Episode 2 Rhys to the Rescue

This is incredible.

Want to see some of Wales' wildest animals?

You've come to the right place.

My name is Dr Rhys Jones and I'm based

at Cardiff University's School of Biosciences.

I'm licensed to handle some of the country's

rarest and most dangerous animals.

ALL SHOUT IN ALARM

OK, everybody, stay still!

And if you find a snake in your bathroom,

I'm the man the authorities will call in to help you.

But it's not just snakes.

I'm licensed to work with everything, from owls,

to iguanas...

Oh, my ear!

..chimps

to seals.

Because I love the scaly, the furry,

the crawly and the unknown.

-What did you think you've seen?

-A black panther.

-A black panther?

SHE GASPS

My God.

And I can help you to love them too.

In this episode of Rhys To The Rescue...

Wow! It's Christmas.

..I get all over-excited about some squiggly slowworms.

I'm all eyes for two abandoned owls.

I cannot wait to get these guys back in the wild.

And I save an unexpected guest from a damsel in distress.

I was scared to death.

I'm not surprised. It's very scary.

When Welsh wildlife gets into trouble,

it's often humans who are to blame.

But nature can be just as brutal and unforgiving.

And in a summer of storms and heavy rainfall,

I've had a number of call outs to rescue wildlife

caught short in the foul weather.

And on a wet and windy Wednesday, I'm heading out to Cwmbran

to investigate a report of abandoned chicks in a wood.

Just had a call out from a member of the public.

They can hear some birds in distress.

It's the right time of year.

We'd expect to see chicks all around these trees now,

but it's really cold and wet and I'm just a little concerned.

We're going to have a listen out, see what we can hear.

Hopefully, everything's all right. Let's just have a look.

Of course, this could all be a bit of a wild goose chase.

And it's definitely like looking for a needle in a haystack.

If we're looking at birds that have fallen to the ground,

and they've fallen in these nettles, they could literally be anywhere.

If we don't hear them then we've got very little chance of finding them.

But we'll carry on. Obviously, they were walking along this path,

so if they heard them or saw them,

I would imagine they're going to be somewhere along here.

Oh, my God!

They're tawny owls!

They're tawny owl chicks.

OK. OK.

Ssh.

This one's clucking. That's defensive.

-Look at that. OK, OK, OK.

-OWL CLICKS

Tawny owls will normally nest in trees.

But they haven't nested in that tree. They need a big old tree

with a hole in.

Normally, they're very, very clever at climbing back up these trees.

There'd be no problem at all. There's no way they've nested in these.

These are too small.

Whatever the case, they're nowhere near their original tree

and it'd be very difficult for me to identify where they've come from.

I think we need to try and get them some food.

Also, I want to get them out of the hand.

I don't want them to get used to humans.

That's the last thing we want.

These two chicks are a bit of a mystery.

Tawny owls usually nest in the hollows of large oak trees.

But there were no large oaks or any other large trees

near to where I found them.

There were also no signs of any adult tawnys,

who would normally stick close and attack any creature

threatening their chicks.

Had the chicks become distressed and disoriented in the storm?

Or had they been taken and abandoned by humans?

Who knows!

But my next step is to head to Ebbw Vale

and the Forest Park Owl Sanctuary where owl experts

Malcolm Jones and Russell Farr will give the chicks the once-over.

If we pull them out and then release them and they go back in,

-we know they're not damaged.

-Two lucky little tawnys, then?

-Yes. They're starving.

-So mice for these? What do you think?

-Rodents? Yeah?

-Yeah.

-Get the mice down them.

OK. Brilliant. So you had these frozen in the back there. Great.

We feed owls with them. Put them in front of their mouth to start them off.

If they're reluctant to eat, they have small feathers along the bill, just touch them there

-and they should gape then.

-Fantastic.

-Oh, yeah!

-Look at that!

-He's hungry.

There we go. That's brilliant. Straight down, look.

I guess the big question is, do you guys think they'll be OK?

This one's a lot bigger. Is that what it is, he's older?

-Six days, I expect.

-It's because the eggs are laid two days apart

in the nest by the female.

-Right.

-Of course, they're then delayed in hatching by two-day periods.

For me now it'd be great... I don't know if you've got

a spare aviary here that we could put the owls in?

I'm quite prepared to come down and train them up because, of course,

before they're released, they'll have to train up to be able to hunt.

I can then take them back down to Cwmbran area and release them.

'I leave the owlets in the capable hands of Malcolm and Russell.

'And we'll return to the sanctuary to check on their progress

'later in the programme.'

OWL CHEEPS

'Thankfully, the storms soon pass, the sun comes out

'and I'm called by two damsels in minor distress to Caerleon.'

-Hello, Dr Rhys Jones.

-Pleased to meet you. I'm Sharon.

-Sharon. Hello.

-This is Kath.

-Hello, Kath.

-Hello.

-You must be the lady that found the snake?

-Yes, I did.

OK. So when I spoke to you on the phone, you'd already captured it

-or contained it, is that right?

-A gentleman came over and put it in a pot for us.

Let's have a look at what we've got.

Oh, my goodness. Look at that.

-That's a little grass snake.

-I touched it with my sweeping brush.

-Right.

-Then it unravelled and started wriggling around

and the old tongue going.

-Is that what you're frightened of, the tongue?

-Yeah.

-If we look, can you see the way it's darting in and out at you?

-Yeah.

With a snake, their eyesight's not very good,

so they poke their tongue out,

they've got a little forked tongue

and they taste the world around them.

So, each of us, doesn't matter how many times we've had a bath,

we're each smelly to a snake, we're each giving off pheromones.

The snake's just identifying if it's in any danger.

But it's one of the only two indigenous snakes that we have

here in Wales. Do you think it's very pretty?

-I've never seen one before, to be honest.

-We were scared.

-I was scared to death.

-I'm not surprised. It's very scary.

If you don't know what an animal is, it can be

really, really scary indeed.

-I think probably the best thing to do with him is move him to the allotments.

-OK.

-I'll do that on my own, shall I?

-Yes, please!

-Thank you.

-No problem.

-Thank you.

Adult grass snakes can reach up to six foot in length

and are Wales' largest terrestrial reptile.

Whilst this harmless little fella is just a juvenile,

around a year old, he's still perfectly capable

of looking after himself back in the wild.

First, it's a race against time. Staff at an RSPCA centre

are working to save the lives of hundreds of sea birds.

And it's not just owls that have had a run-in

with the wild Welsh weather this year.

A huge flock of Manx shearwaters were blown onto Newgale Beach

during their annual migration to Argentina.

On September the 12th,

the tail end of Hurricane Irene hit the Welsh coastline.

And in Pembrokeshire, RSPCA officers waded into the waters to save

500 Manx shearwater from drowning.

Some will make it but most of them haven't got a chance in the surf.

The shearwater had set off on their long winter migration

to South America from the islands

off the West Wales coast,

only to be blown back down the coastline by the hurricane.

Exhausted, and with their feathers waterlogged, the birds faced

drowning in the stormy surf until the RSPCA intervened.

At the same time as the rescues in Newgale,

I also received an emergency call.

Because of the high winds,

incredibly, a Manx shearwater has crashed landed in Bridgend today.

We are en route to rescue it.

'Bridgend is an astonishing 100 miles further east of Newgale Beach.

'I head for the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales

'to meet wildlife officer Rob Parry.'

-Thanks for coming.

-Not at all. Not at all.

Where is it?

OK. Well, firstly, it's very bright and alert. That's great.

So it's looking at me, bright-eyed and alert.

Looking very, very strong.

-Beautiful. Beautiful.

-Stunning.

Great news so far. Really trying to struggle in the hand here

so this is fantastic.

I just want to check the wings if I can now.

OK. Come on.

The wings look in beautiful condition.

I think, to be honest,

keeping her here is not going to do her any good at all.

We've got to get her back out to sea as soon as possible.

We've got to wait till it gets dark, so we've got about another hour before we can release her.

That's going to be the best course of action.

'The reason I need to wait until dusk to release this bird is that

'Manx shearwaters only come ashore at night.

'This is because they use the cover of dark to avoid black back gulls.

'Shearwater make a tasty meal for these gulls,

'so they spend most of their lives out at sea

'avoiding dry land until the breeding season

'and then only landing at night.

'Shearwater are pretty rare and highly protected.

'Over half of the world's 350,000 breeding pairs

'nest in burrows and under rocks on the Pembrokeshire Islands of Skomer,

'Skokholm and Middle Holm.

'They breed here because the islands are free

'of their other great adversaries, rats.

'And so, as dusk approaches, I head out to Southerndown

'on the Glamorgan Coastline.'

You're probably wondering why I'm going to release

the Manx shearwater in weather conditions like this.

But the fact is it can pretty much deal with this.

The wind has dropped and its best chance of survival is to get it

back out to sea ASAP.

This is windy but certainly not as windy as yesterday.

And not too windy to release our Manx shearwater.

Ordinarily, I'd release this bird from the cliff top

but it's a fledging and I'm worried it's going to crash onto the ground.

If it's going to, I'd rather it do it on a beach

than off the cliff top.

She looks really keen to get going. That's fantastic.

OK, little one. Best of luck. Ready?

She's away. She's away. Fantastic!

Fantastic.

Time for some fish and chips.

Hopefully, this girl will now safely navigate

her epic 6,000 mile migration to the South American coast.

Meanwhile, I'm popping back to Ebbw Vale

to check on the tawny chicks.

And I quickly discover that my two chicks have got new roommates.

We've actually got four here today.

People see them on the ground

and they just assume that they've been orphaned.

Of course, the thing is with tawny owls, if they do hit the ground,

they're very, very good at climbing up trees again

and they should just be left where they are.

Our two being the exception, because, of course,

we actually lost the tree that our tawny owls were in.

But, as you can see, these little fellas here... Might take a little bit of coaxing.

Even at this age, they've started to be able to fly now

and also they've got incredibly sharp beaks.

There we go.

The next thing I want to do, Malcolm,

is basically see if we can get these guys to eat today.

So what we've done is

we've tried some mice on the end of a string.

Humanely-killed mice, I should add.

We're going to see if we can get these guys to eat.

The idea is that by throwing the mice to them,

they'll see it as a live animal coming towards them.

We want to get that hunting instinct back into them,

that they're going to grab these mice and take them straight off the string.

Let's see how much success we get. OK. Let's go for it.

Patience, of course, is the name of the game.

At the moment, they're still settling in.

They're still very, very nervous. That's great.

I really want to try and get them to eat while they're here.

'Come on.

'Come on. Mmmm.

'Yummy humanely-killed mice. You know you want some.

'Hmmm. Not sure that you do.'

I think they're more intent on trying to make a quick escape than eat at the moment.

'OK. Skip to Plan B.

'Plan B still involves mice,

'but this time we've got a longer piece of string.

'Malcolm's hiding behind a door on one side of the pen

'and I'm hiding in the bushes on the other.

'We're working on a cunning game of blind tug-of-mouse.'

I'm completely blind here.

I can't see where the mouse is going at any one time.

So I've got to really delicately feel.

When Malcolm tugs, it means that he's trying to move the mouse back that way.

He's just doing that now.

And when he stops, it's my turn...

now to try and pull the mouse back across the aviary floor.

It must look pretty weird to anyone watching here,

visiting the sanctuary. Probably think there's a mad man

with a piece of string trying to steal an owl or something.

That's clearly not working but, in a way, that's pretty good,

because it means that they haven't imprinted on us,

they haven't associated us with food

and certainly don't see us as their parents.

Perhaps the best way forward is to get them back to individual boxes

and they'll probably feed on their own. It'll take a couple of hours now.

I think this exercise has proved two things.

Firstly, whilst these owls are not yet ready for release,

they're no fools either.

Secondly, Malcolm and I really need to work on our mouse impersonations.

Joking aside, it's important that these chicks learn to hunt.

Imprinted birds such as these tawnys rely on humans for food.

Unable to survive in the wild, they must spend the rest of their lives

captive and caged.

'After all that mouse-on-a-string related excitement,

'it's time for a complete change of scenery.

'I head for the West Wales coastline,

'the wide blue sea, and my next rescue mission.'

As part of my work for Cardiff University,

I'm here on the west coast of Wales visiting two islands -

Skomer, where I'm going to undertake some scientific research with the seal population,

but firstly, Skokholm, where I'm going to visit arguably

the largest slowworms in the UK.

The island of Skokholm lies just two and a half miles

off the West Wales coast.

A protected site, the island is run and managed

by the Wildlife Trust for South and West Wales.

Good to see you, mate.

During the summer months, it's teeming with wildlife

and is a nesting site of world importance,

not only for Manx shearwater, but also for puffin, storm petrol,

guillemot, oyster catchers, razorbills and a dozen other birds.

But this is late autumn.

Most of the birds have fledged and migrated

and I'm not here to look up into the skies.

The treasures I'm seeking are generally found under the ground.

Slowworms are neither slow, nor are they worms.

And they're not snakes either.

Slowworms are in fact legless lizards.

And unlike worms, slowworms have teeth.

And unlike snakes, they have eyelids

and a notched not a forked tongue.

They're our most common British reptile, but they're very reclusive.

Until recently, little was known about them.

I'm not just here because the slowworms are big.

There's a real scientific reason why I'm here.

I've found a parasite which is infecting the guts of slowworms

on the mainland and I'm really interested to see

if these island populations are infected by the same parasite.

Three years ago, I discovered that our mainland population had become

infected with two species of roundworm.

Initially found in Eastern European,

research into their impact is still ongoing.

But we do know that these parasites are stunting the growth

of the mainland population.

Are the Skokholm slowworms also infected?

Before I can find out, I'll have to locate some.

This looks quite good, this area.

Got some sheeting on the floor.

You've really got to get your eye in

because you may not see them straight away.

Whoa! Look at those slowworms! There they go.

Now, these are the enormous slowworms I was telling you about.

Whoa! That's a catch. Oh!

Look at that.

Wow!

It's Christmas!

HE LAUGHS

Look at the size of those!

Well, I most certainly did not expect to be able to get

that many slowworms that quickly.

And Christmas just keeps coming.

Look at the size! I've seen smaller snakes.

This is crazy.

There are so many. I can't even capture them.

I'm just going to go for the biggest ones now.

I'm stinging my hand on stinging nettles.

Ay, ay, ay.

The pain is worth it.

I've got to bag them all, remember where they all came from.

It's amazing.

I've just put them in a little bag

and I'll take them back up to the station at the top there

where I'm going to analyse them, because this is valuable data.

I won't be taking these slowworms off the island,

but will re-release them once I've weighed

and measured them and collected some lovely runny poo samples.

And with a bag of 20 of these little beauties to analyse,

it'll be dark before my work is through.

28 grams.

That's quite enormous. This slowworm has lost its tail as well.

20, 24 grams on the mainland is huge.

That's one enormous slowworm.

Let's have a look if this young lady will donate a poo sample for me.

Whey! There we go!

That's what we wanted.

Fantastic. Well done.

Thank you.

The average mainland slowworm is 25cm,

but these Skokholm squigglers are way bigger. How exciting!

Oh, my goodness me. That is a monster slowworm.

That's the biggest slowworm I have ever seen.

There are rumours of these guys getting to 48cms,

but this is a 42cm slowworm.

That is massive.

That is it. I've taken the biometric data for 20 slowworms.

Across the board, they are by far the largest specimens of slowworm

I have ever seen.

Are they carrying the same parasites that I'm seeing on the mainland?

Well, I'll only find out when I get back to my lab at Cardiff University.

Next morning, having put the slowworms back where I found them,

I head for the neighbouring island of Skomer

to check on its grey seal colony.

When Hurricane Irene hit the West Wales coast last September,

it wasn't just the Manx shearwater that were badly affected.

On Skomer and surrounding islands, it was the beginning of the seal pupping season.

Sadly, on nearby Ramsey Island, ten young pups were drowned,

whilst here on Skomer, Wildlife Trust warden Chris Taylor

captured some dramatic footage of a seal cow

desperately trying to save her young pup from drowning.

When newborn, seal pups are too weak to swim in rough waters

and remain on dry land.

This pup was caught by a wave and swept off the beach.

Thankfully, Mum eventually managed to get her pup safely ashore.

Six weeks after the storm, I'm visiting Skomer to check

how much the hurricane affected the seal pupping season.

With over 400 grey seals in Skomer's colony, I'm hoping to find

plenty of evidence of new arrivals.

That pup down there is just a matter of hours old.

-You can hear it crying.

-PUP CRIES

It's trying to get the cow to come out of the water

and give it its first feed.

Eventually, when she thinks she's got him in the right position,

she'll roll on her back.

Just about two-thirds of the way down the body of the cow,

you can see two teats.

That's where we want our little pup to be heading.

At the moment, he's still a little bit confused,

doesn't know which end he should go to get fed.

Then she'll move her flipper to encourage the pup

down towards the teats.

Actually, it can take a newborn pup up to three days

to locate its mother's teats.

Unfortunately, my boat back to the mainland is in three hours.

So it's time to move on and check the island's other coves.

And there's plenty of evidence of a successful breeding season.

This is great news.

I've just been looking around the island and unlike Ramsey Island

that lost ten pups in the first night of the storm,

the pups here look to be doing really, really well.

I can understand that when you look around.

I think the coastline of Skomer offers lots of little niches and caves

where they can hide away and these guys have just weathered the storm.

'Back on dry land, I head straight for Cardiff University.

'I'm taking my slowworm samples to the lab

'to probe their poo for parasites.'

I've got a little microscope over here.

It's not as high-powered as this one,

but it will allow you to have a look.

That's some slowworm faecal matter. That's what it looks like.

It's quite peculiar in that you get this calcium plug there.

That's from where they've been consuming all their snails.

And the rest of the faecal matter... Well, you probably would have recognised that yourself.

I'm going to be sieving through that with a fine-tooth comb

to see if there's any parasites hidden inside.

What I'm looking for here is a small nematode, a small roundworm.

What I find on the UK is that, generally,

slowworms are carrying two different types of roundworm.

One of them is quite large, you can see it with the naked eye.

It's almost a couple of millimetres long.

Very, very difficult to miss.

And, yet, there are none here.

That's very, very interesting because if I took the same

number of samples on the mainland,

these samples would be teeming with those nematodes.

But they just seem to be absent from this sample material.

Have we proved that the Skokholm slowworms are so huge

because they don't have parasites?

Not really. We need to take a step back.

Firstly, did I go at the right time of year?

Perhaps the parasites don't show in the faecal matter at this time.

What about my sample size? Well, if I want to answer the question,

"Are Skokholm slowworms so much bigger because they don't carry

"the parasites that their cousins do on the mainland?"

then I am afraid I'm going to have to return to Skokholm in the future

and get a lot more samples than I've got at the moment.

But do you know what? It's really interesting data.

Whilst the Skokholm slowworms will have to wait

for their happy ending, I'm hoping that four weeks after their rescue,

the tawny owl chicks are ready to get theirs.

-How have they been since I've been away?

-We haven't seen them.

All we've done is fed them and looked through at them.

We've not bothered them at all.

-OK.

-Cos we don't want to imprint them.

No, no. Absolutely not. If they're imprinted, they'll just land

very softly on this glove.

I want them to attack it.

Let's hope they will do that. There he goes. Fabulous.

I'm just going to have a look at this one if I can.

If you can grab his legs.

-There we go.

-With the clicking noise...

-Yep.

-That's a threat to you.

-He is, he's clicking. That's fabulous.

-And he's flying well?

-Yes, he's flying lovely.

Good. His flight feathers are through and looking brilliant.

Look at those wings!

What a transformation!

There we go.

Brilliant. So both looking good, aren't they?

Looking fantastic.

Right. I think we should get them on the wagon. Let's go.

'These owls are ready for release,

'and I'm taking them to my friend Norman's farm.

'But our owls are not here to live an idle life,

'hanging about in trees and twit-twooing all night.'

Pip! Come on.

'Norman's got them here to work,

'keeping down the rat and mice population on his land.'

Do you have any problems round here with vermin, rats, mice, etc?

Yes, yes. We all have that. We run a nursery. My wife runs the nursery

and we've got the farm. You do get a rat population in the winter.

We used to have quite a lot of owls and then the population declined.

I think partly because of the rise in the number of other raptors,

especially buzzards,

-but also the amount of light with street lighting.

-Yeah.

The owls just disappeared because they don't like to hunt

-in artificial light.

-Do you know what, Norman? I'm really keen

to get these guys out because they've had a journey down here.

There we go.

Look at you. You have just grown up.

When you look at that little bundle of white fluff that we had

at the start and look at this. Magnificent!

Just make sure that we get her back into the air.

-RHYS LAUGHS

-I bet you've never seen an owl before, have you?

Well, I think what we're going to do is pop her into a tree,

see how she goes. Come on, you.

There we go.

Looking much happier now.

What was that about never work with children or animals, Norman?

-Well, yes.

-Even when they're as beautiful as you.

Right.

He's going to... They've both gone!

Both of them have gone up into the trees. That's great.

-Should be all right now.

-Absolutely brilliant.

They've probably got the idea.

They're both in the hedgerow, both totally safe.

Nice lot of cover there.

-Not long till it gets dark now.

-No, they should be OK.

-Perfect.

Next time on Rhys To The Rescue, there's a cobra crisis call-out...

We're looking for a cobra. Where's the nearest anti-venom? Liverpool.

..a scary spider from overseas...

I've got to see this spider gone.

..and some beautiful badgers.

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