Episode 11 Springwatch Unsprung

APPLAUSE Thank you very much indeed, thank

you. Hello and welcome to Springwatch

Unsprung, coming to you from the fabulous damp Minsmere. A lovely

audience into night. They have all forsaken the European Championship,

where I understand Ireland are winning 1-0 at the moment. We might

be doing live TV but we are checking up on what's going on all the time,

which is what we do at Minsmere. We have 29 live cameras and through the

course of the weekend we have been watching lots of interesting stuff.

More than 5500 different species of animal, a top place for us to be. It

is 1-1 apparently, they have equalised. Sorry, just had to bring

it to you. I am Chris Packham and we are here for the next half-hour not

just to enjoy the wildlife but people who interact with wildlife.

On that account we have guests who come and join us in the studio.

Our first guest is a singer-songwriter,

a founding member of the Welsh rock group Catatonia, who has found

a place to enjoy the dawn chorus amongst the hullaballo of London,

Our next guest was taken out to the north Kent marshes on the island

Sheppey is the young man with his brothers, by his dad to be

introduced to wildlife, and thankfully it start because he still

goes there today but now he takes his nephew with him, because he is a

champion when it comes to rewiring the child. I say a champion, is also

the captain of the wheelchair rugby team, British Paralympian, Steve

Brown. APPLAUSE Hello. Busy weekend. Busy weekend?

Yes, especially on our live cameras. The wagtails attached, but the most

important thing happened over the weekend... Yes, our little great

tip. One left in the nest, what's he going to make it out? He made out of

the nest box and if you want to see what happened to him, you have to

watch the show. -- greattit. We had so many messages about it.

And Catherine summed up by saying well done to the greattit mum. I am

thinking there was a healthy family of jays out there. Fledging is

adding all over the country, not just in Minsmere. We have had some

great pictures. This is a real cutie. This is super cute, Chris. A

super cute young bird. It's just the blade of grass on the right. Moving

on, the great crested grebe. That is a treat to see that, riding on the

back of the adult. Jamie sent this one in, I love this. It says little

owl, no matter how tall you stand you are still a French. If I do

it... Do keep watching those on our live cameras. I promise you in at

eight o'clock programme tonight we have plenty more. Please keep

sending your pictures, comments. It's so easy, here's how. It has

never been easier to get in touch with us on Unsprung. Where ever you

are, if you use a phone, laptop or tablet. The easiest way to find us

is go online and be friends on social media. Like us on Facebook

and you can post comments and to our wall. Can't follow us on Instagram

and had us into your photographs or tweet us using #Springwatch. And

don't worry, if you can't remember all of this, it is explained on our

website. So easy to get in touch, please do keep doing it. All the

stuff you are sending is great. If you're a member on Friday we had

Martin Corry on the sofa talking about his two-minute beach clean.

Did you do one this weekend? Yes, in the kitchen after the poodle. It

took more than two minutes. I headed out to the beach here and loads of

you did as well. Have a look at this picture. This is fabulous, in

Blackpool from the Sea life Centre. They collected 209. That beach is

spotless! Spotless. They collected 209 kilograms of rubbish. And we had

this picture from Laura of her out on Southsea beach. A lovely clean

beach. Well done. Top work, I promise to be out next weekend with

the poodle is. Good, we will check. Now it is time for our quiz. Today

we have a whole team of naturalists talking about your favourite

subject, poo. Take it away. We are the RSPB young wardens and this is

our quiz for you. This poo 's round. Out in the open. Light in colour,

showing its different ages. Whose is that? APPLAUSE

Loses that? I love to see young people focusing on the most

important things in life! Please send your answers, you can do it

from now, you have about 25 minutes. Moving onto our first gas, Cerys,

thank you for coming in. -- our first guest. Earlier this spring we

tempted you into the natural world with some dawn chorus. Was that a

tough call? I think sometimes the sound of nature is the best you can

get. I interviewed Neil Young's this week and I said, what I like to ask

my guess, what do you listen to on a Sunday? He said, I like to listen to

birdsong. I think that is quite apt. Neil young? I like that very much.

That is the best piece of name-dropping we have had so far! I

interviewed Neil John and he likes birdsong. We have a clip of the

piece you used. -- meal Young. We had a Nightingale and that really

deep one, which was amazing, a bit. There is no instrument that can do

that? We were saying it sounds like a dinosaur or something. The reason

may produce that deep sound so it travels right the way through the

reeds. A male bird communicating to the others. I said to someone it

sounded like my phone going off because it didn't sound like

anything else. We have had a question on that, asking if female

bitons do it at all. No, just the males. That is how we can count

them. Although they sound the same to us, if we were caught the man

looked at the sonograms we can tell the difference. Six Music. Frankly

it is the place to go. I like it because I am into indie music. It

must be great fun? I play music from all genres. I absolutely love

recordings from the very first recording of a human voice, an

extraordinarily enough the scientists have discovered how to do

that, but they didn't discover how to play the recording once he had

made it. I played recordings from that early on to new releases, from

all over the world. It is quite surprisingly it recordings have the

sound of animals on them. I love Field recordings as well. There is

an album I love to play which was recorded on a rough top and you can

hear a goat. It is gorgeous. We don't just play indie. You are also

very passionate about recording and championing Welsh culture as well.

More recently you have been looking at Welsh folk songs, is that right?

I have been collecting traditional songs from all over the world since

I was a young child in my bedroom. It is full of plants as well. People

ask, are you a cat or dog person? I way say, I like plants. Give me

plants any day. He got into them when you were young. This is an

onion skin. If you show your children when they were young

something under a slide... This is how it opened up to me. I started

growing plants and then someone gave me a book called Wild food, with the

foraging expert, in the 80s. It became like the Bible to me, along

with my Irish traditional song book. It taught you how to go into the

woods and instead of just playing with broken prams or rubbish people

left, you knew how to get metals and make soup with that. You knew about

the mushrooms. It opened up the entire will world. Here we have some

other plants we photographed. View our -- you are keen to champion the

underdog. Maybe I was bored in school or something. If you go round

the stone walls you would see little moss growing, if you go up to them,

it is like you're on an alien landscape. I find them fascinating.

These are some of the Hardy structured ones. Very long-lived.

Some lichens can live for thousands of years. No! Yes. They had some

kept in the dry and dark and they take them out and add water to the

man they literally come back to life and will reproduce. I love that. I

am coming back as a lichen. Tell me a bit about the festival. It is

about getting people in touch with the outdoors again? It is, it's

called The Good Life Experience and near Chester every September. I

wanted to make a platform for children and adults alike to get

together, away from their screens and go wild in the countryside in a

safe area. That is the whiskey shack in the woods. During the day you

will have the kids doing Bush craft. Being able to play with fire in a

safe environment, whittling, making bows and arrows, getting to know

nature. We don't have enough chance in modern life with work and school

and everything to go out and explore and to get to know the great

outdoors. Is there a mobile phone or tablet band? I'm not into rules,

they won't be banned, but it is getting the balance. We have a DJ,

John Cooper Clarke is coming. A musical side to it as well. Culture

and the great outdoors. Passionate people and people who are furious

about the world around them, all in a field. And it is small, if you

have never been to a festival before it is very welcoming. It is like an

agricultural show with craft beer. I want to see John Cooper Clarke doing

some whittling. He has been whittling away for years. He's

brilliant. He is. All the guests to come on the show are faced with a

challenge, it is called Brawn to be wild. They are given ten minutes on

a range of artists materials... LAUGHTER

They can go out and they have to represent something, it could be the

landscape or anything they like, a species they encounter. Cerys, show

me, I'm looking down at it here. It is pretty wild. I mentioned this

earlier on, it is a favourite of mine. It is about what you can learn

from nature. I'm scared! It's not my strong point now, Chris.

Hold on. Let's have a look. What have we got here? It might fall off.

It might fall off. So we have weapons of mass destruction- No

instruction. Instruction. Then you've got a couple of stinging

nettles there and then you have Chad, the ancient Chad - If you're

from the '80s, you'll recognise him. Yes, peeping over the wall. Here we

are. What does everybody think? APPLAUSE. Right. I like stinging

nettles very much. I am a great fan of the nettle, actually. I am too.

Yeah, yeah, I like stinging nettles, fascinating plants, interesting,

lots of uses, make rope out of them. Also, nature is the best artist. I

have put it in the centre of the frame, see? Nature. Yes. Yes. OK!

Extensive lobbying going on. But I mean, yeah, they are - they're

phenoplastic. That's what I like about them. They can change their

shape depending on where they're growing to catch more light. Really?

And they're delicious in soup. They are. They like being high up. If

only your art were like that - it could change shape to be better than

some of the others. Come on! I tell you what, I like the nettles. It's

the message. It's a bit like the nature table. I am liking that. I am

going near the table. Oh! I'm with the audience with this one. That

should go higher. There you go. If you were with us last week, you'll

have seen Chris out in a bird hide with famous faces from Nicky Chapman

to al. He has his finger on the bird-watching pulse and it's time

for Hide Share to beat again. Hello, Chris. Hey! How are you doing? Come

in. Nice to meet you. And you. Have a seat. Got some bins for you.

Perfect. We're set up for some birding. I have my JLS lunchbox.

Wow. And here you are in mannequin form. That's a good likeness.

Haven't got the hair right. I know. Before we start, what was it like?

Being with The Voice? Yeah, because honestly, you went from no-where to

everywhere fast and sold millions of albums. It must have been a roller

coaster like nothing else. It was. It was incredible. We worked very,

very, very, very hard. For us, we were just prepared. Rerp ready. We

had been working towards hopefully making it, and you know, as you

know, that was our big break, and we took the opportunity with both

hands. Look. We got some tufted duck. That's a pair. These two here

- I see them. And a black-headed gull there, summer plumage. I see

it. They named it incorrectly. We should see lapwing out here as well.

It's a great place to sit and chill and watch, you know? Absolutely.

But you've gone all rural. Yeah. You have gone from the studio and the

stadium into a farm in Kent. Yeah, yeah. A bit of a nature cure for you

before you're back to the chaos. You have your deal? You signed -

Absolutely. We get badges out there. We have a vast array of bird species

as well. It's an incredible place. One of the things I have learnt on

my farming journey is obviously farming, as you say, is one thing.

Intensification can actually ruin some of the natural habitats for

some of the species that we - are wild. And for me, it's really a case

of trying to balance the two. Must be good, though, for your youngster

growing up on a farm. Absolutely. I have found that kids love being

outdoors, and in fact, it helps them to learn more because they've just

got natural questions. Even if they don't particularly like birds. They

might like something else that's in the water or they might like the

cattle or what's growing on the ground. There's always different

things that can pique their interest. If they don't have

exposure to that, it is restrictive for them. You have to get into

birding, though. I am trying to. There is a lapwing. See on the bank?

I almost knocked you out the window. I think I can... See on the bank.

He's just facing left with a crest on top of its head? Oh, yeah. Got

it? Yeah, yeah. What a bird. Look at that. It's a super-looking thing.

It's amazing when you take the time to sit and watch what you can see. I

want to know - do you always take your JLS lunchbox when you go

birding? It's always with me! As important as the binoculars? You

want to know what I keep in it! I am not sure I do. Speaking of chart

toppers. If you remember, the first week I showed you this picture here

by Mike McKenzie. You gave that a nine out of ten. A nine? I must have

been feeling very, very good. I never do nines. I have set myself a

personal challenge to show you a photo every day to try to beat that

nine with. Here is my photo for today. Mmm. I say. Yes, ding-dong!

LAUGHTER. I mean, it's quite good. It's quite good. Do you know? I'm

going to give it - Wait. Wait. Because I just need to add to it

that was the Dawn Chorus and it's a meadow pipette, so it's one for

Cerys as well, so it's themed. OK. The sun wasn't exactly centrally

behind... I knew you would say that. If the photographer had just tiptoed

up and gone a little bit to the left like that, it would have been there,

so I am going to mark it down on that account to 6.1.

BOOING BOOING. I'm going to keep trying. Please

send them in. Look. It's that just... Move on, Chris. Move on. Is

all it needs to do. Go on. Off you go. OK. Steve.

Thank you very much for coming in. I get so much grief for being so harsh

on the art and the photography, honestly, honestly. Can we start

with wheelchair rugby? Is it as rough as the real thing? Well,

wheelchair rugby is the same as any sport, Chris. It's a full-contact

wheelchair sport. It's the only full contact wheelchair sport there is. I

go around knocking people out of wheelchairs. If I don't, they'll

knock me out of mine. Don't go around knocking people out of

wheelchairs! But that's the way we play the game. That's how we tackle.

We score tries end to end, and we cross the line with with the ball.

That's our try. It all sounds quite simple until you remember the amount

of collisions and knocks that are involved in the game. You're missing

out on Rio because you hurt your thumb? Yeah, it's crazy. I was

introduced to the sport we start playing 11 years ago after I fell

off a balcony and broke my neck. That's how I ended up getting into

the sport. Over time I went from playing at club level, then part of

the GB squad then captain at London 2012. We finished fifth. There I

have been looking for a place at Rio. Unfortunately at Christmas I

dislocated my thumb. Playing rugby? Yeah, you break your neck and you're

in. Break your thumb, and you're out.

LAUGHTER. But that's what happened. But unfortunately, at Christmas, it

meant that the time I had off meant I was too far behind the curve to be

my best at Rio. Nobody wants to do something like that not at their

best. What about wildlife though? It's a massive part of your life,

from the time you were a kid and your father was taking you and your

brothers out on Isle of Sheppey? Yes, I feel spoilt. I am fortunate I

have three fantastic brothers and my dad ingrained it into us from an

early age about going out and exploring the countryside. Sometimes

it felt a bit of a chore but the truth is now I realise how much I

loved it. I was lucky, I lived on the edge of town. I came in the

backdoor, took my tie off with one hand whilst reaching into the

biscuit barrel with the other and walked straight out the door to the

fields. As far as you could see it was fields. Those were the days.

Yeah, yeah! We have a clip here. This is - we had in our week one

series. If anyone missed this, this is you out now on the Isle of

Sheppey. I have three nephews, and these oldest of the three. Wow! What

is it? What do you think them might be? Is it very, very big? ? Spending

time with Louis and watching him looking at the birds are the same

sort of memories I have of me when I was his age and almost reliving it

in terms of what my dad was doing with me. If he got even a little bit

of what I got out of today, then I feel like I've done my bit for him.

APPLAUSE. The wild as a child is really

important, isn't it? It is. The same as I learnt from being out in the

countryside and in nature courtesy of my dad, I try to pass on that for

my nephew now and my others as well, taking them out, getting them

exploring and being away from indoors. They love it. They go past

their toys to the bird books to go sit in the conservatory to drag me

or my grand -- their Grandad, my dad by the hand to go explore. It's not

just about getting out there to look at the birds. I use it to help them

with their numbers and their English and those kinds of things. We sit

there with a pen and paper and write down how many we have seen. We use

it to do a lot more than just teach about the countryside. We have had

loads of people getting in touch with us about 30 Days Wild. This was

sent in by Chloe Alina of a nature trail she's mowed in her own

orchard, which is fab. This is extraordinary - it's a picture of a

young woman leading a young man down the garden path!

APPLAUSE. The guys that are in here as well, they have done a litter

pick today as well, so lots of young people are getting involved. Thank

you very much for coming in. It's really inspiring. Good luck with

your nephews. Thank you. We need them to replace one of us, either

me, Lindsay or Martin or Mikhailla. It's important to get people out

into that environment, but now it's crunch time, mate. Oh. I have been

very lenient today. I hope that leniency continues, Chris. OK. So

we've gone here for a representation of one of the birds that is very

easily seen here, very colourful. It's bold. It's big. It's brash. It

is the war hole - actually, the Warhol of the art we have seen so

far. The beak and its anatomical accuracy is perhaps questionable. I

- do you think, I kind of like it, and yeah - Love it, Chris!

LAUGHTER. I think I'm going to have to go mid table again. I'm going mid

table down here. Going mid table... Higher! Higher? No, no. I'm the

judge. LAUGHTER. You should all shout

lower, then he might disagree. You never know. In your honour tonight I

have had a flick through our fabulous pictures and tried to find

some rugby-themed ones which of course we have. Have a look at this

fab picture. That is black cap trying to steal fish away from a

puffin there. Obviously it's headed for the try line and you have a side

tackle coming in there. It is that way. Have a look at this video. This

is brilliant. Just watch it to begin with.

This is by Sue Wheldan. She filmed these hedgehogs yesterday, and

scrum. It's a hedgehog scrum. You wouldn't want to be involved, would

you, to be honest with you? Hope you have enjoyed those. Let's resolve

the quiz. Resolve the quiz. Earlier we showed you this picture and asked

whose poo this is? We have put it out there. Here it is. We have had

several different things in. This is the poo of a rabbit.

APPLAUSE. A rabbit. Well done. We have some

rabbit poo here. We have the real thing here. Look at this. This is

good stuff, absolutely good stuff. There is a little bit of this for

you there. Look at that you can take that home with you, yeah? Take that

home. That's very good for you, and the young man over there. You have

to have some. Just pop your hand up in the audience if you got rabbit

poo? Did anyone get it right? Lots of you got it online as well, thanks

for sending your answer to hashtag Springwatch. Thank you for bringing

in the poo. Not at all. That's my job! Rabbits have two different

types of poor, they produce some poo they re-eat. This isn't it. Don't

try to eat this at home ever. It won't do any good. All the goodness

has been removed by the rabbit so far. They use this to mark their

territory and not much else. Amazing. Finally, where is your

picture? Where is it gone? Is it better than the two we have had

tonight? That's pretty good. I am loving this, sparrow hawk tree,

sparrow hark ber. Black birds - I can't see that what is this meant to

be? Our studio? Our house. Your house, well done, you. It looks like

a nice house. Would you put it on the market - I wouldn't use this as

a representation. Someone take a photograph! Thank you very much for

joining us this evening. Cerys and Steve, thank you very much for

coming in. who want to show us how good they

are in the kitchen. Many of them can sing, dance, act.

We don't care about that. What we care about is

whether they can cook. That's raw meat. I want to learn

how to cook an ice cream. There will be shocks...

It looks horrible... ..and surprises.

..but it tastes great.