Episode 2 Springwatch

I offer you a redstart. Raise you a barn owl. Surely a Royal flush of

herons will win any hand. Not so fast, my fine friend. I might have

a black-and-white ace up my sleeve. But there's no need to gamble at

all. True. If you want the best of British wildlife, you are in

exactly the right place. Stay tune Hello and welcome to Springwatch.

Coming to you from the beautiful RSPB reserve at Ynys-hir. Just rook

at it. What a fine evening we've got. A bit of sunshine raining down

on the hills behind us there. A bit of geography at the start of the

show. Let's see where we are. Here is a map of the UK. We are in Wales

towards the west central. Zooming in, that's the spot where we are

and here is an aeriel view of the whole of the reserve showing its

rich array of habitats and all of those home to some fantastic

animals. It is. Although we have only done one show so far, the

wildlife has completely taken over our lives. Well, there's one family

in particular, this one, the great spotted woodpecker family. If you

were watching last night, you will have seen two chicks fledge. This

is the third. Did it go? Are there any more? We don't know. We'll be

finding out a bit later in the programme. We've also got some

potentially now great stars for you, stars of Springwatch coming in the

form of one of Britain's most favourite animals, barn owls. Take

a look at these. We have a nestful of birds here and they've been

active over the last few days. so exciting to have barn owls back

on Springwatch. There's been a long time since we have had them live in

the nest, so something for us all really to enjoy over the next few

weeks. Now, we also have one of these. It

is of course a badger set. Mr Packham made a prediction about

this set last night. Was he right or was he wrong? I was a bit

sceptical. Let you know in a few minutes' time. But I can be

absolutely certain that Charlie Hamilton-James has got to grips

with some of Britain's most exciting new mammals up in Scotland.

All right, guys, I'm investigating the first official trial

reintroduction of beavers. We have some cracking stuff lined up for

you tonight so come back to us. We certainly will. Now, let's start

with one of our new families, the great spotted woodpecker. Let's go

great spotted woodpecker. Let's go straight to the nest now. There's

nothing there at all! But... Just teasing us, one of the chicks. Now,

Chris, when we were watching them yesterday, we saw the adult birds

feeding and tempting out these very grown-up looking chicks, two of

them fledged, but we actually have no idea how many chicks are in that

nest. No, we haven't, no. There is a narrow diameter to the hole, only

one chick can get out at a time. There are six, maybe seven out

there. Two came out, another is visible, so there are three, but

could be even more inside. I've got to tell you, it's not a pleasant

place inside that nest. Really? the adults don't remove the foetal

sacks, so you are looking at two weeks potentially of perhaps six

baby wood peckers pooing away. That's not clean, like many of the

nes we've seen so far. So you would think that the chicks would be

absolutely desperate to go out. -- nests. We have had our cameras

fixed on the nests all day. This is what happened earlier. We saw the

two fledglings from yesterday and I'd asked you, Chris, whether the

adults would be able to cope with having chicks in two separate

places. They don't go too far and they make a lot of noise. It's very

easy. That was the second one leading. That was the third bird

leaving, immediately another one's head appeared so we knew there were

four in there. It's almost like a conveyor belt, one goes, the next

pops out. This could run and run because we don't have any idea how

many chicks are in there, you don't know how many chicks are in there,

so keep your eyes on the wood peckers and we'll try and get a

final count at some point later today, tomorrow, who knows. We have

another species though which we met yesterday. For my money, one of the

best looking birds in Britain. It joins us for the summer from Africa.

It's the redstart and here is a view inside one of the nest boxs

with a family of redstarts, six chicks in there, not far off

fledging actually. It's a real shame because we've never had this

species on Springwatch before. It is a shame that we've come in quite

late in their development but we are getting wonderful views of the

adult birds there and great views of just how quickly they develop.

You saw the adult taking out that foetal sack there and how clean the

nest was to contrast it with the conditions inside the woodpecker.

Beautiful male. A stunning bird. Look at the wing flapping going on

here. My goodness. I don't think this one is even trying to fledge.

It's trying to do this, look. It's getting itself into an optimum

position to get the food first. It can see the food coming in the

entrance with its parents so it's hopped up to have the first go at

it. Such extreme confirm tition. They will all successfully fledge,

but it's a case of who gets fattest first to get out -- extreme

competition. That's the nest box you can see against the tree.

Inside, we can see the chicks all looking still quite alert, Chris,

despite the fact it's late in the evening. Yes, it's not that cold

here, quite a few insects still active and the adults have been

visiting many times during the course of an hour. Look how quickly

they've grown. Since yesterday, they've lost all traces of down now

and the flight feathers are getting ever stronger. Could they go

tomorrow? Well, I'm not a gambling man, Kate, but I would say that if

they don't go tomorrow, they'll go Thursday. I think I'm going to put,

yes, Thursday, Thursday. Not a gambling man but I say Thursday.

He's not a gambling man for a jolly good reason. Because yesterday, Mr

Packham made a very wise, considered wildlife prediction.

Look at it. Absolutely derelict. I would never met on a badger turning

up there in a million years... was Mr Packham, our own Mr Packham,

badger expert, talking about our very own badger set. Let's go live

to that badger set now. Martin, I really want you to be with me to

bear witness to this moment. sorry, Chris. There we are live.

Shall we have a look at the other view. Always going to be empty for

a million years. Yes, it is. So, we could obviously have listened to

Chris and gaveen up on the cameras on the set and maybe put the

cameras somewhere else. But something just told us, no, just

leave them be. Good job. Look what happened at 11 o'clock last night.

What do you think this is, Martin? It's a sort of stripey thing isn't

it. Black-and-white?! Could be a fox, stripey fox. A bit squat,

hairy. Tiny bit familiar to me. think it could be...... Wait a

minute. What's this?! It could be a badger!? Has a million years passed

since yesterday to today, have we been in a time warp? Maybe it was a

fluke, maybe not a badger at all. Hang on, a second badger. Entering

a derelict set. There was never going to be any badger activity.

Isn't it great to see? Great to see! Isn't it, Chris?

It really is, yes. I've never ever been so pleased to see any badgers

in all of my life! So, if you would like to continue... What's that?

Humble pie. Just in case he wants a slice. A slice of Humble pie. Can I

make a point about the badgers. quick one? I would suggest the set

isn't terribly busy hence the derelict look to it. These are

probably visiting badgers. The second one looked like a cub, so

they're probably coming from another part of their territory

popping by, the chances of seeing them again are... Well, I'll leave

that out. Whatever he thinks, I would suggest you keep an eye on

the webcams, they keep running until midnight and start again at

4am. I'm going to bet one thing. You won't see a tyrannosaurus Rex

arrive at that badger set in a million years! You've blown it.

Martin's got a quiz for us. Last night's quiz was successful,

reliked it. We'll try another one which is germane to tonight's

programme. It's a sound quiz. Have a listen to this sound, please. And

again. Do you know what that sound is? Get on the website, get on

Twitter and you can get on our Facebook site and tell us what you

think that sound is. I've got to go to another part of the reserve.

Catch up with you down the magic television line. You are not going

to make it. I am, just talk slowly. Egg all over my face and badger

down my trousers, so I'm doing a walk of shame over here. I studied

badgers for five years, you know. There's the buggy and there goes

Kate and the team. Bye, see you in a bit. Drive safely. If you were

watching last night, you will know that we have invited some guest

natralists to be with us. Charlie Hamilton-James joins us today. He's

in Argyleshire in Scotland. Let's zoom in on south-western Scotland.

Right the way in. This is where he is. What I like about this is the

detail. Last night he was here, but we've tracked him and we know he's

here on the side of the lock. He's in pursuit of another mammal,

having a bit more luck than me, I hope, Charlie.

Yes, it's actually raining! Welcome back to the Napdale forest in the

heart of rainy Argyleshire. I came up here with the Springwatch team

to reacquaint the British public with a creature that was once

extinct here, but now is back. It's the beaver. We've joined up with

the Scottish beaver trial team to get to know them again, to get our

hands on one. We even went out and caught one. So, what have we got in

store tonight? Well, we need to film beavers, that's why we are

here, so we have been out, they come out at night, very secretive

and nocturnal, so we've rigged the place with infrared lights and

cameras so we can see what they are doing and they can't see us. We got

a shot of Christian the beaver trying to fell a tree. Now, did he

fell the tree or get squashed by OK, we are picking up where we left

off yesterday, look. Christian, stop. He's been beavering away.

He's listening for creeking. What he doesn't want to happen is, he

doesn't want that tree to fall on him and squash him. Quite a decent

sized tree, this. And it's very Stiltonite, so there's no wind to

assist the felling. He's got to do all the hard work himself. What

he's doing is, he's trying to cut the tree so that it falls into the

water because it's safer and easier for him to have the tree in the

water. He's almost through it, hanging on by a thread. He's got to

be really careful now. Oh, there it goes. Look at the speed of him!

Never seen a beaver move so fast. But the tree missed him, he just

got out the way in time. If you look back, here it goes. Catches

him completely by surprise. Leaps back really fast and then just gets

out of the way as fast as he can into the safety of the water. And

he just gets away with it. But now it's in the perfect position for

him to get in there safely and start eating the leaves in the

water. That's brilliant. It's the first

time anyone's ever filmed a British beaver felling a tree. But, wasn't

very close, we didn't really see what was going on, what was

Christian doing? We didn't really see the physiology of Christian's

jaws, as he cut down that tree. So, we invited along Simon Jones, who's

the project manager of the Scottish Beaver Trial, to go through this

footage and show us exactly what's Simon, we know that beavers chop

trees down. Can you explain to me exactly how they do it? They have

really perfectly designed teeth for cutting wood. Incredible incisors

which the front covers, as you can see, is orange, which is hard

enamel. Behind is a softer den teen. It erodes at a slightly different

rate, so as the beaver bites and chews, the harder eman Elle create

this is natural chisel front on it. And that's sharp isn't it? How is

that working on a tree stump like this, say? The top teeth are used

more as a grip and it's the bottom incisors that do the cutting.

can see all the tree felling is good for Christian, the beef, and

his buddies. But how is it benefitting the trees -- beavers.

That tree doesn't look very benefitted to me? Fair enough, but

we have to remember that millions of years worth of evolution's given

this tree the ability to regenerate. This tree will regrow. In the

process, it's opened up a hole in the canopy which creates a

different habitat for other wildlife that can use these little

coppice areas within the forest. What species will benefit from this

more open woodland habitat? Because there will be higher temperatures

in here, the ininvert grate braits do well. -- invertebrates do well.

This regrowth is important for the birds. It's a temporary woodland

created by beaver coppicing and over time, it will close up again,

but a new glaid will be created somewhere else a they work round

the water's edge -- glaid. -- glade. It might not all be doom and gloom

if you happen to be a tree that's been eaten by a beaver. I hope some

of you at home learn how you can chop a tree down with your teeth if

you don't happen to have a chainsaw or axe handy. Right, once the

beaver's felled his tree, the first thing he wants to do is eat it. We

have some gorgeous intimate close- up shots of them doing exactly that.

Come back to us in a bit and we'll show you them.

Thank you very much, Charlie. Now, I've made it, just, from the studio

to quite the other side of the reserve absolutely spectacular spot

here. This line of oak trees has proved very productive for us. We

have got a buzzard nest which I think we can go to live now. We are

seeing chick and adult, both of them. Lovely. If we go to the end

of the oak trees, you can possibly see a little black dot there at the

end and that is our river cam just inland from that, there is another

camera on a really handsome bird. Let's go to it live. It's the

oystercatcher. One of the adults there. They're brooding two eggs.

We were a bit worried because one of the adults has a limp and we

thought that would make it very easy to be pre-dateed and if that

happened, sadly those eggs would fail, but the good news is, both

adults have been seen on and off that nest all day. But the real

reason that I've made this epic journey is to come and meet up with

Nigel Bean, one of our mini camera team and, you have managed, the

team has managed, to crack a really great first for Springwatch this

year? We have. It's herons just nesting in these oaks over here.

what is it that makes herons and getting cameras on a heron's nest

so challenging? For a start, they're high up, they nest very

early in the season and it would be very easy to disturb them, to turn

up when they're already nesting. So So we've had to go in very early.

How early? Mid-February in this case. Right. I think we got some

footage of you and the team starting to rig this nest. Let's

have a look at that. So you can see a very wintry scene there. Those

blobs up in the tree, are those the heron nests? They are, yes. You can

see the wonderful dummy camera which we put in early on some

camera mounts so that hopefully the birds will get used to them when

they arrive. The birds aren't using this at this stage. You are putting

these cameras in and the birds can come in, see these weird black

blobs and thinking, they're fine, nothing to worry about? Exactly.

And did that little bit of intrigue work? Well, it seems to have.

Yes, we have got them live for the first time, so really pleased.

is brilliant. What did you do? You had to go up and take the dummy

cameras away and replace them with actual cameras? Exactly. Because

we'd done the work, it was simple, we had take the dummies off, run

the cables and let them do their thing. Fingers crossed. So you

think that at this very moment, we could go live to a heronry for the

first time ever on Springwatch? hope so! Well, Chris and Martin,

are you there? Can you see me? We can. Here we are. Let's all

witness this together, let's go live to the heronry. Yeah!

Fantastic. Look at that. What a fantastic sight. Little halos

around them with the light. Beautiful birds. When I heard we

were going to do this, this got me going. Up trees, what are herons

doing up trees? These are a couple of youngsters, the one closest to

you has the devil's hair cut. rock outfits. Looks a tiny bit

familiar, mate! It is, yes, that was me in the '70s and '80s and

'90s. There are 1,300 henonrys in the UK and 13,000 fair pairs of

them. Because they are easy to find and count, always in heronrys, they

were one of the first group of birds that will have been censused

over time, so we have watched the numbers fluctuate. They don't like

hard winters. Let's see what was happening in this very henonry over

the last few months. Here is where it is. You can see it's in this oak

tree. This is a dentry... They started nesting when it was very

much alive because they like to choose trees which provide them

with some shelter. You can see the cameras which are looking at the

birds. They know there is no leaves and the weather we've been having,

it's very, very exposed. Yes and the number of herons nesting here

has gone down over the years. In 2004, there were 12, now there's

only four active nests there. Here is a nest with some young one doing

wing-flapping exercises. We are seeing a lot of wing-flapping

exercises. We have been watching some of the nests can greater

detail. Let's take alike at one that we have stuck our camera into

in the last month or so. Wow, what a view! Here are the chicks. One of

the four chicks. One of them is very small. Yes, the one on the

left. That's typical because they will lay five eggs, up to five eggs,

but the survival rate can be incredibly low, you know, 40% of

those birds might perish. That's not unusual. It's basically the one

that's the largest one gets most of the food, the idea is to get one of

them out of the nest successfully. There's bullying here. They look

like dinosaurs, pteradactyls, fantastic. Stunning. They probably

act them them as well. This is grabbing the beak of the adult to

get it to regurgitate the food into the nest. Here is the adult trying

to avoid being grabbed by the youngsters by holding its beak up.

It's so violent. We don't surely have to go through this? We do,

it's just that when they're teenagers, they're grabbing your

wallet instead. They want to get that adult to regurgitate the

valuable food that it might have flown up to 30 kilometres away to

collect. 30 kilometres? 10-30 kilometres, yes, probably not here

because there is a wide estuary for them to forage over. But if they

are in an isolated henonry, they will fly that far. It's essential

that that food gets to the young. If it were to be regurgitated in a

fracas, it could go over the side, so they want to get the adult to

regurgitate it right there in the cup of the nest so they can grab it.

That's what the beak grabbing is about. So that acts like a bowl.

Then they peck the feathers off the head and it looks shabby, pretty

rough to grow up with. Over the last few weeks, Kate,

Martin and myself have met a great number of fantastic natralists.

Yesterday, we met Mark ef regard, a man who likes his fish. Today I'll

introduce you to an extraordinary lady, Sylvia She wouldon, she lives

in the countryside, where I went to meet her -- Sylvia Sheldon. # Go

wild in the country # Where snakes in the grass

# Are absolutely free... # Those were the days, go wild in the

country where the snakes in the grass are absolutely free. If only

it were true. We only have three species of snake in the UK and

pretty much all are in trouble today I've come to a quiet corner

of the West Midlands to meet a lady who is a true champion of the adder.

The adder is Britain's only venomous snake and has very few

friends among the general public. Yet it's a very secretive snake and

adder bites on humans are rare. Their striking zig-zag patterning

helps them blend into their favourite habitat, but it's also

now being used to help identify individuals. It's as unique to an

adder as a fingerprint is to a human. This remarkable discovery

was one of the insites into the snake's world made by 74-year-old

Sylvia Sheldon. How did you get into adders? I started

photographing them, cutting their heads out and sticking them in this

ancient little book. I was aware that they were very individual.

many do you think you have identified over the years? Hundreds.

Joo they're all different? Yes. I've got to say that this is one of

the most incredible documents I've ever had the privilege to handle. I

was once able to handle some of Darwin's notes and Wallace's

specimens, but this is right up there, it really is. It's so

obviously a fantastic work of natural history. You must never

ever lose this. This must be handed down through generations. It's

absolutely exquisite. Do you have a favourite adder? Years ago, we had

Pawn, followed him for years. ago I had porn but my mother threw

it away. Now it's time for adder mastermind. Oh, yes. Think you know

your adders? I do. That's Marie. Marie is correct. And that is Hue.

And that's broken birch male. Superb. Thank you very much. I'm

going to test you now on punk rock albums. What a slippery customer.

Once upon a time, the singles. done. It's the Jam. Oh, right.

Mod Cons. Well done. Ten out of ten. Surely we are both feeling pretty

smug now. I think we should be. Shall we go and see some snakes?

Yes. It took no time at all for Sylvia to lead me to one of her

study snakes. Yes, this is Marie. Only a young female. Could be a

first breed here. How old is young? Six-and-a-half. If six-and-a-half

is young, how old is old? oldest one we have on the site, I

think he's about 32. I first recognised her in 1984 when she was

mature. Beautiful creature, don't you think? Stunning. Sylvia's

dedication is infectious and it's rubbed off on her grandson and her

close friend Chris. They've joined her in a new project to radio tag

some of the best-known snakes and map their daily movements.

Interpreting the maps is helping reveal much, much more about how

adders use their habitat. So it started under this tree? Yes, went

up here and was mating and combating. This is quite a

traveller, the Marco Polo of adders. This is also a unique opportunity

because we can get underneath the skin of the adder. That's right.

And we charter that course ourselves, can't we. We can. Let's

see what happens. Right. This is remarkable because it's going from

what I would call adder habitat into, look, oak woodland...

woodland, yes. This is the pond here, he crossed over the stream

further up. Yes, this project's given us so much information about

the habitat that adders will use. Really, it's going to help a lot

with manage. -- management in the future, we hope. I hope so.

Sylvia's work and the insight into adder life it's revealing is truly

worthy of geek status, so I struck a deal involving a cup of tea and a

stuffed oodle. You kept your side of the bargain, a fine cup of tea.

Here is mine, the very prestigious geek award, you can make your

acceptance speech now, I'll sit back and enjoy it. Oh, I feel very

privileged to have Mr Scratchy. stoodious one. Very privileged to

have this award. Thank you, Chris. What an amazing lady. She is

absolutely amazing. I couldn't believe... Welcome back. This

reserve is so huge. Wasn't that heronry amazing. Yes, I've been

looking forward to seeing that. How could she have identifyed the

adders from the pictures? I couldn't believe it. To me, every

adder I've met got exactly the same. We didn't fake it, she knows all of

them. I suppose to an adder, me and you will look very similar. Smell

very different. Snakes? Yes, we have reptiles here and here is here.

This is an area just outside the reserve and Lynn zirbgs one of the

wildlife cameramen spotted this -- Lynsey, one of the female cameramen

-- wildlife cameramen spotted this. Surprisingly, one of the birds has

been having a snake bite, or in fact the bite of a snake. This is

the buzzard. Now, they feed a lot on amphibians and have a broad diet.

Occasionally, given the opportunity, they will take snake, not only

grass snakes but also adders too, obviously without being affected by

the vemen. This one is enjoying the grass snake, I'm not sure I'm

enjoying it. Like a noodle. This was like a bonanza. If the snakes

come out in the morning and they're cool, basking in the early sun, the

buzzard sees it, it's an easy catch. That's true. There are other

species which specialise in taking snakes. So the buzzard is actively

hunting, not picking up a dead one, it's actively hunting and nailing

them? Let's go to them live. I wanted to show you something, Chris,

I noticed, just looking at the nest. It's got a lot of new green leaves

in it. They weren't there yesterday. Oak leaves I think. Yes. This is

typical of some raptor species. They decorate their nest with fresh

greenery, not to make them look good, we think it's because the

leaves contain substances which control the parasite population in

their young. So oak leaves here have a lot of what we call tannins,

not very edible for the caterpillars that try and eat the

leaves. Perhaps if they get trampled around the nest, they

release something and that keeps the insects down, that's the theory.

We should try it out here for midges. Let's see and remind

ourselves about that sound, that quiz that we were having. Let's

hear it once again, please. Has anyone been getting us right? Got

any, Becky? Let's have a look. Becky?! Wait a minute. Wrong, lots

of people think a curlew. Kate Derwent on Twitter and Ian on Blog

thinks it's a different species. sounds a bit like a wader. I can

understand why someone went for curlew. Those pipers have that call.

It's an introduced animal and is quite small. We've seen the grass

snakes being eaten by buzzards. Now we'll go over to the eating habits

of the beaver with Charlie Hamilton-James in Scotland. Tell us

about their table manners, mate? Well, haven't got many. Welcome

back to Napdale. We have been filming beavers doing all the

things that they do, chopping down trees, working hard, I think the

phrase is beavering away. But, all of this hard work makes them hungry.

Now, a beaver can get through up to four tonnes of plant material a

year. That's a hell of a lot. That's the difficult of four

Springwatch Land Rovers in food. So, how do they process it all, how do

you deal with four tonnes of leaves and sticks? We got sigh moan Jones

from the Scottish Broofr Triel Scheme back to have a look at the

footage and to explain how they do it -- Scottish Beaver Trial. Simon,

here is the footage we've got. Nice big juicy close-ups for you to look

at. This beaver is looking for aspen leaves. They are really

palatable. Something like an oak leaf which beavers don't like very

much, they have tannins, toxic compounds that plants have evolved

to protect themselves from beefs. So it's like a sweet cup of tea

compared to a builders' cup of tea. So it's the same for beavers as

it's for us. Coming to another area, having a sniff around. There's an

aspen leaf there. This is interesting. You can see, this is

actually the little finger on a beaver acts like a thumb. It allows

the beaver to grip and turn, which is an essential skill for it to be

able to manipulate that closely. So see that little finger has been

used again to grip this branch. Checking it, as it goes, and

nibbling it as it goes. Little twig here. It will nip the twig off,

feeds it into its mouth in one go, like a bread stick effectively.

Sometimes beavers wash the food as well. That's a great shot, it's

nipped it in half and it's effectively got two bread sticks

and it's feeding in bigger stuff. It will strip the bark off. It's

checking along because that's had the bark stripped off it already.

It's made its way to tend of the branch and the beaver will rotate

that branch around, a bit like us eating a corn on the cob or

something, and it will peel the bark off and eat that. Fantastic

footage. Really, really good. Thanks, Simon. I never knew eating

leaves was such a precise art. We have been making it easy for the

beefs here by giving them their favourite food, aspen -- beavers.

But it's not always easy to find food if you're a beaver, but where

there's a will, there's very very often usually a way. Nowadays,

canals are generally just used for pleasure, but in the past, they

were vital for transporting goods all around the country. They were

an extraordinary feat of human engineering. This is the remarkable

feat of beaver engineering. This is a beaver canal. The beavers have

created it to transport goods around their territory. Exactly

what we used to do when we built canals. Now, when you look at these

canals in detail, you realise just how complicated they are. This

looks just like a big pile of sticks, but it's not. It's a mini

dam, essentially a lock gate. It's holding water back here. You can

see there they've built the sides up and created a pool. This is

flooding right back into the forest which is allowing them to go up

into the forest to feed and allowing them safe passage back

down their canal with their cargo. Of all the things that beavers do,

to me personally, this canal building is the most fascinating,

because to have that foresight to be able to manage your landscape

like that in flood areas of forest when you are a massive rodent, I

find quite extraordinary. I'm going to get some camera traps out there

and see if we can get some shots of them actually building their canal

Aren't those canals just a bit cool. We got all the camera traps out,

they're a bit ropey because of the camera trap, but they revealed what

we wanted to see, the beavers using their canals. Now, look at this guy.

He's going up the canal. That's what we want. It's about 8.30 at

night, so it's not quite dark, he's out early because they're usually

nocturnal. He's come up to this dam. I say the dam, this is the big pile

of sticks I showed you earlier. He's inspecting it, checking it's

still intact. If it's not, he's going to fix it. He wants to go up

into the forest beyond into that water above his gate. And there he

goes. Now, looks promising. He's gone into the woods, but is he

going to get a branch and bring it back down the canal. Well, wait and

see. Absolutely extraordinary stuff from

Charlie. I had no idea that beavers were such engineers, high doe

engineers, is that the right word?! Anyway, let's resolve our quiz.

Let's hear the sound once more. OK. Now, on the blog, Craig R got it

right, on Twitter rosy got it right and on Facebook Gill got it right.

It is of course a little owl. Well done.

We'll have a bit of an owl fest tonight. I'm going to start off

with my personal favourite, the little owl.

The little owl really is little. Only about seven inches high.

They're not native to the UK, they were introduced in the 1870s and

1880s and they're visible because they sit on top of telegraph poles

and things, even during daylight. We have been luck you in you have

to catch up with Emily who's doing a research project at Reading

university. What she's doing is, trying to fit cameras into the nest

boxes so we can get a really intimate view of their private

lives, something we have been trying to do for years actually.

And here we are, right inside the nest with a little owl. And so now,

let's catch up with the very latest news and see what's happened.

Now, here is a little owl bringing in food. That's a worm and a vole.

Very Catholic diets. This is interesting. Here is the female.

She's just laid her first egg. How many is she going to lay? She

lays one egg every two days, quite staggered. There's the second. And

now let's have a look. What's she got in there? Three I think, yes.

Four. You can see she's got four in there. She'll start to incubate

them and the male will bring food for her all the time she's

incubating them. Of course, we'll follow the

fortunes of those little owls waul the way through Springwatch for the

next three weeks. Back to Chris and Kate -- owls all the way through.

An owl fest tonight. Time to introduce a new set of stars for

Springwatch, as I mentioned at the top of the show. 200 or 300 metres

away down in the woods there, we have our barn owls nesting. We can

cut to them live now. There they are. You can see the

adult bird is there with a family of four chicks. Looks like the

adult bird has just brought some prey in, perhaps. Some food.

the chicks are feeding. One of them's got it. Probably just about

at the stage where they might be able to swal row that whole. What

you will notice is the one on the right looks significantly big tore

some of the other ones -- swallow. It's not, Chris, because it's the

greediest, is it? No, when she laid her eggs, she started incubating

with the first or second egg, meaning that the last egg that got

laid has longer to wait and it will hatch later. This is a deliberate

ploy. Many birds try to start incubation with the last egg so

they hatch at the same time, particularly if they have to leave

the nest like ducklings. Owls want a staggered set of sizes because

there is a strategy there to make sure that at least one gets out of

the nest. To explain what Chris means, we had exactly that story

played out on Springwatch a few years ago. We had a barn owl family,

it was the last time we had them live in 2007. Originally, there was

seven chicks, two died, so we were left with five, and then

mysteriously, the male bird disappeared. There was quite a lot

of bad weather and the pressure on the female bird to keep feeding

those five chicks just became too much. And so, the survival

mechanism of having smaller chicks in the same brood became very

evident indeed. Have a look at this. This is from 2007 and you can see

one of the bigger chicks, I'm afraid, it looks a little gorey,

but it's eating its siblings, and this one, cies, was the next one to

go -- Chris. Its destiny was to die in the summer time, frankly. It

makes sense, you see, because they've got to get their genes into

next population, meaning they've got to invest in the biggest chick.

It's not unusual. Up to 40% of barn owl chicks in any year, that's a

high year, might get eelten by their siblings. This is actually

relatively common behaviour -- eaten by their siblings. Let's go

back to our barn owls now. We have footage of them feeding, Chris,

they seem at the moment to be doing pretty well to be finding plenty of

prey animals and so we hope that this scenario won't have to play

out again? That's right. We spoke to barn owl expert Colin, he really

knows his barn owls and he said it's likely to be a vole year this

year. Voles go up and down in their numbers. When there are more of

them about, there's more feud for owls. Each one of the chicks will

be after four or five voles an evening. Wow. If there are lots of

voles about, they all get fed and then the sibling infanticide just

isn't playing a major part. Let's hope that doesn't happen. Let's

have another look live at the barn owls. These are going to be a

family that we hope to be able to follow entirely over the three

weeks of the series. While you are enjoying that view, let me say that

we've had a lot of questions on the message board about finding small

chicks, apparently helpless chicks. A moorhen was found by Mo and Suzie

Q has told us about hand-rearing a bluetit. Did they do the right

thing? Well, Martin Hughes-games has been to investigate this common

string conundrum Out for a walk, it's a beautiful

spring day. Suddenly, you hear a rustle in the grass or see

something. This is actually happening and it's happened to me.

It's a baby animal and looks like it needs help. What are you going

to do? You need to think very hard before you decide to pick up a baby

animal. You might not think it, but leaving it alone might be the best

thing to do. I've come to the RSPCA rescue centre in Somerset, to meet

manager Pete and his staff to find out more.

So, Pete, we've come here at probably your busiest time of the

year? Yes, this is definitely the busy season. It's babyboom really

for animals out there, for wildlife. The centres get about a 400%

increase in baby animals coming in at this time ofier. Let me put you

on the spot now. I rode along on my bike and saw a baby rook at the

bottom of the rookry, tiny and I thought, what should I do. What

should I have done? First thing to do is watch and see if the bird is

in danger and if there's no obvious sign of a parent and no nest that

it can be returned to, the best thing to do is to seek advice,

failing that, bring it into us, the best place for it to be. So it's a

matter of watching and making the right decision. If you are unsure,

seek advice from the experts. When it comes to baby birds, if you

spend time observing them, you will probably see the parents come in to

feed them. Some fledgeles will spend two or three days on the

ground before they learn to fly, so they may not have been abandoned at

all. That's something animal nurse Ellie West knows only too well.

They're beautiful. What's happened to these tauny owl chicks?

suspect most should have possibly been left where they were. Because

this is a classic one for the mistake of bringing them in isn't

it because they sit on branches? Yes, they branch. And people think

they've been abandoned but they haven't at all? No, that's the

biggest problem. So there are birds here that really shouldn't be. And

it's worth remembering that whether they need to be here or not, all

these baby birds require a huge amount of work to look after them.

How often will this wren have to be fed? At the moment, every 45

minutes. Different birds need different food, different feeding

times, they're all different, you've got to know exactly what to

give them? That's right. It's very important, so therefore it's not so

easy for a member of the public that's just picked up a baby bird.

How long is a shift? We start add 8am in the morning and finish at

9pm in the evening, but certain things like this little wren

ideally we are probably going to be taking home and start to feed it

about 5am because that's what mum would do. If somebody was to try to

do this at home, they wouldn't have a hope, would they? No, it's a lot

of hard work. Ellie tells me that over 70% of the baby animals they

get here are birds. You will also see baby mammals alone at this time

of year. Again, that's not always a bad sign. Newborn deer fawns are

left in the long grass by their mums for up to eight hours a day.

It's a deliberate strategy to keep them hidden. So deciding if a

fawn's been abandoned is no easy task.

How did he come into you, this little one? He was found by some

members of the public. They heard him crying during the day, they did

the right thing, stood away from it. He was in fact left for 24 hours so

unfortunately he was still crying, a clear indication that something

is wrong, so he was brought into our care.

And you have sadly had an xmpl where things didn't go so well

recently with a deer? Yes, we had a roe deer, probably about a week old,

some members of the public found it and tried to hand feed it

themselves and by the time it got to us, it was severely dehigh

drailted and sadly that one has to be put down because it wasn't a

viable animal -- dehydrated. can see why people do that to help,

but it's an expert job? Yes, it's a huge, huge responsibility. But with

this little one, looks like he'll be all right? He's doing really

well. I know from personal experience just how hard it is if

you find an injured or apparently abandoned baby animal. You just

want to step in there and try to help. But what we found out today

is it's generally better to leave it, just watch the situation,

definitely try to get some advice because by the simple act of

picking it up, you could be doing more harm than good.

Wise words from Martin there. If you are still a bit confused about

anything to do with finding apparently abandoned young animals,

please go to our website. There's lots of information on there.

We've had a fantastic response when it comes to sending in photos. No

less than 48,000 have come in to our site, inClaudeing some baby

animals. I've got some. This is a glorious one, a fox cub taken by

Philip. I love that. This is, I have to say, if you are allowed to

have fauf Ritz, I love this one, this is one of lovely wild boor

taken by Ben -- favourite. Finally, a fluffy wader, a lapwing chick and

it was taken by Julian Sawyer. Thank you very much indeed. I

picked out a few that were great photographs in my opinion. This one

is a turn, taken by Keith, super picture that one. This one, a bit

more interesting than beautiful. These are wasp larvae and were

photographed by Trevor and Dilys. Lastly, how about this for a close-

up view of an orange tip butter flay's head. Keep the photo shots

coming in. Now back to Napdale and to Charlie.

Hi, guys. Welcome back to Napdale. Earlier on, I show yod u my

favourite piece of beaver engineering, the beaver canal --

showed you. We rigged the canal and got some ropey footage of a beaver

going up it. But have a lack at this, this is what happened later.

Now, this is a beaver out on the land, dragging this huge stick,

heaving it across the land, pretty hard work and really, he doesn't

want to be doing that. It's not safe, there are predators out there,

he wants to be in the water. So, back to the canal. Here is a shot

of him using the canal and look, he's heading off down the canal,

it's easy, perfect, back to his lock with his food. That's pretty

amazing stuff. As much as I love beaver canals, some would say it's

not their most impressive thing. Beavers are famous for their

ability to entirely change a landscape. Now, how do they do it?

Look at this! This used to be a forest, but now it's a lake.

The reason is this. This is a beaver dam. It's massive. It's

about 15 metres long. And over here, it's about two metres deep. What's

amazing about it is that this was made by a rodent. It's quite

unbelievable. It's by far the biggest structure I've ever seen an

animal build anywhere in the world. So, how do they do it? How does a

redon't create this monstrosity? I'll show you. It all started here.

Now, this used to be a small Forestry Commission drain. Now,

here is the interesting thing about beavers, when they hear trickling

water, instinct tells them to stop it. They have to block it. So, just

here, they started bunging on big sticks, tree trunks, anything they

could get to block the flow and stop that sound of trickling water.

Then they started adding smaller sticks and leaves and mud and

anything they could get their paws on and behind that grew a pool that

started overflowing, so they made it bigger until they ended up with

this. This is 1.5 football pitches of water. It's held back by these

sticks, these haven't been put here pi people, these have been put here

by beavers holding back this vast wall of mud and dirt and anything

else they can get their hands on -- put here by people. They're still

doing it. This is last night's. I get very excited about this. The

ability of an animal to flood its landscape. But, not everyone's as

excited as I am about it. I went to meet a farmer who had a few more

concerns. Robin, what do you think of

beavers? Not a lot. Beefs do several forms of damage, that being

one. Another being the lagoons they make, each family unit requires

something like a hectare of water. That's a lotment. That's a trainage

ditch, I could visualise a dam going there and in time the water

blowing up and this lovely bluebell wood being skramped and all the

trees here, their roof would be under water and the trees would die,

the roots would be drowned -- swamped. It would be like a

battlefield. Amageddon! I have a lot of low-lying farmland. I spent

my life trying to get rid of water and keep the pasture. The last

thing I need is beavers stopping the water going away. So Robin, do

you think beavers should be released back into Scotland? That's

up to others. I would defend the right of Scottish Wildlife Trust to

release beavers as long as they're held on the land belonging to

Scottish Wildlife Trust. Once they get out and adversely affect

somebody else's land, then that's not so good. This farm has never

had beavers and, as far as I'm concerned, it never will.

So, clearly this is a subject that's being watched by landowners

all across the country who probably have similar concerns to those that

Robin aired there. There may be positives though. It's said that

beavers can help the environment and help other animals and possibly

even help the economy. It's a complex debate and one that we are

going to cover in more detail tomorrow. Join us then.

It is a complex debate isn't it? Fascinating. Can I just interrupt

briefly. I have my copy of Gerald of Wales, his journey through

Wales... Never without it! walked through Wales in 1188, a

long time ago, and he says "the river has another remarkable

peculiarity of all the rivers in Wales, it's the only one where you

can find beavers". They had beavers here, wild beavers here in Wales in

1188. I hope they're back here by 2088, I have to say. Let's go and

do a final check on our lovely redstart family. Let's join them

live now. There are the chicks. Looking very Bonnie indeed. Will

they go tomorrow or will, as Chris predicted... Thursday. He

reckons Thursday. Shall we have a look at the gorgeous herons.

Fantastic. Herons with the setting sun with that hair cut. Terdack

tolls. Wing flapping. You can keep an eye on the characters by going

to the website. That is how you send us your photos and videos and

you can get all the information you need. If you have had your finger

on the pulse, you would have noticed a sad story of 0 tonne

sperm whale washed ashore this morning on Redcar beach. Tomorrow,

we are also investigating a stranding of our own where we delve

into the physiology of these remarkable animals. We'll also be

looking at beautiful, British butterflies and how they're faring

this year. We'll be going up and looking into the world of the barn

owl. Yes, loots to look forward to. Now, don't forget, 7.30 tomorrow