Episode 5 Springwatch Unsprung

Thank you very much. The most exuberant applause we have had all

week. We are not lied tonight. We are honest on Unsprung. We recorded

this on Thursday night for you to enjoy on Friday. We are still at the

RSPB Minsmere with a great audience. What have we been up to this week?

The reserve is full of life. Filled with our cameras. We have been

unpacking all the things we have seen, analysing the behaviour and

the beauty. Have a look at this. It was really chilly. Wet, and

called, and wind. You won't want to miss Springwatch.

This spring looks like it won't disappoint, look at that, hundreds

of thousands of sea birds gathering here from all over the world, in

order to breed. Larry Lamb.

Maggie. Mr Clive Anderson. I've never been

close to a starving before but these are rather nice.

It is good, isn't it? APPLAUSE.

We have a couple of celebrities and stars but the prize goes to the

starling. Tonight we have some really good guests. The first is a

suave, sophisticated polymath who started off wanting to be a wildlife

cameraman, then a vet. He tried as an engineer but ended up in the

fashion business. You know him from The Great British Sewing

Bee, Patrick Grant! It is a pleasure to be here in this

beautiful place. And the best audience, we like

rowdy. Our next guests are celebrating BBC

Music Day, they are twice winners of the Folk Band Of The Year, 2015 and

2016, The Young'uns. APPLAUSE.

We will be hearing from you in a moment.

Lindsey, there we are. What a week, Chile. It has been

really cold, half the country is basking in the sunny weather at 21,

but it has been freezing here. We drew the short straw. Loads of

you have got in touch. Please keep comments, videos and photos coming.

We can't get back to you on air, we are online, go to our website, all

the links are on there. We will be in touch over the weekend.

We have had so much in. The Unsprung team has gone through

it all. This is a personal favourite.

That is pretty good, I like the symmetry. This guillemot has those

eye markings which only a percentage have, making it all together more

striking, almost artificial. Mike McKenzie last night gave us

that amazing picture of the mouse. Both really good pictures. At the

top of the leader Bert -- leaderboard.

Sorry about this if you are eating your tea.

A fascinating piece of behaviour. Slightly worried about that piece of

glass behind it! Finally, this comes with a question,

this toad, sent in by Christine Kerr, she says it has different

coloured eyes, is that common? It is not common at -- in any

animal. It does occur in humans. David Bowie, we sadly lost him he

had different coloured eyes. My sister also. Back on Tuesday to

me you set a challenge on the show, get in touch and draw the stars of

the show, loads of people have. Take a look, I have had loads in.

Aisling is 12, she has been watching a sparrowhawk in its nest.

Unlike the bright yellow eyes, a most striking feature of the bird.

This avocet has been sent in by Abbey, thank you for writing our

address. Finally, Andrew Edginton, a really

special picture committee sketched this from the programme.

Lloyd and his starlings. It is very good actually, indeed.

A very good drawing but take a look when we compare it to a still from

the night we broadcast. It is spot-on. Brilliant. Lloyd can

identify which starling it was from Andrew's drawing.

Top work, Andrew Edginton. He is 12. Pretty good. Something that has been

very popular this week, obviously, the quiz.

Time for the quiz. Hello, I am Melanie, this is my

quiz. On this skull, you can see these

huge and slower routes, then short ones on top.

Front on, the eyes are on the side rather than looking at you. This is

a prey animal. What do you think this skull is?

APPLAUSE. That is hard for tonight. We have

had Badger, Sparrow, fox, this is the most difficult. A few might

know. Don't shout it out yet. We're not so

don't tweet in, just play along at home.

Hope you get it right. Patrick, thank you for coming this evening.

APPLAUSE. You started with a keen interest in

natural as a young lad. As a boy, I spent half my childhood

at Edinburgh zoo, I used to go to the Gannet Club, to handle reptiles,

learn about the brilliant wildlife. I spent a lot of time there. At one

point, my mum thought it was a terrible idea that I would never put

an animal down, if I became a debt. It is part of the job, as we know.

That didn't work out. I grew up with Attenborough, life on

Earth, I spent my childhood reading books on animals, getting out as

much as I could. Circuitously, you have ended up in

the fashion business, and as a judge on it. On the show, the great

British fashion be. These pieces have all to be the size

of the pattern. None of the three you have cut are actually the size.

I have to restart. This is the back, you want the

front. Don't panic.

Very hard not to panic. We didn't mean to make you panic.

Please go. We will! I have a reputation for being

ruthlessly critical when it comes to photography, are you the same with

fashion? I am with Sewing Bee. We have a new

judge who is worse than I am, now I am the nice one. She is Simon Cowell

and I am Louis Walsh. If you watch the week before,

children's baby grows, somebody got pretty much everything they could

get wrong, wrong. Disastrously wrong. It can go pretty bad.

You brought a photo along. Did I? My mum was rooting around, I don't know

what you have got. Oh! Can we zoom in here?

Yes, you can. So, this... Have you seen this? This is I think a perfect

allegory of post modern Britain. The cultural mixing pot. A grey

squirrel, North American. A naan bread from the Indian subcontinent.

A park in Blackburn built with the money of the industrial Victorian

revolution. Everything that is great about

Britain's cultural diversity in one shot!

You may not agree. An interesting as the nation or a very poor excuse!

I was walking back from a factory where I stay in Blackburn. Walking

through the park and I saw a squirrel eating a naan bread. There

we are. It is unusual, have you seen one before?

No. Aside from the park, you like to get into the wild. Someone who is

pick a fight with neat but you like going rustic.

I do. -- Preoccupied. I like going into

the wild where I feel most happy. Work is busy and stressful, London

is hectic. I like to get out and walk, to wild camp. To spend time in

the wild bits of Britain. It pays off. I have had some very

lucky encounters. I was camping wild on the beach, in Paris with my

ex-girlfriend. The sun was setting over the water. It is here. Looking

out over those mountains, on this bit of sure. We were sitting in a

tiny tent that really isn't a two man. The mesh was closed. Two sea

otters walked two feet in front. One of the most exhilarating, just being

that close to those wild animals going about their business. So

enriching, it was great. On that same trip, I was in the water and a

giant Finn around. Obviously, it was a basking shark. We watched it, this

enormous animal. I might be exaggerating slightly, almost the

wit of this studio. A huge animal. You do see so much beautiful nature.

When you are quiet and there, you wake up

You see them quietly going about their business.

Good, it makes you feel good. One habit I have picked up from my

sister is critiquing people's fashion tastes. I apply it to birds.

When I see a kingfisher, I see it as the Saatchi. Bright, colourful, too

colourful. When I see and avocet, I think of

50s Chanel, classic lines. I am with you so far.

We have some more birds and we would like you to apply a similar

approach. Who has the first picture? This is the white crested duck, sent

by Diane. Wearing your granny's hat. Have you seen my granny's hat?

Bit loopy, it looks like Chris, in the 1980s!

Picture number three, brilliant, a hipster bearded tip, looking call.

And, number four, a black throated diver, working the stripes.

Splendid. On the end, two roughs looking stately.

Elizabethan almost. Back Black adder era.

Not on the high street today? Shoes, silk hose, he is magnificent.

What am I supposed to be doing here? Would you go out dressed like that?

I think I would. That is spats, crisply starched shirt front,

evening wear at its finest. Tea at the Ritz.

Here. This hoopoe. Not my cup of tea. A bit

extravagant. There is a certain showy kind of manly pride about his

parents -- his appearance. That is for the younger man.

For those of us in our 40s, we can look back fondly.

Of all of the birds that we have seen which is the top of the fashion

pops? Black throated diver, the height of sophistication. Let's hear

it for the fashionable birds. APPLAUSE

Every guest comes for a challenge. They get sent out with artists

materials and they have to capture what they say. It could be a

landscape or it could be a species. I hated this challenge. I feel

enormous sympathy for the people on Great British Sewing Bee. I'm not

very happy with it. Twist that around so we can see it. You're not

happy with it? Ten minutes. With longer it'd be fine. APPLAUSE

Another three minutes and I'd probably be happy. If we all had

another three minutes, life would be different. It's my duty to mark you

on this. We have our leaderboard, or lose aboard. In our drawn to be wild

contest. This is the most accomplished drawing we have had so

far, no doubt about that. We are still being topped by Jason Singh's

effort here. I'll go here for the draughtsmanship with the robin.

Patrick's in second place here. Happy with that.

It's time for our last Hide Share of the week,

our feature where Chris meets a well-known face in a birdwatching

And, today, he is faced with a real-life Dragon.

Hello. I've got a modest wad here. I'm going to set you a challenge

before we start bird-watching. You need to come up with an idea that I

can buy into or not. In terms of UK conservation. OK. Conversation. How

about we give a bit more land to the struggling wildlife? I'll give you a

couple for that. Just a couple? It's just a start. We got those tufted

ducks. The male on the left is easy to identify because they have got a

black backside. In ducks, it's important that the males are

brightly coloured. The females sit on the eggs and are stuck there for

a month at least. They want to be as camouflaged as possible. You are

into wildlife. You are patron of WWF. Where do these is come from? No

idea. My parents are lovely people but they're not into animals. I have

loved them from an early age. As a child, I had a snail hospital. It

was the only creature I could interact with. Was it successful? Or

did it suffer cutbacks? Stop it! Was there always a waiting list. They

didn't get the service they require. To be fair, I was taking healthy

snails and putting them under a plank and calling it a hospital.

There is a tern looking for fish. What about that? I'm going to pitch

an idea for you. The money is back to you. ?200 of that is mine. What

about roadkill bingo? Right? For the kids in the back of the car. Driving

along, they have a card and on it are a number of things which

unfortunately we see dead on the side of the road. We are noting the

route we are taking and they post it off to a central base where we

analyse the amount of road casualties on different networks

across the UK. I genuinely think that is a brilliant idea. Visit

another thing I'm going to have to do? Black headed

gull. They disturb the mud with their feet to disturb any

invertebrates in there. There are parts of the UK that are not in

marked as valuable land in terms of money but they could be in terms of

diversity and sustainability. On the basis of the fact that you are going

to I a pitch of derelict land, I'm going to give you my money. I'm in.

I've made my investment. I know it is in safe hands.

You know what I'm going to say. Roadkill bingo. My life as an

entrepreneur was about to take off. But, like all good ideas,

it has been done before. Who has heard of roadkill bingo? It

is a citizen science project at the University of Cardiff. They collate

the information and build a map that will hopefully allow us to see where

roadkill is happening the most and allows to do something about it.

Totally deflated. Project Splatter at Cardiff

University. It doesn't have the same ring to it.

But I accept that it wasn't quite an original idea.

You are a folk band who have drawn lots of influence and inspiration

from birdlife in the First World War. We have also drawn inspiration

from a band called roadkill bingo! We've been looking at fantastic to

stories about soldiers who took pets and mascots to the First World War.

We wrote a song with some kids about a dog from Middlesbrough who was

taken to war by seven Brothers, day Wallace brothers. Each of those

brothers who had the dog came home safely. There was a book called

Tommy's Arc. An anthology of fantastic real stories. Beautiful

heartfelt diary entries from soldiers describing in heartbreaking

detail how nature could survive the brutality of the First World War.

I've got one of the diary entries here. I'm going to read a fuse

entrance is. It came from the diary of a private in the First World War,

written in the trenches. Following the geese came

a couple of Lapwing. In a few hours, those same lapwings

might be wheeling over I watched them go by in

scattered pairs, small All journeying in

the same direction. My thoughts went with them

to the level Fens of East Anglia and the north country

mosses I know so well. I was watching the flocks passing

when the leaving sentry appeared. It seemed scarcely possible those

hours had passed. Back once more in the dugout,

I dozed off to sleep. My dreams were of English fields,

horses at work ploughing, APPLAUSE

You can just sensed the yearning to be at home in a place where it was

free and peaceful and nature was going about its business. That was a

piece that inspired you, wasn't it? It was. From that diary entry, it is

such a powerful piece, appropriate for East Anglia where we are at the

moment. Yes, very inspired by that. We've got an extract from the song

now which we canvass and two. # There came a pair of lapwings.

# Flying north towards the sea. # Following the call of spring,

# Where my love waits for me. # My love waits for me. #.

APPLAUSE A great lament therefore what was a

very, very sad thing. Folk band of the year twice in a row. You've been

touring, Australia, Canada. And a UK tour this year? Just completed it.

We are doing lots of festivals this year. It's great to be back in

Suffolk. We love Suffolk. There is a great festival here called Folk

East. We are working with an extraordinary group of young

decisions from across the country called the Aubrey Young musicians.

Breathing new life into fantastic traditional Suffolk songs. All

inspired by one man who was Benjamin Britten's Gardner. When he was

writing Peter Grant, his famous folk opera, he needed a folk song so he

looked in all the library 's and found one in a book. He should have

opened his window and asked his gardener. He didn't know? This man's

name was Bob Hart. His life was like a folk song. He ran away to sea and

fished out of Lowestoft. He served in the First World War and was at

the Somme. He collected songs wherever he went. You're carrying on

the tradition. I hope so. Thank you very much for coming. Before we go,

I'm just going to bring out your artist impression. What we think of

this? APPLAUSE Well, I've got to say. The nice! The

shape of the birds have an element of Picasso about them. Small heads,

big breasts, concentrating on the feminine, voluptuous breast there.

I'm loving it. Top of the charts. Both musically and artistically. It

had to hell because there are three of them.

And, of course, before we go, we need to wrap up the quiz.

Anyone in the audience know what this one was?

I know somebody who will know and she is right here in the audience.

Let me introduce you to Melanie Wilson thank you so much for your

contribution this week. No problem. You have a fantastic collection of

skulls. Tellers about this one. It is a muntjac deer skull. It is a

herbivore, eating grass and plants. Big eyes to look out for predators

behind it, things that might eat it. And these are indicative of the

muntjac. Nicely prepared. I really like the skull. A bit has just

fallen off but, there we are. I like it so much I imagine it on my own

mantelpiece. We've got you a surprise. We are going to give you

an sprung hero award. We think you are worthy of this with a fantastic

interest in skulls. So, here are, Melanie. APPLAUSE

If you go to our website you can get the full track from The Young'uns as

well. Thank you very much. We have had a good evening. Thank you to the

The Young'uns for coming in. Thank you to Louise. Thank you to Patrick.

We will be back on Monday night. We will see you then.