, but I quite like them,

probably just because they're on the doorstep and we don't have to go very far to be entertained.

It's through the work of Richard and hundreds of other people like him

that we know so much about Britain's scaly and slimy creatures.

Far from loathsome, these people find reptiles and amphibians highly lovable.

It's only by knowing what we've got, where it is and how it's doing

that we can spot trends and changes in British wildlife...

..and know when to step in and help.

It would be an impossible task without the work of our British wild army.

If you want to know more about cold-blooded creatures,

log on to:

Next time on Born To Be Wild,

two men get down and dirty with puffins...

You're covered in grot.

..A financial adviser hunts for nest eggs...

Might be a bit difficult.

..A politician doorsteps some ungrateful locals...

Ohh!

..and one man is all ears for birdsong.

Join our amateur naturalists as they keep a watch over Britain's birds.

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