Episode 10 Springwatch

It's Tuesday night. It's BBC Two, it's 8

It's Tuesday night. It's BBC Two, congrach late you on tuning in to

watch the very best of British wildlife -- congratulate you.

Tonight, we'll feature some Springwatch favourites, otters on

the West Coast of Scotland and a star character that's flown a London

way to be part of Springwatch, Monty the osprey.

I'm going to be meeting those icons of spring, the swallows.

But right now, the larks on the wing, the snails on the thorn and

all's right with the world. It's Springwatch.

Hello. Welcome to Springwatch 2014, on a beautiful evening up here at

the RSPB Minsmere reserve on the Suffolk coast. It's our third week

and we have been having a fantastic time. Lots of drama, lots of new

science, even the occasional bar chart and pie diagram, I have to

say. Let's take a look at where we are. One of the best nature reserves

in the world I beg to suggest. Famous for its reed beds, bearded

tits, harriers, open water, the famous scrape can its avocets, the

body of open water, the North Sea on the beach, it has heath lands too,

plenty of woodland and amongst all of these we have scattered our

cameras so that we can bring intimate insights into the private

lives of the birds and other creatures that live here, even the

little reed warblers hiding down in the reeds.

We have certainly had plenty of drama. We had one particularly

nail-biting drama that we showed you last night when an adder pre-dated

our goldfinch nest. It managed to get one chick but one got away. But

is it still alive? It was at the end of the show last night but let's see

if it survived until today. This is the nest live and there it is! Not

only sit alive, it's looking well and healthy. Although, I say it's a

lucky chick, not so lucky to be in that revolting nest. No, but it's

only a few more days. It's flapping vigorously, its fledging is

imminent. It's looking strong with its wing flap, the parents are still

coming in and feeding it. They are very attentive with the feeding but

not so attentive with the housekeeping. It was a remarkable

drama, keep your eyes on that though, because as you say, could

fledge today, tomorrow, Thursday. The adder didn't make it way back.

Predators often identify a source of food. Another nest that we have been

looking at is down here in the woods, a favourite of everyone's.

Young Grub, the all theny owl. On Friday, he surprised us by leaving

the nest. We didn't think he was up to it, but he branched -- tawny owl.

After about 25 days, they'll jump about. It will be another ten days

before they get the power of flight. But we wondered where he was. They

are difficult to find with moving around at night so we lost him. We

thought yeed use the thermal camera at night when he's easy to spot and

that dark spot that you can see on the left hand side there that you

can see is the young grub. He's joined by one of the parents, we

think the female, and she brought him another tasty meal, I jest, of

slug! This young owl's had a few rodent,

birds, bluetit, moorhen, but he's had a tremendous number of slugs.

This is leading us to wonder whether this is a young inexperienced

female. She's not that adept at catching a proper diet for the young

chick. There's also only one and typically in a tawny owl clutch or

brood, we'd expect three or four. It could be a young, inexperienced

female. The cost of eating the slugs is grim. They don't have much

protein. We have seen Grub have other interesting things,

particularly the slow worm. It's mainly grubs, not much protein but

it means his face has been covered in slime which is why we gave him

the name of Grub. That's caused us to be really concerned about him on

Sunday because, if we take a closer look at that face, you can see it's

absolutely covered in flies all eating that slug juice and no doubt

laying their eggs in that face on his feathers and what is going to

happen when they hatch? As time goes by, he'll moult that down and his

proper facial disk will become apparent. I think that with any luck

the flies have cleaned up some of the slug use -- slug juice, the

slime and if they have laid eggs, he'll moult that up. He's climbed

further up into the tree after being low on Sunday. He's got further up

and the female is still providing him with food, although it's mainly

slugs. So he's not going to have a beard of maggots then or something?

! That would be so disgusting. He looked much better yesterday when we

saw him. He's looking healthier. And there is another nest we have been

watching closely. It's a tree tenement, Jackdaws and green wood

peckers have taken up close residence.

tenement, Jackdaws and green wood peckers have taken up close The hole

is probably last year's hole. These birds are boisterous, argumentative

types and, throughout the time we have been watching them, look at the

woodpecker, they have been niggling one another the whole time. Over the

weekend, we saw this, the first of our woodpecker chicks emerged from

the nest. It's the bird in the centre, shorter tail, greyer head.

After the first one came out, we saw another four coming out.

Tried to spoil the party. But what the wood peckers do, the adults is,

they come up to the entrance hole and tease the youngsters out by

offering them food. You saw it there, pulling the beak away and the

youngsters eventually pop out because they are hungry. Look at the

last one. Just out of the hole. Look at the way it moves across the

outside of that bark, perfectly like a woodpecker with its first few

hops. Amazing to see five come out. And how many were left in there? At

least another two. If you watch carefully, here comes the beak of

one of the wood peckers and, as it withdraws it, the adult turning away

so it can't have the food you will note, there's the Head of Another.

So five are out and there were two in there. At least seven. There

could be more. Is that an unusually large clutch for wood peckers? Five

to seven is what it says in birds of the western Arctic. The first ones

left four days ago, let's go live and see if there are any still in

there now. Nothing moving there at the moment.

Five minutes ago there was one peeking its head out. Probably two.

So there's peeking its head out. Probably two.

some time wes peeking its head out. Probably two.

staying in the hole for up to a peeking its head out. Probably two.

hanger than their siblings. The can peeking its head out. Probably two.

give the adults a problem, particularly if those which have

fledged are scattered throughout the wood because they have to find them

and continue to go back to the hole to feed them. Clearly it's a

strategy that works because green wood peckers are doing well.

Goldfinches and wood peckers could fledge in the next day or so. Keep

your eyes peeled on the live cameras. In week one, we saw a lot

of kittiwakes around the reserve and they were clearly nesting because

they were collecting mud for the nests and mating on this scrape.

It's confused us because they are the only gull that exclusively nests

on cliff edges and, around this coastline, there aren't too many of

those. So where were they nesting? It was a mystery that I wanted to

Seoul. -- Seoul. The blag-legged kittiwake is widespread and found in

coastal areas throughout the kittiwake is widespread and found in

northern hemisphere. Kittiwake gulls spend most of their team at sea and

come into land during the summer breeding season which is right now.

That explains why our kittiwakes will have been collecting nesting

material. But I doesn't solve the mystery of where they were taking it

to. Kittiwakes nest in colonies on

narrow Lens on sea cliffs around the coast. -- narrow ledges.

The only cliffs and Minsmere are these which are constantly eroding

so they are more suitable to sand martens. If you have a close look,

you can see the sand martens nest holes and you can hear them as well.

These cliffs aren't the answer to our little mystery then.

But, we know that kittiwake also rest on man-made structures that

provide bridges and oil rigs and we have had a tip-off that the

kittiwakes here that are collecting mud off the scrape behind me here

are probably nesting on one of the largest man-made structures in the

area which is just over there. Sizewell is a nuclear power station

and, over the years, it's become home to various breeding birds. For

the kittiwakes, it seems to be the offshore rigs associated with their

cooling system that act as artificial cliffs. Wildlife

cameraman Mark Yates has been tracking them down.

Hi, Mark. The mystery's been solved. Yes, they're here. This is where

they are. Let's have a look. That is a perfect ledge. How many do you

reckon there are? There must be 00 there if they are using the front

and the back. We can only see one side here.

Are they on eggs or chicks? -- 200. Most of the birds have been sat on

the nests so I don't think they have hatched yet. Have you seen them

bring the mud in? No. Seen them carrying see weed so the mud must be

helping stick the see weed together. Most of the nests look well built

now. I've seen a couple of other birds as well but mostly kittiwakes?

Yes. I don't know whether they are waiting for the chicks to hatch so

they might have a little snack. You can hear that kittiwake as well.

That's where they get their name from. Yes. Really good.

Mark, you have filmed kittiwakes before. Ever filmed them on a

structure like this? No, never. Normally where I come from in

Cornwall they rest on cliffs and you have to get to boat to go and see

them. I got up this morning and managed to get the sun rise behind

them because you never get the opportunity to do that when they are

nesting on a cliff. I'm down here on the beach, this

beautiful evening. There behind me is Sizewell. I think it's got a sort

of austere beauty about it, rather brutal. There to the left you can

see the outflow Towers where the kittiwakes were. It's good news

because we filmed the kittiwakes yesterday. Here they are. They are

in real trouble around the country, but not here. They've done well

because there are the chicks, you can see them. It's very hot

yesterday when this was filmed and they are trying to cool themselves

down. They are saying, "it ain't half hot, mum" to the mum there, and

it's cooling them down. Wonderful to see those kittiwakes doing really,

really well. We are down on the beach. These dunes have a life

history of their own. Let's go through it. So we go along here and

the sand blows up and then it's stabilised by grasses. Let's carry

on up to the mature dune. This is the grey dune here, a nice backside

shot! Up here, there's a whole community of wildlife living on the

grey dune and he's interesting is, if you come over here, this is what

we are looking for. Can you see down there there's a spider's web down

there. Now, that's a special sort of spider, a labyrinth spider and I'm

going to try and tease her out. We haven't tried this before. She's

very sensitive. what a labyrinth spider actually

looks like. Here she is. She's about 18 millimetres long. Look at those

fangs at the front. You can see those eyes there as well. They're

covered in hairs, really sensitive to any vibration. That's what her

life is all about. She can pick up different vibrations. It means

different things to her, different vibrations mean different things. I

have my own chart tonight. If the vibrations don't here about 10

kilahertz, that's the wind on her web. If it's down here, though, sort

of 40, 50, that's a struggling insect, just their legs. This one

here, around 200, that's insect wings buzzing. She can read the

vibrations in her nest and know exactly what's touching the web.

What is there down here? If you can look, there's lots and lots of tiny

little baby grasshoppers, all leaping around here. There's dozens

of them actually. If one of those grasshoppers was to fall into that

web, it would be bad news. Here's the grasshopper. That's a youngster.

It's landed just where it didn't want to go. And here the spider.

She's picking up on that vibration and she's out. She doesn't want to

hold onto it, because it might kick her. It's small, so what she does is

dashes in and impail it's with those fangs, there they are and injects

venom into that poor, little grasshopper. Here she goes again.

It's light lightning. Quite cowardly going in and letting it go. She will

retreat and let that venom do its work and paralyse that little

grasshopper. She'll drag it back. As well as the venom she's injecting

enzymes. They break down its tissues. Eventually, she'll start to

suck out the juice from that grasshopper. She'll use the same

fangs like straws, you can see her now, she's sucking out grasshopper

soup from that. It's a grim now, she's sucking out grasshopper

being a little grasshopper down here. We notice something curious,

you might have seen it, when she tried to drag the prey away, it

drops a leg. As it went away, a tried to drag the prey away, it

came off. Now that wasn't entirely by accident. The grasshopper has the

amazing ability to actually shed its limbs, by nervous control. It has a

muscle around the limb. If it wants to it just cuts it off. Lots of

insects can do that, crabs as well. That's a defence mechanism. If they

shed a limb, the predator might grab hold of that limb and leave it

alone. In the case of that grasshopper, it didn't work. We saw

another curious thing there. It moves so fast, the spider, this is

it at normal speed. It's like a superhero. We can't actually slow it

down enough to see what's happening. It's just frame by frame. It just

leaps straight across. It's missed its prey. The weird thing is what

she does when she goes back into the nest. Does she walk backwards? No,

she won't. She actually does a somersault. She rolls her body back

into the nest. Absolutely bizarre. You would never see that if we

hadn't slow today down. We will leave this glorious evening down on

the coast and whiz all the way up to the West Coast of Scotland, to the

fabulous Island of Mull to explore the wildlife.

The North West coast of mull, this wonderfully rich marine environment

is home to a diverse wildlife. We've been following a female otter and

her cub. The cub's nearly a year old now, so his mother has been teaching

him how to fish for himself. And he's not the only one making the

most of this seafood feast. Unfortunately, crabs aren't really

enough for a growing cub. Still hungry, he pinches his mother's

catch. Then, in the distance, something

disturbs the peace. A dog otter swims across the far side of the

bay. Is he looking for a mate? Soon, this female will leave her cub to go

and start another family. It may well be that time is coming soon.

Just a few miles inland our white tailed eagle chick is growing fast.

He's six weeks old now and starting to lose his downy feathers. He needs

a lot of food, which keeps his parents very busy. With a chick

growing in streng, the female spends less time at the nest. But when she

heads off into the plantation, the local buzzards won't leave her

alone. Irritated by its presence, she tries to flick the buzzard away.

Despite her size advantage, she's wary of really going for it. There's

a risk the buzzard might get a lucky shot and actually cause some damage.

Back at the nest, the chick is testing his muscles. It's still

another five or six weeks before he thinks about pledging, but he needs

to start building up strength ready for that big moment.

-- fledging. Mull is a magical island and lovely to catch up with

the family of otters and white tailed eagles again. There was

something interesting in that film. We often see large birds of prey,

like eagles, being mobbed like other birds, whether it be buzzards,

ravens or seagulls. The birds of prey have to balance attacking the

bird back with making sure they don't get injured. But have a look

at this: This is Sula being attacked by the local buzzards. She goes over

on her back and she appears to be hitting the buzzard away with her

wing, swatting it like a fly. Let's have a look at that, slow it down.

The wing actually makes contact with the buzzard and she flicks it away.

I had a word with the RSPB Mull officer, one of the world's experts,

and he said he's never seen that kind of thing before. So we might

just have filmed some new behaviour there. I'll be looking at white

tailed eagles again tomorrow, a very special family, that has a

connection with Springwatch going back ten years.

That was absolutely amazing. White tailed eagle karate. Do you think it

was a fluke or practice move? I think it might have been flukey.

I've seen them turn on their back to grab things. If buzzards attack

them, just because they're big doesn't mean they're not quick. They

will flip over and grab things. It might have been an artefact. It was

trying to grab the buzzard. Who knows. It worked. It looked

brilliant, though. Cubing coos are what we call -- cuckoos are

parasites. They lay their eggs in other birds' nest so they rear their

young. We found an egg in a reed warbler's nest. We found a reed

warbler's nest here. On the left, you can see our reed warbler. On the

right, that nest with the cuckoo egg in. It's hatched. Its immediate duty

is to turf out the other eggs. That's to ensure it gets all the

food for itself. Our reed warblers have hatched. They're serviced by

the parents. Look at the relative growth going on here. Quite clearly,

you could argue that the cuckoo is getting four times as much food and

therefore it's growing four times as big. It's growing into a bit a

monster. We nicknamed it cuckoozilla. It continued to grow.

We sent a cameraman to a reserve to see what it looked like yesterday.

It's huge! It's absolutely enormous. Look at the size of it. There's no

way it's ever going to get into that nest again. The parents are coming

back and feeding it regularly. Lots of people have said this, why don't

the foster parents of the cuckoo get suspicious of the size and colouring

of their chick as it grows? Clearly it looks completely different to

themselves. It does, if they had a chance to stop and think about, it

they might suss that out. The problem is, it's offering them

something called super stimuli. It's that massive orange mouth. We too

are victims of this. We like things that are big. We like big cars, big

things. We're drawn to those sorts of things. Here, every time those

adults come back, it opens that mouth, they stick the food in and

they must feed, must feed. Brace yourself, I'm going to tell you

something simply fascinating now. Have you got a bar chart? I haven't,

sadly got a chart. Listen, it's worth listening to. Each young reed

warbler chick on average weighs about 11. 3 grams when it fledges.

There are four on average in a brood. If you multiply that you get

to 45 grams. That will be the total weight of reed warbler chicks

leaving a nest when the assaults had finished feeding them. The cuckoo,

when it leaves the nest, weighs up to 100 grams. It weighs twice as

much as the reed warblers together. How does it put on all that weight?

The super stimuli, the How does it put on all that weight?

them spurs the adults on and when it's a freshly emerged youngster, it

makes a louder noise than the young reed warblers and that encourages

the adults to feed it more and more. When it's bigger, its gape is

massive. That encourages them to feed it more than they would their

own young. So as a consequence, it's able to bulk up in just 17 or 18

days, big enough to leave the nest. You've got to feel so sorry for

those adults, haven't you? They don't even sit on top of it. You do,

but I've got to admire the cuckoo. It's a remarkable animal. Not only

at the nesting stage, but also when it comes to migration. If you were

watching our first week, you know we followed Chris the cuckoo. This is a

four-year-old bird that's been backwards and forwards from the UK

to Africa. We went out to Africa. We miss today. There -- we missed it

there. We found him in Norfolk. He's moved 200 metres from where he was

when we found him. What's equally exciting is that the British trust

of ornithology, who are satellite tracking these birds, have 24 of

them marked and they've marked an extra 16. If you go to our website,

you can link to their website. Over the forth coming months, you can

follow these birds' remarkable journey across Europe, across the

Mediterranean, down to the Congo basin and hopefully, next spring,

into west Africa and back here. So check that out.

Bbc.co.uk/Springwatch link to the BTO. Brilliant stuff. I put a allite

tracker on Martin. -- a little satellite tracker on Martin. If you

look behind us, that white dome there, he's around there on the

beach. I've actually moved away from the

beach. I don't know if you can see, if you look down that water you can

see they've been blown away, but there's lots of insects and in the

sky, around me, I can hear the kitering of -- chittering of swat

lows. It's not -- swallows. I saw my first swallow on April 8. We haven't

featured them on Springwatch yet. That is about to change. Let's

remind ourselves what it looks like. A graceful bird, very elegant. It

has a coppery chin there, that throat. Long tail streamers. That's

nothing to them. They come to us 6,000 miles from South Africa,

almost impossible to imagine. They live for about two years, three

years maybe. The oldest one ever was just 11. That's swallows. I am down

here on what they call the sluice. This is what the RSPB use to control

the water level here. If you come over here, you can see just behind

me, there's the scrape there. They can control the water level on the

scrape from here on the sluice. There's something fascinating about

this sluice because it seems to be a magnet for the swallows. They keep

flitting in and out, why? What is it about this sluice that makes it so

attractive? Look over here. Five minutes ago they were whizzing out

of here. There's all these tunnels leading off here and they are flying

in and picking up the insects and feeding but not all of them are

threeing out again. Some are staying there and nesting rite under my feet

here. We can go live now to a camera underneath. I don't know how the

camera boys got in there and put that in. That is our swallow's nest.

These chicks are getting on now. We think they are not going to be here

for much longer. They'll probably go in the next couple of days. There

are five chicks here. Let's have a look at what has been going on the

next couple of days underneath the bridge. The parents have been coming

in, very diligent feeding them. They are taking parasites out the nest as

well I think. The male tends to be the first to arrive and he'll scout

out and the female does most of the building work. They'll stick

together there. Wonderful, being fed. They may have

three broods so they can be very successful. Having a good old preen.

We'll keep a good eye on the nest. They have long, long tail streamers.

They are not just there for show. The females will choose a male with

long streamers. The reason for that is, they are quite energetic to grow

so he must be quite a fit bird, but also they grow longer and longer as

they get older. An older bird may be more experienced. He's probably

managed to nest before so that's a good bird to choose for the female.

Beautiful birds. Very, very elegant. Putting the

cameras in often gives us amazing insights into the lives of the

birds. Our cameras have given us insights also into the badgers.

We have seen badgers doing some very unusual things. We have seen them

climbing trees. With a lot of noise! Like junior bears. We have seen them

swimming with the night cameras, across at night With a thermal

camera. They have been eating their usual food, which is worms. About

60% of badgers' diet is worms. Little bits of spaghetti leaf.

Shockingly, seeing the badger get on to the scrape over the weekend and

they are opportunistic, they'll feed on anything they can and of course,

that badger's probably got cubs to feed as well. But it was distressing

to see that. But that's badgers top side.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to go underground and see what they are

doing underground. Colin Tony Martin tickle came across to help us see

underneath -- Colin Tickle. He got underground with some large yellow

lawnmower! Talk us through this? It's a ground penetrating device. It

goes into the ground. It hits a pipe or a feature, reflects a signal back

which reflects on the screen. So you are confident if there are any

tunnels, we can notice them? Yes. Can I push? You may, yes. Oh, no,

not in the hands of an amateur! There is a definite entrance to a

tunnel here. And this's another over there so if we go between the two.

Push it over here... So on the screen we have the make-up

of a tunnel. That's where you would expect it to be. So this tunnel cuts

across over here. What I would like to know. They are the tunnels, how

do we find the chambers? We have to push this backwards and forwards for

the whole area, sorry, YOU' VE got to push this. I see a challenge for

myself because there are two entrances in the middle of the

brambles. And that's my job? Exactly. You do the outside, I'll do

the brambles. I find it hard enough to push it up the hill!

Nice to see her finally doing something, Colin, honestly, sits

around on the sofa going on about wildlife. I'm not deaf you know.

You've deviated. I've done it. What did you see, anything on the screen?

If my calculations are right, I think probably where they spend most

of their time, is the area that I didn't do right in the middle. What,

in the brambles? Yes. I'm getting lots of lovely data on

my screen here. OK, look at this. Seriously. Oh,

look at that! I know. There are loads of tunnels underneath. We have

of the our hyperbole. One, two, three, four, five, six. The problem,

is we need to process all this data through no doubt complicated

expensive software to map it correctly. I was genuinely very

excited about this. I've been watching badgers for years and have

stood on the sets, looked at the ground and wanted to know what was

going on down there. We tried to use the ground-penetrating software on a

previous occasion but the ground was - I'll deep with this in a minute,

it's a sensitive touch screen - the ground was completely water logged.

But here, we have got much better sandy soil and we got some fabulous

results didn't we? Where is it? Springwatch. Original radar. There

we are. Beautiful. Now it's quite complicated to see the blue lines

represent the grid where we pushed that yellow ground-penetrated radar

device. And the tunnels and the Chambers are represented underneath.

But looking at it from on top, you can't see very much. So with no

expense spared, we produced a 3D revolving graphic of the spiny set.

Just take a look at this. You can see the three Chambers there and the

tunnels that link them. The tunnels are about 80 centimetres beneath the

surface. The Chambers are about 1.2 to 1.5 metres down, quite shallow.

We typically find this in sandy soils. The likelihood is that what's

happened here is that the badgers have excavated an old rabbit warren.

If we call this one up here and I can expand it, this is one of the

views and you will see that there is an odd piece of tunnel here which

doesn't seem to connect to anything. What we think is happening here is

that this would naturally be connected to this other chamber here

and probably go up through the roots here. It could be that it's

collapsed and that the radar didn't pick it up. There's another area too

if you look at this one here. Let's have a draw on here if I can, nice

and bold red. This tunnel ends. But what we think would probably happen

is that it would come up through the roots of the trees because in areas

where the soil isn't particularly firm, what we see is badgers using

the roots of trees to provide some structural stability to the entrance

because that's where it would get wet and be in danger of collapse.

This doesn't represent all of the spiny sets. Some was hidden

underneath bramble and Bracken and we didn't want to disturb it too

much. I think we have learned a bit about the way the badgers are living

in these shallow soils. But, that's the structure, what are the badgers

doing when they are down there? Recent work at Oxford University has

shown that badgers spend up to 70% of their lives underground in the

set. But rather than spend all night hunting and then all day in one

chamber asleep, rather predictably, we found they are a lot more fidgety

and sometimes can move up to 19 times during the course of a day,

sometimes males will follow females around the set. Other occasions,

when they come back to the set at night, they'll go down, perhaps have

a little nap like this in one of the tunnels, rather than go into the

core of the set. Nice to see some young badgers

loving their life underground there. I think there's still a lot more to

learn when it comes to the habits of badgers underground but there's the

radar worked this time and we've got some idea as to the structure of our

set which is just out there. It was really interesting to see just how

shallow it was. Yes. Fantastic. Over the last few years, we have been

following the fortunes of an osprey called Monty. Monty last year

mateded with a female called Glesley, and after a bit of a Rocky

start, they successfully brought up two female chicks. Glesley then left

for her long flight to Africa at the end of August. Monty turned out to

be a real superdad and stayed to feed his two girls. Only once they

left a few weeks later did Monty leave to start his journey.

Now, they have spent the winter thousands of miles away in Senegal

in west Africa. Then in about February, March, the adults started

to make their way back to their nesting site in the estuary in

Midwest Wales. Did they both make it? Let's find out.

It's early spring and Glesley and Monty's nest has been dormant for

months. On 29th March, a female osprey known only by her leg rings

arrives, she's flown back after wintering in Africa. With so few

nesting sites available, ospreys will often try to take over a vacant

nest. This one is prime real estate.

The nest and the female have not gone unnoticed. A male attempts to

meat with blue 24. She clearly plans to remain here for the breeding

season. This may signal the end of Monty and Glesley's occupation of

the site. Sex days later and the male has

moved on. Then, another appears. It's Monty. After an absence of

exactly 200 days, he's returned to reclaim his territory.

He quickly begins nest building to get it ready for the breeding

season. But who will be his mate? With no sign of Glesley, blue 24

tries to secure his affections. Blue 24 is vying for Monty's

affections. And maybing herself quite at home.

When Glesley finally returns, she's surprised to find a rival in her

nest. -- making herself quite at home. The

females extend their wings, a defensive behaviour known as

mantling. But neither is going to give up the site or Monty without a

fight. Blue 24 launches a series of aeriel

attacks as the battle begins in earnest.

With a top speed of 80mph and razor sharp tall Londons designed to rip

flesh, an osprey is not -- tallons. Blue 24 is left winded on the

ground. But is determined to fight on.

Then, Monty enters the dispute. He's taking sides.

With Glesley. . His intervention tips the scales and

the interloper retreats. By mid-April, with no sign of blue

24, a sense of order returns to the nest.

With her home secure, Monty mates with Glesley for the first time this

season. Hopefully, this will be the

beginning of another successful year for Monty and Glesley.

What a drama that was. It was like hand bags at dawn, but thanks very

much the Montgomerieshire Wildlife Trust who filmed that for us. He

does it for me! Monty? He's like the Brad Pitt of the osprey world.

There's something about him, Brad Pitt of the osprey world.

eyes, the look! They are tatty. Weird feet, you know, toes going

both ways, Spikey blue feet. Ospreys don't do it for me at all. You You

can't be serious. You can find them all over the world, colonising but I

wouldn't go out with one, there's absolutely no way at all I would go

out with an osprey. Last week, we started looking at a small warbler

that was nesting down in our brambles, the whitethroat. They were

feeding their young and one of the things we saw them feeding was a

very large moth. Slightly big for the chicks to actually eat. I think

we have got that clip. They've come in. They're insectivores.

we have got that clip. They've come in. They're insectivores. The adult

is too ambitious. This is a fox moth.

It won't go down the chick's throat. The chick is trying, the adult is

trying. That's like trying to swallow a cardboard box. It's not

going to work. Let's go live to the whitethroats to see how they're

doing. They're not doing. Because they've done. Frankly, they fledged

today. It was quite good. We had five to start with. One sadly

disappeared. We don't know what happened, might have fallen out.

There was rumour that it disappeared whilst the adder was attacking the

goldfinches. There were four left and this morning they started to

tentatively fledge out of the nest. What's interesting is that the white

throat fledges early, after just ten days, these birds are leaving the

nest. Typically, we see other small birds of this size leaving after 14

days, maybe even 15, 16 days. Eventually, they all disappeared

into the cover of the brambles. They're not fully flighted yet. They

are able to hop around. There you can see that the nest is empty. One

other interesting thing, the fledging success of whitethroats is

extraordinarily high. 80% to 90% of those nests manage to get the young

out, as opposed to -- as opposed to the goldfinches that struggle at

25%. That's an incredible success rate. It could be they're leaving

earlier. It's difficult to assess chick survival. They're difficult to

watch. But there's a very distinct difference between the two

strategies these animals are using. Good to see the whitethroats

succeeding. Then they'll migrate. Of course they will. Yes by July they

will be going back to south-western Africa, which is where we went to

see our cuckoos. We saw whitethroats when we were down there. They're

sharing that space. In the past the journey has had its toll. In the 70s

the population took an amazing dip when there were droughts in

south-west Africa. They've recovered now and the population is building

up again. So many animals migrate to and from our shores. If you'd like

to know more about migrating animals, check out the I Wonder

guide. Find out all about that on our website, bbc.co.uk/Springwatch.

It's a fascinating subject. It's extraordinary, lots to learn. Oh,

hello! I popped back. Have you buzzed in to tell us something

interesting. Very good, I like that one. Yesterday we launched another

nest, not a bird's nest, a bee's nest. We can go to it live now. You

can see that much larger one, that will be the Queen, I think. What

will have happened, let's look now, yeah, it is. What will have

happened, you can see the Queen there. She's much bigger. She is the

only bee that will have survived the winter. She will have set off early

in the year to build the nest on her own. Now she's managing to surround

herself with workers. They'll take over the duties and she'll just

start to lay eggs and do nothing else as the workers support her. We

notice something interesting going on last night, have a look down in

the bottom right-hand corner. There's a pewa there -- pupa there

and it's about to hatch. I thought they did the hatching all on their

own, broke out, look - the other workers are going down to help. This

is speeded up. That took about 20 minutes. They're nibbling off the

top of that. They must have been able to hear or something that it

was about to emerge. Here it comes. A brand new worker to support the

queen. You can see how much bigger she is than the workers. And out it

comes. There it is. All shiny and new. Isn't that lovely. It is. I had

hornets in my bedroom once. Of course you did, mate. I cut the

paper off it, and the grubs were inside the cells like that bumble

bee. When they were at the right stage to come out, they would come

to the surface and scratch with their mouth parts on the surface and

the other or nets would help get -- hornets would help get them out.

They helped? They cut them out and took off and flew out the window.

The insect world is amazing. It will be a fascinating live camera. What?

The hor net nest in my bedroom? No! Last week you we saw the ring necked

parakeet. Not everyone is such a fan of this bird.

People have a love-hate relationship with the ring necked

What intrigues me is how they flourish, how do they do so well in

environments that they're not made for.

Probably one of the reasons why they're so successful is because

people feed them. They'll eat all of your food. They

dominate bird feeders. They come in large numbers.

You might expect a Great Tit or blue tit, it's common to see parakeets

fighting over a bird feeder around here.

We don't know whether they're having any impact on our native Flora or

fauna. Very little research has been done. There is the potential for

impact. My concern about them would be whether or not they displace the

wildlife, like wood peckers, in the woodlands here. They are secondary

cavity nesters, meaning they don't make their own holes. They nest in

holes or cavities that are already there. They really like old

woodpecker holes and they re-use them. They nest in them more than

one year, not necessarily the same family, but they re-use them.

It's not just the trees that they nest in. They will find any hole to

nest in, so any loft space, any brick that's loose, they will get in

there and make their home there. You either love them or you hate them.

Chris versus the touch screen. Where are the parakeets? Let's look.

They're not in the North Sea, as it's trying to Kate. -- indicate.

They're very much around Greater London here, there are a few in the

Thames Estuary in east Kent. Over the years they've started to spread

out. There the years they've started to spread

Birmingham. And a few in Liverpool as well. Now debate rages a bit when

they first arrived here, certainly by the late 60s and they were first

breeding down here in Kent in 1971. The interesting thing is that

although the population is increasing by about 30% every year,

its distribution seasoned expanding. The density of birds is increasing,

particularly in the Greater London area, here. But they're not

spreading out very much. Occasionally you get sightings

across the rest of the UK. Even some up in Scotland. But it's an increase

in density not dispersion that we see. We also asked to you help out

with Hazel Jackson's feathers. She obviously doesn't have feathers, she

might peel off her coat and she has lovely green feathers behind her or

primaries, I don't know. That wasn't a euphemism either. It's useful I

didn't mention her undertail coverts either! We want to you collect the

feathers if you're in the Greater London area. Put them in an envelope

and sent them to Hazel Jackson. I'm Alan Partridge, I think! You've lost

it. This parakeet has couldon aislesed your It has jacket. . Where

has it gone? A little kissing session before. Hello love. We ought

to point out when he goes out socially, he always wears that red

coat there. He's about ten weeks old. We say he, we don't know if

he's a girl or boy. He's beautiful. He hasn't yet developed the ring

around his neck. He seems to be enjoying Hello, don't himself. Bite

me too hard, if you do. Let's talk about the origins, though. You were

saying that when you go to India, you can always hear them. It's the

sound of Delhi. You hear these ring-necked parakeets screeching.

It's bizarre to go to somewhere like Richmond Park, it sounds familiar.

It's the sound of the British Empire. People are surprised they

can survive here because they think that they're from warm countries.

They're from the foot hills of the Himalayas. They're not used to

frost, though. They suffer from frostbite on their toes. Martin...

Sorry, I'm getting carried away here. It was me and Monty getting it

on and now you! I think we're in love. Very cute. I hope it's a girl.

Is it urban myth about how they actually came to this country? Did

they escape from a film set, the African ghen 1951, that's what they

say -- Queen. They didn't breed until 61, what were they doing

between 51 and 71 They were just hiding, clearly not. The second one

that Jimi Hendrix came here and released them, he went to Karen by

Street, he -- Carnaby Street... To improve the purple haze over London.

Lovely idea. I think actually that it's just like our parakeet here,

they were a lot of pets that got released. Let's ask the audience.

Perhaps your grandmother have an ary around -- avary in London and let

the parakeets loose. Let us know. Over the last few weeks, we've had

dramatic scenes of life and death. But that's what spring is about.

It's about mating. It's about birds. It's about building nests. It's

about survival. It's basically a time of renewal.

Beautiful. Gorgeous. What are you looking at me like that. Still

thinking about the undertail coverts and apologising to Hazel later Let's

lock at our live -- look at our live cameras. This is the bittern cam.

Gone to sleep. We might hear snoring. Is that the adult or just

the youngsters? That looks like the youngsters. I don't think the adult

is there at the moment. She's not there. They're still coming back to

the nest. They've still coming back. Coming up tomorrow, what have we

got? We've got itchy and scratchy, it's the white-tailed eagles. We're

looking at the name sakes of my poodles. We catch up with our

incredibly adventurous bittern chicks. Look at that. They're

grasping the reeds now, just like mum. There's exciting news of a new

arrival to the UK, the continental swallow-tail butterfly. What a

beauty. Of course, unsprung will be coming straight after us on the red

button and online with Nick Baker. Make sure you tune into that by

pressing the red button. We will see you tomorrow at 8pm. Lots of live

cameras we'll be looking at. See you then. BBC Two. From us, bye-bye for

now.