Episode 4 Springwatch

What are we going to do tonight, then? Well, we could start with a

red start. We could catch up with a flycatcher. We could go with a dip

-- for a dip in the river. Hello, welcome to Springwatch. It's

the last of our programmes in the first week, coming to you live from

the RSPB reserve in Wales. We've had a fantastically warm day today.

Some of you might know, I'm in the a man for predictions, I'm thinking

along the lines of an Indian summer. I'm keeping quiet. Whatever, we

have real wildlife in real time. A great show tonight. We really V we

said we might start with red starts, so why don't we. If you were

watching yesterday two of our six chicks fledged the nest. What has

happened to the other four? By this beautiful water fall, magnificent,

who would live in a nest like this? If you've been looking at our

cameras online today, you might have noticed that our barn owls

have had a tough one. It's been so hot. They've been panting away and

one of the youngsters has been struggling.

Without further ado, let's head up to Scotland and to Charlie. Welcome

back to Knapdale, home of the Scottish beaver trial. Tonight,

it's the night, we're sticking our necks out tonight. We're going to

try to bring you live pictures of live beavers on this loch. It's a

bit of a Mission Impossible. But we have gorgeous footage, that we've

been shooting over the last couple of weeks. Stay tuned.

Our lovely little red start family, what has happened to them? Let's

get the full story. Let's go live get the full story. Let's go live

to the nest first of all. Outside all is quiet. Inside it's totally

quiet. Nobody is there. They've all gone. Now last night, while we were

doing Unsprung, the programme after the main show, we took our eyes off

the ball and something happened. Luckily the story developers were

watching and this is the full story. We saw two had pledged and at 9pm

last night, just before the third one made his escape. There he is,

going and it's away. I was surprised about that. I thought he

might have ht night, a comfy night in there. He didn't, he went. In

the morning, the third one went at 6.02 then 8.10 and then at 9.20am,

needed a bit of edge couragement. Mum gave a bit of food. He had a

final poo there. Our last little chick and there he was waiting, is

he going to go? And he was away. Now the parents, there's dad coming

back to make sure everything is all right. Now the parents' work

doesn't finish there. They'll continue to feed the chicks outside.

There they R clever cameraman to catch this. Here's one in the grass,

which may not be quiet the safeest place to be.

There's quite a lot of tension for the parents. They want to stop

feeding those chicks as soon as they can and strt a second brood.

Just think, those little chicks, relatively soon will fly away from

here, 5,000 kilometres, back to Africa. Absolutely incredible. But,

those story developers that got those pictures, who are they? Where

are they? I'm about to find out. Join me later.

Kate? What? I don't like a baby receipt startd on the ground. I

tell you something though, much of what we know about the behaviour

and ecology of red starts was found out by John Buxton. He discover

today while he was in a POW camp in Bavaria. He wrote this amongst his

notes, "One of the chief joys of watching these birds in prison, was

that they inhanted another world than I. They lived wholey and

enviablely to themselves, unconcerned in our fatuous politics,

without the limitations imposed by our knowledge. They lived only in

the moment, without foresight and with memory only of things of

immediate practical concern to them." What an incredible sentiment,

whain cred insight. That's made the hairs on the back of my neck stand

up. That guy is in prison and enjoying freedom that he saw in

those beautiful birds. He wrote a book afterwards, the New Naturalist.

We owe what we know about these birds to him. Thanks to our red

starts, a first for Springwatch. They have kept us going beautifully

through yot the first week. Now let's meet a bird that will be with

us maybe until the end of the series. There's their box, in the

woods by the studio. Let's go inside. There she is. She is a pied

flycatcher. We introduced you to her yesterday. If you missed it,

she's sitting on four chicks. She did lay six eggs, but only four of

them hatched. The chicks are doing well. Lovely stretch there. She's

such a pretty bird. She's been working extremely hard today,

feeding up these chicks as we caught on camera earlier. Amazing

energy, this bird was in and out, in and out all day. And a great

range of prey. You might think she's only catching flies or flying

insects, no beetles, grubz of many kinds much here she's given a chick

the caterpillar. It's stuck to his beak. She's trying to get that

caterpillar out and trying to refeed it. Her instincts are

telling her to get it into the gape, to get it swallowed, not left on

the side. That's point of the gape, that great yellow gawping hole is

like a target for them. Exactly that. Each species has a different

gape, some of them with strong patterning inside their mouths to

say, hit this mark. What we have noticed today is that the female

seems to be doing all the work. The male has been suspiciously absent.

Well, he has. Over the last few days we've hardly seen him at all.

He came back a few times at all. He has a mouthful of food, you think

he's going to give it to the chicks and he leaves. Then he comes back

and arrives back to the female. She's displaying to him. Is that

flirting or defensive I think defensive You think he's her mate?

He must be, to go to the nest and go into it. Later, he arrives at

the nest. She's not. There he goes in. Once again, he doesn't take the

opportunity to feed them. She ariefdz back. He then panics,

starts fluttering around in the nest. Like he's being caught in the

act. He's not feeding them. He's not feeding them. He jumped up in

the corner and she comes in. Her instinct is she's got food and has

to get it into their mouths. She is perplexed by the fact that he's

putting her in an embarrassing position. He's in the wardrobe. She

takes a peck at him. He then flies out and leaves her to dot rest of

the stuff. It is very, very strange behaviour or is it? If you keep an

eye on these pied flycatchers over the weekend, and you can do that by

looking at our webcams, you may see a pattern emerging. Don't you

think? When your female pied catcher love

will never do what you want it to. This is an example now, I'm going

to say this now, so they can't cut out the science next week, there's

going to be geekery, polytear er to -- polyterer to. Now I have a

teaser to pose to you while the show is going on. Have a look at

this extraordinary photograph sent by JEL1969, I don't know if that's

a girl or boy. They live n in chat nam Kent. Our question is, what is

this photograph of? Get in touch via Twitter, our Facebook face or

viate website. We will be giving you some of your answers right and

wrong later in the programme. give a clue? No, it's too early.

Soy couldn't say that they're floating on water? Sorry. Every

week we're very lucky to be joined by a guest naturalist. This week

it's been Charlie Hamilton-James, who's been up here in Scotland. If

we zoom in, we can see exactly where he is. He's at Knapdale. He's

been here at the top of the loch. Then we cracked him down here. This

time he's off the map. What is it, pub, tearoom or Charlie or are you

on Beaver Patrol? Welcome back, guys. We're still in

Knapdale, home of the Scottish beaver trial. We're trying to bring

you tonight a first live shots, ever, of wild beavers in Britain.

Now, we're not having much luck so far. I think they're probably still

in bed. But, over there, in the marshes lushes specialist wildlife

cameraman oon. He has a great, big long lens and he's pointing at the

beaver lodge. That's why the beavers live. Most of the day they

sleep. They sleep in their lodges and come out at night. This is

where they breed. This year we're hoping they will have kids. That is

what the Scottish beaver trial is all about. As we haven't got any

live beavers to show you, at the moment, I thought we'd show you a

piece from the other day. I went out with the Scottish beaver trial

to see just how hot a beaver can environments. They don't really

have modern clothing like to us keep warm. Their fur has to do the

job for them. It's incredibly well insulated. Tonight, I've come out

with a thermal camera to see if we can look at one. Because what this

does is it looks at the heat coming off things. Now, we have got more

of the beaver team there. We will throw the thermal camera on them

and say, can you take your hats off please? Look at that. Now that head

is glowing bright yellow, a lot of heat coming off that. The rest is

blue, where the coat is, which is well insulated. This is exactly

what we're trying to do with the beaver. We're going to see where

the hot spots r, where the heat's coming off, but also where the

darker spots r, which bits of the beaver are most well insulated.

All we've got to do is find a beaver.

The guys have just flashed their torch in the darkness, which means

they've got a beaver. We're racing over there, literally amph, to see

if we can get there. -- literally onemph, to see if we can get there.

That's the back of his tail there? Yes, that's the back. He's coming

right past us. The head is a lot hotter than I would have thought.

What do you think? It's really bright. It really stands out. It's

really exciting seeing that white and red shape moving along.

What we really want is this beaver to get out on the bank. At the

moment we're just seeing the back and top of his head. She seems

quite relaxed F we keep our distance she might come out onto

the land. She's coming out. You can see most

of the heat is coming off the back. It's bright white. That's where

it's less dense hair wise. They're more dense on the fronts of their

bodies. Having dense fur on its belly makes a lot of sense. This is

the area its body that spends a lot of time in cold water and needs to

hold in heat. The tail's red. It's not putting out as much heat as its

back. That's weird, though, because it hasn't got any hair on it.

a big layer of fat really. It's quite well insulated. Sometimes you

see beavers largely sit on their tails just to keep their feet that

wee bit warmer. It's not too cold tonight. She's probably quite

comfortable. She's out feeding, so we'll leave her alone. Leave her to

Give her the night off from the weird camera crews with weird

cameras. I have to admit, I was surprised.

With all that thick fur, the beavers would be more well

insulated than that and put out less heat. I suppose if you think

about it, beavers generally live in very cold places, like Canada and

Norway, which are much colder than here in Scotland, where actually

it's very warm at the moment. Maybe the beavers are trying to dump heat,

maybe they're getting too hot. I don't know. I'm still waiting to

see a live beaver. I'm not seeing anything. I'm seeing lake, forest,

camera crew, but the beavers still sleeping.

Come back to me. I'm sure we'll find you one.

Thank you Charlie. I have to say, you've set yourself a tough task,

live beaver. Look at this, we've come from our studio over there,

about almost three quarters of a kilometre to the estuary. It's a

wonderful evening down here. What a picturesque landscape we've got.

First time I've been up here. It's absolutely stunning. At the top of

the programme we teased you with a new nest. Well time to reveal all.

Firstly, here it is. It's difficult to identify. But its habitat might

give it away, rushing, fast moving Welsh stream. It's a species which

like that's sort of habitat a lot. Now, of course, you find a nest

like that, well that's challenge number one, sorted, but then, if

you're a wildlife cameraman, you want to get a camera on it. For

Lynsey McCree that was something of now bring you pictures from that

nest, but first, this is the bird who made it. This is, of course, a

dipper, dipping beautifully for us. That is why it has its name. It is.

It's one of a group of birds, like the wagtails, even the sandpipers

do this bobbing. This is what it's all about. This is lovely. We're

not sure how many chicks are in the nest or how old they are. We've

seen three chicks, you can see clearly there. But we're not sure

how long it is going to be before they fledge. They look quite well

developed. I think they do. They typically have a couple of ear

tufts of down. You saw a wisp on one of their heads. Once they lose

those it's not long before they think of jumping out of the nest.

That's going to be a perilous journey. They are perched above

that river. Can they swim? Will they drown? Where do they go?

will bob about, but not in the rushing currents. These animals

have to jump out of there and deal with the force of nature. The first

flight is going to be critical. They need to clear the water and

land on some stones and bolders, where they can be attended by the

parents. Yes, first flight, given that there's little room for wing

exercising in the domed nest that they've made there, it will be

critical. At the end of the day, this species has evofld to be able

to dole with that. I'm pretty confident about that.

Sadly that camera isn't connected to the internet. You won't be able

to keep an eye on them. You can be absolutely assured that our

wildlife cameramen will. We will bring you news of those lovely

little birds on Monday. We've had a lot of fledging this week. I'm sure

you have fledglings in your gardens or local parks. These are some of

the ones we found here. Long tailed tits up here. Gorgeous.

Adorable. We have a treecreeper as well. No, wagtail. That's just on

the wall where the oyster catchers nested. Here's a treecreeper.

Nipping up the tree. Of course, there's a tremendous noise here at

the moment. Can I hear it, at this moment, I can hear a family of tits

up in the tree peep ago way. At this time of year there's a vast

number of birds out here. The adults have bred, some of them

producing five, six, seven, eight, nine young, think of the amount of

food that must be out there to feed them all. That's what the noise is

about, the begging call that's people are hearing. Conversely,

those fledglings are becoming food for other things. Now, you see this

bank of oak trees just across here, well around about where I'm

pointing is where our buzzard nest is. Earlier today we caught this on

camera, atentive adult, as ever, bringing in, this is probably the

male, bringing in food for the female to pass. That is a tit of

some kind. It's a young, it could be a young bird. It could be,

actually I say it was a tit. That could have been a willow warbler.

It was yellow underneath. They are foraging at the moment on birds.

These youngsters, not terribly worldly wise, are frankly easy prey.

This one eating another bird. was today. That is a Pipette,

either a meadow or tree pippit. All sorts of birds are going in here.

These fledglings, and we've seen it, they tuck themselves away, in the

trees or down in the grass. But they have a lot of cover. The

adults make sure that happens. Buzzards quite big, clumsy birds,

you know they're not like goshawks, not famed for folder their wings up

and being able to navigate through woods. So how on earth are they

finding and catching those little birds? They fly through the woods,

relatively quietly. They take perch on a branch. Then they watch and

listen. Once they find a family, they don't move too far. They will

farm them. They will take one of the youngsters and then go back for

another one. They know where they are. They are listening. You

mention goshawk though, we have to think here they might be eating the

young tits and the other birds here. That buzzard chick, let's go to it

live, that buzzard chick is potential prey for a goshawk.

Goshawks will visit other rap tores' nests and take the young out.

In the food chain buzzards, unbelievably, not at the top.

another bird for to you keep your eye on over the weekend. Certainly

is. Now, very occasionally, I get offers in car parks. I turn most of

them down. But I couldn't turn this down. Matt Hamilton is a student

film maker. He came up to me and said "Chris, I've made a film about

an area you love." I looked at it and I have to say it's absolutely

beautiful. I couldn't keep it to ago I was lucky enough to move into

a cottage by Ichin navigation. This runs for ten miles between

Winchester and Southampton here in Hampshire.

There's an incredible diversity and wealth of wildlife here.

I woos doing a course in wildlife documentary production, and for

that summer, my diser taigs was to make a film.

I thought about all the exotic locations I could fly off to and

what I could shoot. Eventually I realised you don't need to go to

those places. On my doorstep is this wonderful habitat with

spectacular creatures of its own and I set about telling the story

a Kingfisher will come and land on it. I put a perch out and a

Kingfisher didn't land on it. I sat there for hours staring at a stick.

Nothing happens for ages, then all of a sudden, you'll look out and

They have extraordinary colours, orange breast feathers and

iridescent blue. They look fantastic in the sun, glowing

To tell the story of spring I thought I should focus on some of

the invertebrates. Nothing is better for that than the May fly.

They live as any more ofs under water. They burrow db nymphs, under

water. At the end of the two-year period they rise up to the surface

and hatch out to live for just one One or two that come up and they're

able toe merge straight away, they sort of burst out of their skins

and take off instantly. The whole place is just alive with thousands

and thousands of May fly. You see them fluttering up and they

fall back down like miniature skydivers. It's a beautiful time of

year. It lasts for just the shortest amount of time, like so

many things in nature, that's what make it's so spectacular. It really

marks the start of summer and the end of spring.

One thing I really wanted to do was film the demoiselles emerging. It

happens at night. I thought if I managed to get a result then it

would be something we would rarely see. I spent about two weeks

waiting all night waiter for one to emerge. I never thought I would get

to see this moment, when something in its life is so vulnerable and

going through these changes. It was breath taking. I felt like I had

been let in on a secret world that not many people would be able to

witness. Having filmed the emergence, I felt

I had come into their world. I need -- needed to film the adult form as

well. I decided to put the waders on and get in the river. It's an

amazing perspective from the water level, among the reeds with them or

see them perching. The whole place looks completely different from

river level. It was a great One thing I really found through

making the film was that I sort of, really stepped into the world of a

lot of the wildlife here and learned a huge amount about it and

feel much closer to the place as a result. What I really discovered is

that there's absolutely no substitute from just spending time,

quietly, sitting and watching and waiting for things to happen. Only

by doing that, will you really get to know the river and see what

I think you're going to be going down the Jobcentre. It was

beautiful wasn't it? What a fantastic film. Well done Matt.

just great behaviour. The framing, composition of everything was spot

on. Matt, you've done a good job mate. We have a bit more gear than

you at the moment. We have to try to match up. We have a camera here,

not far from the studio, we're calling it marsh-cam. It's a

lovelyer is reen -- lovely serene evening. We get those pictures

because of the magic of technology and an awful lot of cable. So if we

can mix from this picture through to well that's the scene where it

is, we're zooming in, so you can see exactly where the camera is.

That's what it looks like. Then it's connected, as are all our

cameras, via miles and miles of cable that race through the woods

and join up, well from here it's about a kilometre, to our

production village, there it is. I hope that Martin is standing in

amongst those trucks somewhere. Martin, are you there? Kate, I am

here. Here I am at mission control. It took seven months to plan this.

It took two weeks to build and there are 90 kilometres of cables

around here. I'll show you around. That building there, that's where

we have our production meetings in the morning to plan the day's

program. There's informer a cross here, let me show you this. This is

interesting. I don't know if you can see through there, that dish

there is transmitting the pictures as I speak to you now. The signal

goes into the satellite and it goes 72,000 kilometres to get to your

telly. Now these big vans here is where the film editors are. They're

putting together all the films of the animals we see on Springwatch.

We came down here to find the story developers. They gave us, oh, let's

see if we can find them in here. Careful up the stairs. Up you come.

We have to go through here. Now this is the, hello everyone! Come

on in. These are the producers, directors, there's James or

director. Don't be shy chaps. They're not used to being on telly.

Come through here, if you would. Going very well. Well done everyone.

This is what we've really come to see, story developers. Hello all of

you. Hi Martin. This is Sara. This is Jess and Scott. Now you actually

got our lovely red start story, were you here to see that? We were

indeed. We saw them fledging last night during the show. Fantastic.

Thank you very much. We are completely off the ball we werement

I forgot to do that, I'll remember now. What's been going on now?

What's catching your attention? the moment, we're keeping an eye on

the two heron nestlings. They look like they've settled down for the

evening a bit. They've been teasing us all day with wing flapping and

preening. We keep thinking they're going and then they don't. What's

this up here? Here's a sandpiper, now that's a brand new nest for us?

Chris and Kate, can you see that? That is a brand new sandpiper nest.

Look at that! I'm really pleased about this. I like the sandpipers.

Hang on, I think we have just heard from Charlie Hamilton-James, we

have live pictures of beavers. It's coming from Knapdale. Can we

coming from Knapdale. Can we connect to Charlie? Can we hear

him? Hello guys! Look at this, this guy is so close. You can -- he can

hear me talking, look. He's probably about 20 metres away. I

say he, it could be a she. It's difficult to tell the difference.

If it's a he, this is Christian, who we met the other night. He was

trying to fell a tree and trying not to get squashed by it. He's

speeding up now because he can hear me. He's out on evening patrol.

They come out about this time and head off on a patrol around the

loch here. They don't really start work until it gets dark. At the

moment, he's having his evening feed. That is pretty special, isn't

it? I have to let him go, while I reposition myself. I can't quite

believe how close he is. He's just there.

Let's hunt for him with that lens again. It's all a bit back to front

to me. There he is. I'll doom in on him again.

Now he's come, we're about 200 yards away from the lodge now. He's

come up quite a long way. I keep calling this a he. It could be his

wife. Now this just proves that anyone can come out here, to

Knapdale, and see this. This isn't private. This trial isn't a private

thing. Anyone can do it. And you don't have to come out with loads

of specialist kit, you don't need infrared lights. I've no idea what

the time is probably 8.20pm and there's a beaver swimming around.

The sun's not quite sext anyone can do this. If you want to, don't

bring your dog. There's one thing beavers don't like, it's dogs.

But if you came out, sat here quietly, on one of these lobgz, --

lochs, there's every chance you could see something as special as

this. Look at that! That's a tail snap. He's come back up, that means

he's a bit nervous, probably because we're all here, giving us a

tail slap, bit of an alarm. He's not too fazed. He's come straight

back up and just carrying on. Hopefully, going to get into the

reeds and find some food. So now, he's heading back down the

loch. If I can zoom out on this thing, you can have a look. He's

going back down the loch towards his lodge. Beavers don't just,

sorry I'm jerking the camera around now. They don't just use their

lodges for sleeping in. They also use them for eating in. They have a

secret, underwater tunnel, that heads up from underwater into the

middle of the lodge. In there they've got, let's just zoom in,

inside the tunnel just at water level as you go in the tunnel, a

little area where they like to eat. They'll take food in there and eat

in complete safety knowing that no predators can get them.

I think he's just heading down. This could be the last we see of

him tonight. It's just starting to get dark. I think he knows where we

are. Well there you go guys, it's got a

bit far away now. I'm so chuffed we got you then. It's been a big thing

all week, can we get it for you and we did. I hope you enjoyed it.

Oh, I say, honestly. That was brilliant - Charlie Hamilton-James,

you are a genius! That was fan of theic. He stole our thunder. We

were going to introduce our beautiful sandpiper, now you have

to wait till Monday. I'm sorry about that. But you wanted to talk

About some historical stuff that you found out. One of the thing

that's people say about - hi Martin. Sorry. One of the things that

people say about the wee introduction of beavers in Scotland

is that they didn't used to occur there. I was checking out my

history and recently they've discovered no less than five ark

logical sites with beaver bones in Scotland and there are place names

with beaver in it, suggesting that the animals used to live there.

Beavers were in Scotland. Can I just do another literary reference.

Gerald of Wales - You just have the one book, do you? Help yourself to

a second. Gerald says in Scotland or so they tell me, there is again,

only one stream where beavers live and even there they're rare, but

they were in Scotland, Gerald says it. It must be true. It must be

true. Now, many of you have been contacting us via the message board

to talk about our barn owls. Before we get to the nitty gritty of that

story. For those of you who aren't familiar with barn owls, have a

look at the perhaps non-geeky version what have makes up these

amazing birds.?. A barn owl weighs about as much as a grape fruit and

lives for around four years. Though the oldest reached precisely 14

years seven months and two days. Very impressive. They're easily

identified by their pale colour and heart shaped face. I love you.

right, that's enough! If you hear this... (screech) Don't be alarmed,

it may sound like something out of a horror movie, but that's your

barn owl. They have also hiss, yap and snore.

The barn owl has the motion acute hearing of any known animal. It's

all to do with the placement of their ears. They're placed a

similar et Rickally. One is slightly higher than the other.

About there. The owl cannical being late the

exact position of the sound source, which allows them to catch 2,000

mice, voles and other small mammals every year (. That was one minute

eight seconds actually. If you've been watching our webcams today,

you'll notice that our barn owls have been terribly hot. Everyone

was really concerned about this. Not only you at home, look at this,

we got back to the studio and found the ep tire crew gathered around

the monitors, literally sweating it out with the barn owls, such was

the worry. They had reason to be, because this was the scene that you

were all watching. The barn owl chicks, as you can see, panting in

the heat. This little one actually collapsing and seeming Chris, it's

at the back now, unable to get up. They just look like, now two of

them down on the ground looking moments away from expiring. When

you think about, it they're covered in a thick, warm coat of down to

keep them warm. The young one is the least with -- is the one with

the least energy. They're expanding a lot of energy panting like that,

energy they need to building up their bodies. It's quite an

expensive process, this what we call goolating, panting to lose

heat. The nest is at the top of a barn, under a roof, about the

hottest place it could possibly be. Wood peckers, anything that nests

in hay confined space like this, barn owls, they are set up for it.

They have to go through these changes in temperature. It's better

that they're warm than cold. The adult will be trying to brood

what's now a large collection of young probably not being able to

keep them warm. Here's a challenge to the camera crew, next week maybe

we could get a thermometer into the roof of the barn so we can see how

hot it is. Then how cold as well and what they do when it's cold. We

could try. It has cooled down a little now, lovely evening now.

Cooler than this afternoon. Let's go now live to the barn owl nest.

What do you think? I can't see that flutter going on now. Is that the

little one in the middle? I don't think it's going to expire. It's

pretty strong at the moment. There's so much food there. It's

not hungry. It's just a bit behind of others in terms of development.

It doesn't look that perky, though, to be fair? Well, no. But they're

sleepy animals. He's sleeping, that's all Kate. Let's not be

negative. Eating and sleeping, that's all they have to do. Is it

not very perky or just sleeping? Keep an eye on the owlles over the

weekend by going to the website. Bbc.co.uk/Springwatch. The web kams

are there. Keep updated with them. And our quiz. Can we, Becky,

where's Becky with questions, please? Answers rather. Thanks

Becks. Lucy aged eight says hedgehog. I'm getting that. Sally

monster says damsel fly eggs on the blog. Ella says leeches or worms.

Good effort. Keep them coming in. None of them quite right. Earlier

in the week, we had a competition where we were setting out these

camera traps in the woods. We were trying to see which mammals are out

there in the course of the night. I won the competition actually with

pictures - Rubbish! Steady on. also asked to you send your

pictures in, if you were using camera traps. The viewers got much

better pictures than we did. put us to shame. Marvellous fox.

Beautiful badgers. This is fox and badger. I wouldn't have bet on that

in a million years. So we are going to have another go next week. But

keep your photos coming in. Now many of you will have seen on the

news today and in the newspapers that our hedgehogs appear to be in

decline. I had an e-mail from an old friend, Jennie, saying that

she's not seeing hedgehogs in her garden any more. What's going on

Martin? It's all to do with our gardens. I've been going out and

trying to find out about a potential solution to a very

serious problem. This is a story about these...

Hedgehogs. This is hue Deany. But it's also a story about something

much, much bigger than just hedgehogs alone. It's something

that, and she's sharp! All of us potentially, nearly all of us could

get involved with this. Hedgehogs are one of those garden

visitors that we assume are somewhere in the backyards. But

when was the last time you actually saw one? If you had seen a hedgehog

recently, you're lucky. We've lost about half of all our hedgehogs in

the last 25 years. Now our gardens are potentially a great habitat for

hedgehogs, but we all tend to overtidy them and that is actually

one factor in the hedgehogs' decline. But help is at hand. The

people's trust for endangered species and the hedgehog

conservation trust have started a really exciting scheme, called

Hedgehog Street. I caught up with volunteer Fiona. The idea is that

you talk to your neighbours in your street and encourage them to look

for hedgehogs, to talk to each other about hedgehogs and look at

how to improve their own gardens and in particular... This is the

big idea, right? To connect gardens. Then hedgehogs can go between

gardens so they have more areas to forage over. They range for up to a

mile or more than a mile a night in search of food. So they need to get

between more than one garden in order to find owl the food they

need. Collectively we have over a million

acres of gardens in the UK. Unfortunately, because most of our

gardens are fenced in with wire and wood, they've become just isolated

pockets of habitat. But it doesn't take much to make a big difference.

All you need to do is look at your garden from a hedgehog's

perspective and that's exactly what Fiona is trying to encourage her

neighbours to do. From a wildlife perspective, one of the first

things that you would notice is that there's a hedge row, so they

can get access to the garden. the one to the next door neighbour,

it looks great at first sight, ah, but it's not. No, there's a hidden

barrier behind here. You can see there's a mixture of rabbit netting

and plastic netting behind there. Soy doubt very much that there

would be a way through. What will we do? Maybe a hole.

Ideally, we're looking to make 15 inch gaps for our prickly friends.

Talking to neighbours, connecting your gardens and generally thinking

like the animals that live in them could not only help your hedgehog,

but all of our garden wildlife. We've been lucky so far, we've just

had to cut through wire, what about if somebody's got a solid fence,

could you dig a hole under it? Indeed you could. Shall we try one

of those then? I think that might holes here and there, what

difference can that make? Well it can make a difference in a small

garden. If you can imagine everybody in their gardens doing

that across the country, that is going to make a huge difference.

There's 23 million gardens across the country. I have this vision of

them all starting to interconnect. It could be the start of something

really big. Not just a wildlife corridor, but a

massive wildlife network. I like it! It's such a thrilling idea.

Simple. A million acres, we could connect them up. It's a lovely,

easy thing for anybody to be able to do and make a huge difference.

If you want to get involved in hedgehog street, here it is, we've

got a link on the website and maybe get to know your neighbours, cut a

hole in the hedge and make a massive difference. It's a strange

way to get to know your neighbours. Can we go straight back to Scotland

because I'm just hearing, look at this! This is absolutely live guys.

This is from Charlie Hamilton- James's cameras in Scotland.

Beautiful shot of a beaver doing what it does best. It's a bit of

bark. Back with Charlie in a moment. Now let's answer the question that

we set you earlier in the programme. We asked, what on earth was this

photograph of? Who got it right? Remo knew was a species of mosquito

eggs. Zoe on Facebook and Lynsey Edwards congratulations to you all.

Mosquito eggs. I like mosquitoes, I know that's a bit weird, but a

fantastic life history. Those eggs hatchupside down. The lar vi hatch

through the bottom and drop into the water. I don't think I love

mosquitoes quite as much. Neither do I, I've had malaria too many

times. This weekend why not think of doing something terribly simple

to help the wildlife that lives around you. Here is a really neat

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 109 seconds

them if you like this sort of thing. You can make your own, as long as

you put them on a sunny wall, you'll get the bees. If you haven't

got bamboo, but you have Japanese knotweed, that works well as well.

Go to our website, bbc.co.uk/Springwatch for lots and

lots of ideas of how to help the wildlife in your garden.

without further ado, we have to go would. But we did! I think it's

still them. I can't see it. It's gone all the way off to the lodge.

Ian, our specialist cameraman, can. Look at that. We think this is

actually Truda, not Christian. This is who he lives with. Just now she

stood up. We got to see her nipples. Now if we can see protruded nipples,

it means she's probably pregnant. That is exactly what the Scottish

beaver trial wants because they want beavers up here. They want

them breeding. That's what the trial is all about. Now, the other

day, I went out with a special mission of my own, involving an

quirky mission and a personal one. A few years ago, I discovered that

otters could smell under water, using my underwater cam ra. I got a

hunch that beavers might be able to do the same.

What I'm going to do is dump it right in the middle of their canal.

When they're swimming up the canal, they should, hopefully, smell right

into it. Beavers love apples. So I'm going

to tempt them in with one by sticking it on a spike, like that,

sticking it in the water right in front of the lens.

I can control the underwater camera from my laptop.

So all I need to do is retreat into my hide and wait. The crew has left

me and I'm bedding in for the night. I've got my monitor here. The

monitor is wired to a camera that's in the canal. Hopefully, I'll get

it as it arrives, swims down and grabs the apple. That's the plan

any way. At least it's not raining.

(heavy rain) It's 2am, it's raining a lot heavier now. I've started to

get really tired. I still haven't heard a beaver come up the canal,

so I'm just going to keep going really. However, an hour later, my

it. It's doing it. I got it. He found it straight away. It's right

here. It's 2.50am and suddenly the beaver

just appeared, out of nowhere and got it. It came up, floated right

over the camera, head down, just grabbed the apple. I can't quite

believe it though. My heart's going crazy. So chuffed! I was very, very

excited when I shot that, but when I looked back at it, I don't think

it actually was smelling that am. I think it was probably smelling it

on the surface and and using its feet to find it. Maybe some better

scientist should discover whether they can smell under water or not.

I've had an amazing time up here in the last couple of weeks, getting

to know beavers again. And really following the story of them coming

back into Britain, after 400 years of being away. It's a very debate.

There's three more years to go on this project. So, who knows what

will unfold? A few big thank yous to the people who let us do this

and made this happen, Scottish Wildlife Trust, Scottish natural

heritage, Royal Zoological Socitey for Scotland, the Forestry

Commission and let's not forget the Scottish beaver trial team. Thank

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 109 seconds

viewers at home, I think he deserves three cheers. He's really

delivered anded to live beaver. Absolutely, thank you so, so much

Charlie. Safe journey home and very, very well done indeed. Shall we

have a quick look at our live cameras before we go for the

weekend. Let's look at our herons. weekend. Let's look at our herons.

Look at that! Do you think they'll disappear over the weekend? I think

they'll come back to the next for a few days to get food. Let's look at

the sandpiper. We nearly showed you this lovely little bird earlier in

the thing. She had her thunder stolen by a beaver. We will

introduce you to this beautiful bird on Monday. She's sitting on

her eggs. We don't know how many she's got. Keep an eye on her and

all our characters do, that by going to our website

bbc.co.uk/Springwatch. There's another great thing about that

website, if you have a look for a little icon, things to do, click on

that. Can you put your postcode in and it will give you great ideas,

in where that the live it will give great ideas of things to do over

the weekend. What's going on on Monday? We're heading to the island

of Skoma. We will meet up with Wales's greatest naturalist. He's

going to be looking at some of the iconic wildlife, including of

course, puffins. We're keeping a careful eye on the owls of course.