Episode 4 Springwatch Unsprung

Minsmere. We've got the wildlife, we have got cameras and three extra

live spinning watch presenters. Because this is your show, we've

even got a live audience! CHEERING AND

really, it's a unique, Kong lopration of natural history, wisdom

and minds, we have got brilliant natralists here and this is very

accessible to you and you can ask us pretty much anything you like. Make

the most of this opportunity. Get in touch via the Springwatch website.

All the information is there on how to get in touch with us, and that is

www.bbc.co.uk/springwatch, in particular, there's that Twitter

thing. You can pretty much get in touch

with us almost instantaneously. Now, we've had an exciting first week.

It's been pretty good. Not bad! The bitterns! We'll get to that in a

minute. I'm going to ask the audience, have you had any favourite

moments, anything that's stood out for you? The rabbits. The rabbles.

The rabbits! Bitterns. Bitterns. Impersonations of the bits terns.

That was definitely one of my highlights.

All right, I'm going to run through your particular favourites. Martin?

Yesterday. What was your highlight? I liked being out on the sea last

night and was completely amazed that somebody had seen a hutch back whale

off the coast here. It seemed completely impossible. Funny you say

that. We were going to show that last night. We have that clip here,

so the clip of the actual whale that was seen off the coast back in

November. There it is. It's very brief. Whooa. Look at that! It leapt

out of the water. Yes. That's real. That was sent in by one

of our viewers, so that's pretty special.

Michaela, do you special.

I don't know if it's best, but it sticks in my mind, that spinning,

I don't know if it's best, but it extraordinary. You saw that a minute

ago and you can remember it? ! I happen to have a very good memory. I

want to just show you my chest. I've worn that specially. Bug Boy Baker,

I've done that for. We are almost having a bug-off here! I haven't

seen this yet because I had to duck out of the meeting this morning, but

wow, look at that! Whoa, it's drunk. She was looking the other way. It's

like Kylie Minogue "I'm spinning around". Fantastic stuff.

Now, bitterns. Yes. I just think a phenomenal bird. I know your

favourite is going to be the bittern. It is. It's a dream come

true because they are so shy. At this time of year, if you are lucky

enough to see a bittern, even here at Minsmere, all you see is a

bittern come up, look like a drunken owl and it falls back into the reeds

again. We never knew they would do that so it's good to see and the

cannibalism is something we have not seen before. It darks you out a

little bit. It's pretty graph I believe. -- graphic.

The colourations, one is gingery and one is dark. Any idea why? No. I

trawled through the literature on the Internet. Remember it's their

down, it's twoing to be interesting if we see what happens to their

mature feathers, there's nothing to say one is a male or a female or

anything like that. Again, this is possibly because it hasn't been seen

before. Last time we saw these, they were in black-and-white! We couldn't

tell what colour their down was. They are going to walk off into the

reed and we'll never know. Yes, it says in boobs, ten to 15 days, they

start branching, so they are back in the reeds. By the start of next

week, we might start to lose them. We will understand more about

bitterns by the end of the week. If you are one of those unlikely people

for whom the bitterns aren't doing it for you, we are going to try to

up the bittern love for you. A bit of a challenge for you. We want you

to tell us in 10 characters or less what it is about bitterns that you

like. You can help us by adding the hashtag at bittern's got talent. I

don't understand that at all, but it's quite catchy! We thought we'd

do that! Martin, job for you. We need your

help. Come with us over here. Thank you, chaps.

Going to leave you with Laura. You can help Laura there. Today's quiz -

my love of the little things is well known - I don't know what gives you

that idea, but we are going to do a quiz and talk about small is

beautiful. We have taken these various images, mystery macro shots

of some creatures that are featured on the show and I want you to guess

at what they might be. Mystery macro. Have a look at them audience,

but don't shout out the answer, wait until the end of the show for that.

But what tuning that is? -- but what do you think that is?

Look at the shape. That is the clue. This is a little easier but pay

attention as it may not be as easy as it thinks. -- as easy as you

think. If you have any ideas, do let us

know what this is. Threeite ens in today's quiz, so... There's a lot of

giggling going on. Let us know and we'll reveal the answers later on.

You can do that via the website. Right, over here, Chris. I know you

have been itching to get on and do this all week. This is your

opportunity. You have the floor. Yes. You have been talking about

cuckoo might races, you followed one all the way to Africa. Yes, don't

rub it in. We have had a Nightingale too. We have had a lot of the

audience getting in touch saying about the mechanisms. There is some

good news science. There is. Birds migrate from one part of the planet

to another and a mechanism they use is a compass. They can actually see

verbally, we know that they can visually see the earth's magnetic

field, so they can record electromagnetic raidration --

radiation and record it. I read that German scientists had been doing

work with robins for about seven years and they were tested in which

direction they moved in. While boiling a Celt until the middle of

the room, the robins lost their ability to orientate themselves, so

any disturbance that we generate using electromagnetic force, can put

the birds off their ability to use this. If a bird is migrating over

cities, where we are boiling kettles and a lot more, they won't be able

to use that method. Will you luckily, they have other means of

migrating. We know they can use star maps, they are use the -- they can

use the stars and the position of the sun in the day time. They could

switch off the electromagnetic thing. Assuming they can see the

stars? Yes. The other thing is, they'll learn the landscape. Birds

which have long lived are frequently seen follow courses such as rivers,

railway lines, even motorway networks and they'll come back year

after year and navigate through perhaps the UK to get to their

favoured area. When it comes to finding the last spot, if you like,

other recent research has shown that certain species like song thrushes,

they are short-term migrants and don't go too far, but they'll come

back to the neighbourhood using the stars, or the sun, the magnetic

compass or even features on the ground. But when they get there,

they find their way back to your garden using smell. No, no, no. Yes.

You look like one of the cameramen for a brief moment there. Where's he

gone? Don't be so rude. They collected material from several

gardens and found they could smell the difference between one garden

and another. They are using a complete complex of things to get

back to precisely the same spot. The subtlety of that we shouldn't

underestimate and it makes you worry, if boiling a kettle can put a

robin off and confuse its direction, what are we doing with everything

else. Mobile phone antennae and all the rest of it. Thanks for that

insight. Wondering what the nose was about there, we had a surreal

collection of items there. Do we have any migration stuff or cuckoo

sightings? We had a few cuckoo sightings on the web. Laura, had any

good cuckoo sightings? Really good ones on the web. We gave people the

link to the BTO survey so they could track things. Lee Martin heard

cuckoos in Edenbridge in Kent this year. That's significant for me

because I grew up down the road from there and I used to hear them as a

child and I went to visit my dad recently and not a cuckoo to be

heard. It really is happening. I'm spoilt where live because I liven

Dartmoor, a cuckoo hotspot, it's like an island, amazing. Great

questions as well about bittern if you've got time? Not right now.

We'll come back to that. Haven't got time for a bittern. Ridiculous! What

have I started? We'll come back to you so we can do it properly. Your

lap's fallen off! -- your lamp!

Every now and again I like to find an hour to disappear off site and

this morning I headed to an hour to disappear off site and

Before we have even stepped into the treeses, just look at this. We have

got a perfect situation here, we treeses, just look at this. We have

have a track and this is very muddy with all this water and rain we have

been having, it's produced the perfect kind of mud. It's not too

coarse and not too slippy, it's just about right and already, this is for

real s hook, we have a fox footprint -- sloppy. How do I know it's a fox

print? You could draw a cross between the pads and it woulden

touch any other pad. If it was a doing, you couldn't do that. So

that's a fox. Then there are some footprints of a rabbit. It gets

better. A pheasant. Badger track. Last night's footprint. We have got

red deer tracks here as well. You can see the footprints of an animal

with cloven hoove. I could spend an hour alone just analysing the life

associated with what most of us would chas as a dead tree. Each hole

represents a life. A meaty, chunky beetle grubby life. You see the big

jagged holes around them, that is where a woodpecker's come and

smashed its way through the bark to extract the same grubs.

A little look down the bottom. These are brilliant. They are called

harvests, the big er erones tend to be out harvesting and mowing the

grass. They are found at all-times of the year. A very, very quick

glimpse of some red deer there. You know, very rarely when you are

tracking animals, do you see animal at the end of the journey. I imagine

they are the same ones that left the tracks further up at the beginning

of the trek. We have only gone, 50, 100 metres and already my time is

up. If you saw yesterday's show, you

will have already have met a Trina, but we have her again in the studio

-- Katrina. You have written a fabulous book called The Unfeathered

Bird and we have thrust it into that Kayla's hands. What do you think?

It's absolutely remarkable this book. It's called The Unfeathered

Bird. Katrina's drawn painstakingly pictures of skeletons of different

birds. They are totally accurate and she's done them, they are doing

something some of the bird, they are not just a skeleton. It shows you

why birds have evolved in different ways. You have lots of different

birds up there. You can see it is doing what a woodpecker would do.

How long does it take you to do a drawing like that? It depends if I

am in practice or not. If I was in good form, the skeleton would take

three or four days. How long did the book take? 25 years. 25 years! You

could have got your husband to build it for you. From the biologist's

could have got your husband to build it for you. From the point of view,

it's so unlike anything else, this book, it's not just art or science,

it meets in the middle. To give you an idea of what it is about, if you

take, and this is Steve, by the way, if I was to grab gizmo and compress

him, there's not much owl in there, it's mainly feathers, so if you

start intellectually plucking these birds, underneath, there are so many

other stories. Take this bittern here. A very talented bittern.

Remember these points. Well, once bitten. Don't give them ideas. It is

doing the sky pointing, you can't see me think. When you look at it

head-on, you can see how man of these things are. I'm doing a good

impression there, but see how narrow the body is -- how mannered these

things are. Other than being narrow, is there anything else going on?

They are narrow so they can squeeze through the reeds without disturbing

the vegetation. They have this interesting thing going on with the

two struts, and in most birds they are joined together like this on the

breast bones, but herons and the bittern overlap so they can

compress. This is interesting, and the heron has one as well. This

bone, this vertebrate, it's a bit longer. It actually joins the other

vertebrae so it meets at more of an angle. That is so it can shoot its

head forward quickly to grab things, like fish. Like a built-in catapult?

You can see as the neck of a snaky bird, but there's more to it. The

neck of the heron always has a kink. This is a work of love. What made

you want to do a book like this? It began when I was an art student, an

undergraduate fine art student. I did pictures of living birds. I felt

it was important to understand the app -- the insides so I could do the

outside is better. I found a dead duck on the beach which I stripped

down layer by layer, and if you're going to spend months grip --

stripping a duck down, you give it a name, and this is a blog dedicated

to Amy. I thought this would be a really good idea for other artist to

produce a book about bird anatomy aimed at normal people and

bird-watchers so they can appreciate the living birds more. We are

dissecting birds, so you don't have to. It is unique. I've never seen

anything like it. Loads of good stuff, great inspiration. Look at

the massive great feat for treading over the reeds. Look at the feet of

the bittern. If any of these things have inspired you, extra talents

that we weren't aware of, thank you very much than that. Right now, all

week, we've been trying to help and inspire you in ways to get involved

with mass participation science projects. We are calling it Citizen

Science. But you have been helping us. I won't mention rabbits

distracting us, but some of you have helped us by watching the nest feeds

and counting your visits and looking at the sort of food coming in. We

are really grateful. Laura, do you have any name checks? David

Sanderson and Brian Goodall. They were up counting this morning. Thank

you very much indeed. The people who appreciate this more than anyone

else are a team of dedicated naturalists, and we are there in the

production village with them now. Not quite in the production village

but we're outside the technical area of the Spring watch village. There

are lovely green and blue ones, and some shiny red ones. Moving quickly

on, we will go into the BT truck, arguably the most important truck on

the whole operation, not just because this is where we do the

online and read about and show, but also because this is where the story

developers live -- red button. The story developers are a vital part of

the operation. URA story developer, Maddie, what do you do? -- you are

a. We have loads of cameras around the sites and we have to keep an eye

on them and we record the ones with the exciting action on so when it

comes to the show the next day, they can put the footage across. The

pressure is on you guys. If you missed something, it won't go to

air. You are logging everything that happens. Exactly. We have to record

the right channels so stuff goes wobbly on the screens. I am on the

night shift, so I have to keep an eye out for the badger action. What

is it like when a badger appears all you get some great wildlife action?

Do you get the surge of an adrenaline? Definitely. On the night

shift there is only two of us but one of us might suddenly see what is

happening and there is pressure to get on the right channel, but then

we can sit back and enjoy it. You got the short straw, the night

shift. I will be here until four in the morning. Well, you are doing a

fantastic job and we love you. On that happy note, we will go back to

Nick in the studio. Easy, made. Easy. Brilliant. Thanks that. --

mate. We have Laura manning the computers and taking the tweeds and

e-mails and we also have Martin, who is very capable, I hasten to add. We

have been sent some fantastic video clips and Martin has not seen them.

Some pretty cool ones. What's the first one? This is called the great

escape by Andy Holden. He filmed it while he was filming fox cubs. What

you have is a bit little -- a beetle wrapped up by a garden spider. There

is a noise that the beetle is making. Futile clicks, but are they

futile? But are they? He has cocoon that cocoon that the spider thought

he had wrapped around him to store him. He has clicked his way out. And

he keeps clicking, and he is out. And it gets better, because the

spider comes back and you can imagine the disappointment. Look

what he does. Or she does, rather. He's gone! Where has it gone? Have

you seen the second Hobbit film? That's exactly what happens. I had

terrible trouble in rehearsals because there was lots of the B in

one sentence. A polluted versus bumblebee in a box. James is 18 and

he has gone to a lot of trouble to get as this clip -- a polluted.

There is a bluetit in a box, not that surprising, but look, there is

a B. Bumblebee. That bumblebee is not happy. It is freaking out. I

thought it was somebody outside with a lawn mower. That is an angry

bumblebee. That is pretty good. We think that is enough. But something

else happens. It carries on, this saga. Watch this. We will go back to

it. The bumblebee is on its back, Sting in the air. It might be trying

to be aggressive, not actually stinging, she is screaming away, and

the bluetit picks it. The bumblebee has had enough, and then the bluetit

does sidestep, and the bumblebee slaps it in the face and flies. That

is from James, and he wanted to know what kind of bumblebee was. It could

be a tree bumblebee who are spreading. They recently arrived in

the UK and I only saw the first one on Dartmoor the year before last,

but it's very recent. We will hopefully keep you posted, because I

want to know what happened. Did the bumblebee comeback, or did the

polluted family takeover? -- the bluetit family. Why do we have a

hornet on the table? One of the audience brought in. Shall we get it

out? See what happens? Here she comes. This is worth a quid. Chris

said it -- he would give you a quid if it's done you. The idea is, well,

Martin, I will leave you here. There we go! Now it will fly off into the

audience and there will be an immediate evacuation. They are not

aggressive at all, she's just very big. I'm going to get on with the

quiz. This is what happens when all of the present is what happens when

all the presenters are in the studios. Mystery objects. Pay

attention. Let's get them the right way up. What do you think that might

be? Any ideas? Anyone in the audience? Leg of a moth. Yes, but

let's look at the clip. There it is. You could look at the legs on the

moth and think it doesn't look like it, but it is the back legs. The

soccer legs. Very good who got -- to anyone who got that. Mystery object.

What do you think it might be? On the face of it, quite easy. Violet

Brown beetle, but I'm not sure about the thorax. It might not be a Violet

Brown. It is a beetle, but those striations make it problematic,

because it's easily confused with the Violet Brown. That is my hunch.

These are fantastic beetles, you can find them in the garden, and they

like slugs in particular, so they are good for the garden. Mystery

number three. Anybody know? The goose grass seed. It is! Goose grass

seed. Also known in my part of the world, as sticky Willy. I can't

imagine why. If you have a wildlife garden, these things grow really

quickly, something like 30 feet in a season. They have just come out of

nowhere. Do we have any more questions, any great questions? The

bittern has unusually low set eyes, so why? It's so they can see their

prey. Many birds have the capacity to look in their own beak, so the

bittern can move eyes in their socket, like the heroine -- Heron,

and they can judge distance to the point where the distance is just

beyond the beak or even inside, so that is why they are able to twist

their eyes like that. When it puts its head up and is doing the reading

thing, it can look underneath its peak to achieve the same thing. Yet

another talent for the bittern. Have we created a boom on THAT twitter?

There's a lot of puns stop but they are pretty bad. Have we got any?

It's mostly once bitten twice shy. Michaela will appreciate this, I was

handed this by Nigel, and look at that. Guess what it is. We are

running out of time. We will tell you next week. Chris, enjoy that for

a moment. We are about to go off air and we are going away to the

weekend, but you should not. The animals are here, the cameras on the

nests. Will there be a fledgling bluetit tomorrow? They should be.

Keep an eye on the bittern as well. We will see you on Monday. Goodbye!