Wetlands Nick Baker's Wild West

The wetlands of the West.

Soggy, but beautiful.

Sometimes threatening, perhaps, but they are home

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

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

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

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

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

as anywhere I've travelled.

On my journey across this wonderful landscape,

I'll be catching up with great wild spectacles.

Tracking some intriguing insects.

And most stunning birds.

Join me as I explore my Wild West.

HUM OF DISTANT BIRDSONG

These are the Somerset Levels -

the heart of this beautiful county.

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

they are fast becoming a naturalist's paradise.

But they're also important farming country.

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

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

Just in the shadow of Glastonbury Tor,

it's home to thousands of waders and wildfowl,

some of them severely threatened.

This was once intensively managed farmland.

Over the years it was drained and ploughed,

making the peat shrink back.

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

to flood and they carefully control the levels.

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

BUZZ OF BIRDSONG

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

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

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

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

where you can see this number of birds so close.

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

and the different food sources.

This teal has completely upended itself

in the search for every last bit of nutrient.

The drake is dabbling.

Its bill is vibrating across the surface.

Its tongue is sucking in water through grilles in the beak

which filter out small plants and animals.

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

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

This species is under some conservation threat,

so places like this are vital.

Open stretches of water like this obviously are very important

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

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

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

Like these widgeon.

They're keeping their feathers in tiptop condition,

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

of the wavy patterning on the drake.

The technical term is vermiculation, worm-like patterns.

They're on the lake in their hundreds

and their distinctive call rings out throughout the day.

Lapwing too abound.

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

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

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

under severe conservation threat

with breeding numbers in massive decline.

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

but also on some of the breeding birds.

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

At the moment, the birds are rather enjoying it.

It's rather good for them.

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

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

that the birds can actually breed on the Levels.

And also, significantly, all the creepy crawlies,

all the invertebrates they feed on, in this waterlogged soil

will have drowned, so there'll be nothing.

Even if they do manage to get a nest off,

there'll be nothing to feed their chicks with.

And there's another problem - rush.

It abounds here,

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

too much favours the approaching predators, like foxes.

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

And they must be estimating correctly,

because the last couple of breeding seasons have seen

an increase in numbers, with waders doing particularly well.

WATER SPLASHES

REEDS RUSTLE IN WIND

It's all about water management here.

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

and recreated traditional Levels habitats - fen.

Once there was a lot more

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

Now it's relatively rare,

as over the centuries the Fens were drained.

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

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

We had to remove a lot of the vegetation.

And the reason for this is we had to actually rebuild

and re-stabilise the whole system.

The banks were gone.

They were degraded. They were leaking.

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

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

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

We levelled the land to a variety of heights,

gradients and angles to suit a huge suite of species.

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

We've had marsh harriers hunting here.

We've had bittern booming,

great white egrets, little egrets, cattle egrets.

A huge array of duck species.

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

And it's not just about the birds.

These reed heads are covered in millions of gossamer threads

spun by small spiders.

These beasts use these filaments to ride warm updraughts,

behaviour called ballooning.

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

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

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

ready for the off.

All these invertebrates are great news for this stonechat,

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

Not a bad find in December.

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

These are roosting and having a great splash around,

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

The reason - the unmistakable outline of a marsh harrier,

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

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

the biggest spectacle the reserve has to offer.

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

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

over and over again, all day long.

Absolutely breathtaking.

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

Like the now famous flocks of starlings that circle over

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

This could be a way of avoiding or confusing predators

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

for social cohesion, if you like.

Whatever the reason, it's hypnotic.

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

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

and flooding we've had over this last winter,

to take this sort of scene for granted.

But, several centuries ago,

the whole of the Somerset Levels would have been under water

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

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

the draining of the landscape,

scenes like this are incredibly rare,

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

and filmed today.

Here, farming and wildlife are in balance.

The fields would be grazed in summer

and then allowed to flood next winter.

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

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

the all-powerful hand of man.

That same hand is helping nature here,

simply by using abandoned peat pits to recreate fen.

What once was just a hole in the ground,

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

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

now gathering rainwater,

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

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

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

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

and the last passenger service was nearly 50 years ago.

But...

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

the cycle route that goes through North Devon

and through the very heart of this nature reserve.

And what a place this is,

with something like 14 species of dragonfly recorded.

All of them need water-filled ponds and ditches.

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

Devon Wildlife Trust took over the site in January 2013.

And for decades, this was a clay quarry.

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

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

and they left behind this absolutely enormous hole.

This is Meeth Quarry itself.

There's actually two holes in the ground here,

but this one is the largest and it is massive.

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

That's over 150 feet.

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

these little grebe chicks have no such issues

as they play and squabble.

It provides everything they need, even the fish.

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

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

but come the winter and this should abound in wildfowl.

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

Believe it or not, this stuff,

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

is fast becoming an important habitat in its own right.

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

pretty inhospitable environments,

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

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

Like the pretty little bird's foot trefoil flower.

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

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

It means it provides many insects with nectar,

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

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

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

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

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

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

for these hungry goldfinches to take seeds from.

Sometimes nature needs a little bit of creative neglect.

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

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

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

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

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

before the water was discharged into the river.

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

The dragonfly bench on one side gives you a clue,

for this is a dragonfly paradise.

This four-spotted chaser is perching by the waterside.

The males are really aggressive and they like to perch here

ready to chase off any other males

or other species that invade their space.

The pulsing abdomen is its way of breathing.

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

are also taking advantage of the damp conditions.

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

using their long proboscis to take nutrients.

This dragonfly is egg laying...

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

Look at that.

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

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

But death for one species is food for another.

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

The skater can walk on water

and this pond is a vast, watery food trap.

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

are all the rides.

They're not just footpaths to join up

the different experiences and habitats.

They're worthy in their own right.

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

perfect for woodland creatures,

and some of the more open ones act as suntraps

and they're brilliant for all manner of insects,

and there's one particular insect

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

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

on the woodland edge.

It's a wood white,

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

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

This place is absolutely heaving with dragonflies and damselflies

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

a pond of dragonflies and damselflies -

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

The metallic beauty of an emerald damselfly,

one of the larger damselflies.

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

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

where tree roots are swamped by water.

And this greater spotted woodpecker is busy.

Now, it's not digging holes for nesting.

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

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

is aggressively patrolling its territory

keeping away incomers but also snatching the odd insect.

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

and blue-tailed damselflies show us just how much life

this pretty small area of water is supporting.

My visit here is almost at an end.

It pretty much takes a full day

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

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

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

the full sweep of the reserve.

From up here at the highest point of the reserve,

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

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

and just beyond that line of conifer trees is Ashmoor.

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

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

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

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

Somewhere where man, having damaged the landscape

in the first place, is actually putting something back.

And that idea of landscape-scale conservation

is really coming to fruition here on the Somerset Levels.

With six large reserves within 20 miles,

things here are beginning to connect up.

That scale means that when wildlife faces a threat,

it has somewhere to move.

RUSH OF WINGS BEATING

This is West Sedgemoor.

Run by the RSPB,

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

The reserve is some 700 hectares,

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

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

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

Rich patchwork of fields stitched together with dykes and ditches,

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

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

it would have looked completely different.

This whole landscape was completely under water.

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

Huge amounts of rain, combined with surge tides,

prevented the rivers from draining the land.

That raised water levels to dangerous heights.

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

forcing over 250 households out of their homes.

Now, back in January or February in 2014,

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

The water level would have been up to chest height.

In fact, a lot of the Levels,

and quite a bit of the surrounding countryside,

were so deep under water the area was inaccessible.

The Levels are used to winter flooding.

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

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

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

But the 2014 floods were simply overwhelming.

The reserve is only open to pre-booked groups

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

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

The RSPB are working with the farmers here

so that both wildlife and agriculture can benefit.

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

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

these pools in front of us, teeming with birds.

And if you spend a bit of time here,

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

This is a female marsh harrier out hunting.

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

before spotting something and suddenly swooping down.

Maybe after sick birds hiding in the grass.

This time it comes up with nothing.

These birds will take small ducks, like these teal,

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

LOUD BUZZ OF BIRDSONG

NICK LAUGHS

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

or, should I say, raptor and duck.

Or raptor and corvid.

These crows are a bit more feisty with potential predators.

They mob the luckless harrier and it scarpers.

This place is all about water.

Not enough and the land dries out,

making it of little use for wildlife.

Too much and it becomes unfarmable.

The RSPB works with the local drainage board

to control water levels here.

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

on this sluice releases hundreds of gallons.

The idea is to keep the reserve wet in the winter

to favour all those feeding birds,

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

Come on, man, faster.

NICK LAUGHS

'But holding water at higher levels than the surrounding areas

'has attracted criticism.'

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

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

and the devastation of those floods.

Yeah.

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

from some hydrologists, and basically the result that

they came back with was that it's insignificant.

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

compared with the massive volumes that occurred during the flooding.

So, we are only talking about making a difference of

less than a centimetre.

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

for the wildlife that you're managing it for,

but how did the wildlife cope with the flooding?

Obviously it was too deep here.

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

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

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

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

Other species actually increased in their numbers here.

Things like pintail which can feed in slightly deeper water

with their long necks, dabbling upturned in the water.

So, you know, we had far more pintail here

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

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

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

after elusive mammals and small birds.

She's not having much luck today.

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

These teal are feeding on seeds floating in the water,

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

And these shoveler are using their spatulate bills to sift seeds

and invertebrates from the water.

You can just see on the bill of this drake

the small combs they use to filter out the food.

What a resplendent bird.

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

Vast flocks of widgeon and golden plover land,

get spooked and then take off again.

Eventually the widgeon return to nibble on aquatic plants

on the fringes of the lakes.

What a place this is.

But it's not all about the birds.

Now, it might be difficult to appreciate,

as I squelch my way across these fields,

but it's the flooding here on the Levels

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

All the nutrients from the floodwaters create

high productivity, many hay-cuts

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

And these grasslands are also pretty good for the wildlife.

In winter, these lapwing are plucking worms and insects

from the grass and mud.

In spring, they'd be breeding here

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

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

A hen harrier, a seriously endangered bird,

rarer than the marsh harrier.

A flock of lapwing take off.

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

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

But when a top predator like a peregrine falcon appears,

it's a no-brainer.

They all take to the skies.

The falcon manages to separate off one lapwing,

dives...

and misses.

Then tries again...

and misses again.

Before flying right over our hide.

Danger over, the lapwing head back to the muddy grass

to take more fuel on board.

This place is pretty special.

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

are threatened in one way or another,

either directly, birds such as the hen harrier,

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

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

This is what happens when conservationists and farmers work together.

And with plans to improve drainage management on the Levels

and a new sluice at Bridgwater,

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

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

Now, there's something really exciting happening

here on the Somerset Levels, I think.

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

and much wetter weather, but overall the farming community

and nature conservation seem to be working well together.

That gives me pause for thought.

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

are a bit out on a limb.

Like the Isle of Portland,

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

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

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

are surrounded by pasture.

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

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

We need more places like this.