London Urban Jungle

I was born and always lived amongst this.

We're all crammed in with not much room to breathe,

and whenever we hear about our wildlife, it's usually about rats or pigeons.

But from a young age, I discovered another world here,

amongst the concrete and clay.

I'm a birder, so my London's been one of lapwings,

yellow wagtails, honey buzzards and ring ouzels - to name but a few.

So, armed with my binoculars,

and with the help of special guest Alison Steadman, I'm going

right into the cityscape to unearth a beautiful urban jungle.

We can just about see her underbelly.

Which is orange. That's great.

They're not seen all over London, and they do make quite a racket.

If I open up this, tucked in there, almost the same colour as the hay...

..is a little spiny back.

To start with, I'm taking a trip down a watery road that,

at the time, was built purely to aid industry.

This was first opened in 1801.

At its height it carried timber, building materials

and coal to King's Cross Station from the industrial North.

It also enabled fruit to be brought to marmalade makers,

beer to bottlers and grain to a nearby flour mill.

It was once the equivalent of the North Circular Road.

Its industrial use is now long gone, and today it is

apparently a great highway and byway for London's wildlife.

We get wildlife right in the heart of our city.

Canals connect our rural, idyllic countryside - where people

expect to see this explosion

of wildlife - with our urban centres.

The canal brings together a huge variety of different habitats,

we've got a hedgerow that lines its edges, grassy verges,

this amazing open water space.

This allows wildlife to travel up and down,

either through the hedgerow or within the water.

Not only does it use the canal as a corridor,

like a bit of a superhighway, but once it's living in our city,

it uses it as a place to feed on, and for protection.

The canal towpath is now much used by Londoners

going about their everyday business, but there's no shortage of birds,

and they seem quite happy to have us around.

One of my favourite wading birds, the heron,

is apparently always to be found by the weir at Brentford,

where the Grand Union joins the River Thames.

So how did you know that fella was going to be over there?

He's here all the time. Every time I come down to Brentford I can

guarantee to see the heron.

It's amazing because grey herons are birds of rivers and marshes

and places like that, and it's incredible to see a heron

hanging out in such an urban place like this.

Absolutely, and it just shows how important the waterways are,

connecting the countryside with the heart of our city,

and the birds just migrate in with them.

They are wading birds - I look around me, I can't see any areas

where he can actually wade, so what does he feed on?

Well, here he's actually feeding on scraps that people are putting

out for the pigeons, but he's also sitting on the weir tops

and taking fish as they go over, or fishing them out of the canal.

I love grey herons, I think they're a really statuesque sort of animal.

'One of the delights that heron would have had his eye on

'on in the past would have been that old London favourite - the eel.

'The young elvers travel over huge distances to migrate to

'places like Brentford.

'They're still here in the canal,

'but in the past this place would have been teeming with them.'

We've got anecdotal records, from the 1830s for instance,

of millions of elvers coming in through London every day.

Huge, unimaginable numbers, nature in massive abundance,

and now we get an absolute fraction of that.

Here, their decline is being recorded.

A team of volunteers from the Thames Rivers Trust trap

and count the young elvers trying to make their way up the canal.

Over a two-month period they've only seen about 50.

It's a very complicated story

because they have this amazing life cycle.

They travel from the ocean, 5,000km away, that's where they start,

and they drift with the ocean currents

across from the Sargasso Sea,

and then they get washed up in estuaries across the coasts

of Europe and end up in lovely places

like this at Brentford Lock here.

En route they are susceptible to all sorts of risks -

there's fishing, big part of the picture, commercial interest there,

people have eaten them for many generations of course.

The changing ocean currents, related to climate change and things,

new diseases in the European eel.

'As well as counting them the team have built an elver pass,

'to help make life as easy as possible for those eels that

'actually make it here.'

Without our help the elvers wouldn't be able to get above the weir,

so we've had this elver pass installed here...

that allows the elvers to wriggle up the pass

into our trapping box.

And then we count them, measure them, and let them go on their way.

It's very important that we carry on doing what we can in our patch,

so, opening up access to the canals, opening up access to the rivers.

The more adults we can support in London,

the more adult eels will return back to the Sargasso to breed,

and then hopefully, more breeding adults will mean more young elvers

coming back into London year-on-year.

It's great that volunteers are trying to encourage eels

back to London in greater numbers, but all along the banks,

other animals are already flourishing.

Leela had something that looked like a baby dinosaur to show me

just a couple of blocks away at Hanwell.

This is a smooth newt. This is actually a juvenile newt.

It looks like it was last year's.

Yeah... But a female.

We can tell that from the colouration. She's slightly paler.

Why do these newts like the canal so much?

The canal at this point has got side ponds in it,

so areas where it's free from fish.

In the spring, so May onwards, they come down into this area to breed.

It's a really, really important part of their life cycle.

The canal connects all our different gardens, our different parks.

A male newt will actually travel a few kilometres

to find new ponds, and they will travel 500 metres each night.

If people were to take time and look in their ponds in the spring

they might find these small newts.

Completely harmless.

Obviously in their gardens too.

So, if they could take time to make a compost heap,

or even just leave a pile of logs or stones in a corner

where they won't be disturbed, that is excellent for the newts.

'As we were filming our newt, a dog walker stopped to look.

'He was fascinated by the creature, but had previously seen something

'on the tow path that he'd never seen before.'

It was a silvery colour, about that round.

What, newts? No. About that round.

It had like a head of a lizard coming out of it,

as though it had dropped off a tree.

It's just like you're describing a slowworm. But it was silvery.

Yes, silvery or bronze-like.

When I looked on the website, it didn't say it was silvery.

No, they can have different colourations.

'With his dogs impatient to continue their brisk walk,

'the gentleman moved on, but Leela actually had a slowworm

'to show me, that she'd found on this very spot earlier in the day.'

This is the perfect home for slowworms as well.

They like similar habitat to the newt.

They're loving the undergrowth here,

the long grasses we've got in the field to the back.

They'll be sheltering underneath piles of wood,

and burrowing slightly into the ground itself.

They are really similar to a snake,

but their scales don't overlap at all,

which makes them really smooth to the touch.

They're actually a legless lizard.

'Leela and her legless lizards and newts had already convinced me

'that if it's wildlife you're after,

'a trip down the canal is well worthwhile.

'But before I left, I wanted to enjoy the heron one last time.

'He stood patiently hoping for lunch, whilst just above him,

'London got on with its busy life.'

If you take a few steps away from the canal,

you might end up on a street like this.

Pretty busy.

So, not much space for wildlife, you might think.

But, most parts of the capital have parks and open spaces,

and if our wildlife senses any old piece of land that suits,

they move in and live quite happily,

as Alison Steadman found out right in inner-city Stoke Newington.

Heat haze against concrete.

The smell of the ubiquitous kebab.

Sounds of dubstep, rap and funk emanate from every car.

But hold on, is that the distant sound of birdsong I can hear?

This is Abney Park Cemetery, and it's an extraordinary place.

It was originally a woodland,

but because it's been a cemetery since 1840,

no-one's been allowed to build on it, and it teems with wildlife.

'I live just down the road from this place,

'and I adore the sight and sounds of birds in my garden.

'But here, smack bang in the middle of one of the most populated parts

'of London, the birdsong is apparently some of the loudest

'and varied of anywhere in the country.

'Richard Beard has spotted birds in here for years

'and is a sound recordist.

'So, with his rather fetching microphone,

'he's heard them all, and has even made a CD of them singing.'

So what have you been hearing? Anything good?

Yes, there's been some magpies up there.

And a great spotted woodpecker

has been calling just over there.

Right.

We've had some goldfinches. Oh, that was a great tit!

I particularly like the green woodpeckers.

That yaffle they have.

Yeah, the yaffle, they call it. It's a lovely sound.

It's almost like they're laughing.

Yeah, and it carries right across a wood. Absolutely, yes.

The thing I find about the birdsong is that,

because obviously we all lead busy lives now, we get tired and stressed,

and sometimes I get very stressed with my job, although it's fun.

But I love just to sit, and if there's a blackbird singing,

there's something calming about it, isn't there?

They'll perch themselves in full view and sing away.

Although you can recognise the song of a blackbird,

every blackbird will have a slightly different song. Really?

Yes, so there was a car alarm going off at some distance over there -

they'll often mimic car alarms, or mobile phones.

Somewhere in the song, there will be some mimicry of something else.

Right, I didn't know that.

So why is this place so special to you?

It's a haven.

We're surrounded by houses and traffic,

but what we get here is just so many different species.

There are so many different habitats in here.

Beautiful trees everywhere. Yes. I think there are 120 different species of tree in here. Wow!

'Listening to birds singing, I'm rather good at that,

'but at this time of year,

'it's actually very difficult to see the birds in the canopy above.

'But I know a man who always can.

'Graham Hatherley is our wildlife cameraman, and was lurking

'amongst the gravestones, ready to film anything he could find.

'He must have some tips.

I like to pick a good spot.

You see an awful lot more, I think, by staying still,

than you do by wandering around.

I always think a fisherman sees a lot more than a cyclist.

A good friend of mine often says look up,

so in this environment

you've got the forest canopy, and a lot of the smaller birds particularly

will be gleaning flies and other food from the top of the canopy.

Birds in the lower canopy like robins and blackbirds

will often forage on the ground.

So you're looking for movement, really.

And also what food they like, I suppose, as well.

If you're near a tree that's got berries that a particular bird

would like... Absolutely, yes.

In fact, there's a cherry tree along here,

which has wood pigeons in it and grey squirrels feeding.

I had a cherry or two from it too!

And I noticed a fox cub underneath,

picking up the cherries that the other birds and the grey squirrel

were dropping as they were foraging.

And this cub, I guess,

had left the safety of its mother's protection

in the last month or two, so this is the critical time in its life.

Having to forage for itself. That's right.

Have you seen anything else exciting?

Yes, just now there was a sparrowhawk just over in the wood in that direction.

Brilliant. Just skulking in the canopy.

And I think that was a young bird, a fledgling from this year.

We're 50 yards from Stoke Newington High Street,

and all this is going on!

It's so exciting. It is, isn't it?

And it's good to have a green heart, a green lung,

in a really dense, urban space.

So full of life and interesting things to see,

if you sit for a moment and notice them.

Just take the time, take five minutes and look.

'As the sun lowered, new birds came out

'and performed a merry dance for us.

'High in the sky, swifts search for their supper.

'This really is somewhere you should experience for real.

'I'd recommend sticking to the paths though

'because it really is a bit of a jungle.'

So, if you want to come and see all this for yourself,

it's open every day, but it closes at night.

But I'm being given a special treat.

I am going bat spotting.

'Abney Park's Gothic chapel makes a perfect spooky location for them.

'I'd arranged to meet Philip Briggs from the Bat Conservation Trust.

'He came armed with his bat detectors.'

So, here we've got a common pipistrelle.

It's got that very distinctive wet, slappy sound, like somebody slapping their cheeks.

Pipistrelle are the really tiny ones, aren't they? Yes, exactly.

So we probably can't see those because they're so tiny.

No, if you look up, you can see them flitting around.

So, Philip, tell me,

why is this particular place really good for bats?

Well, it's full of insects, which they like to eat.

Woodland is one of the best kind of habitats for insects.

Certainly a lot of insects around tonight.

And it's also nice and dark.

They prefer dark areas because they're safe from predators.

There's one.

There, there!

They're just hoovering up all these midges and annoying insects.

I wish they'd hoover up a few more - I'm itching all over!

It's said that one of these can eat 3,000 midges in an evening. Really?!

There's one!

BUZZING NOISE

Hear that? That's called a feeding buzz.

When they detect an insect, they speed up their calls

so they can really home in on it.

The calls get so fast that on the bat detector it just sounds like a raspberry!

Right!

They have a great time here, it's a wonderful location for them,

but what about the rest of London?

Well, London has lots of really nice bat habitats.

There's all the parks, where you've got water, trees, just the sort of places they like.

There's buildings, trees for them to roost in.

The trouble with London is the habitat is very fragmented,

so it's kind of lots of islands.

We've got all this street lighting everywhere... Yeah. Exactly.

It's quite bright. Yes, they need these dark corridors.

So would you say this was a perfect location for bats?

I think it's pretty good.

What a treasure that place is.

But London can be a very hard and unforgiving city.

So, without our help, wildlife would struggle to find places to live.

But thankfully, all over London,

there are people using the cityscape in very clever ways,

and deliberately creating habitats for wildlife.

Here, just off the Lea Bridge Road in Leyton,

surrounded by light industry and traffic,

something truly beautiful has occurred.

This place was originally built in 1852 to provide clean water

to the East End, following an outbreak of cholera.

This would have been either open water, or ten to fifty men

labouring away digging out sand and gravel.

The amount of activity going on, the steam engines pumping,

the noise, the people wandering around,

the horses pulling carts.

I don't think it would have been the best habitat for wildlife.

# Birds flying high

# You know how I feel

# Sun in the sky

# You know how I feel... #

But by the late 1960s, it was obsolete

and was left to become overgrown and a wasteland.

But 20 years ago, it was realised that it had the potential

to be the perfect habitat for wildlife.

We try and balance the two -

the industrial history and the natural history.

We've got a variety of habitats, from reed bed to wet woodland,

which is quite a rare habitat.

We've got a wet meadow behind us.

This used to be a filter bed,

so how did it make the transition to what it is now?

A key thing we did was to stop managing it as a filter bed,

so it was left to go wild and naturally colonise.

One of the key things we did was bring in a pumping system for water,

so that meant that we can now manage the different water levels

at different times of the year, and that helps us keep the habitats

at optimum level for different wildlife at different times.

This is now a perfect spot for a bit of urban birding.

This unique hide has a different view every time you open

a different window, and different birds to be seen through each one.

But there's much more than birds here.

Even the old wellhead had a treat in store.

This is where all the clean water would have ended up.

It's been opened up now so people can see some of the architecture.

Is that not a frog down there? Yes, that's great.

That's one of our edible frogs.

That's probably the first edible frog I have seen in London!

# Dragonfly out in the sun

# You know what I mean, don't you know

# Butterflies all having fun

# You know what I mean... #

As Graham, our cameraman, hid amongst the reed beds,

something wonderful happened.

All around him, nymphs turned into beautiful dragonflies.

# And this old world is a new world

# And a bold world for me... #

Remember, this is just across the road from trains, buses

and traffic jams, so this really is

a surprising part of London's East End.

And it's open to the public all year round, and admission is totally free.

London has over 40 nature reserves and wetland areas that you can visit.

Binoculars can be inexpensive,

and even bat detectors are less pricey than you'd think.

So, don't just watch it on telly - get out there

and take a look around for yourself.

'If you need help, go to our website.

'Of course, you've probably missed that -

'but don't worry, I'll give it out again before the end of the programme.

'If you wanted to, you could really get involved.

'Most of the conservation work here is done by volunteers like Paul Lister.'

This is an amazing area of grassland.

There must be tonnes of butterflies hanging out here.

Yup, we've got something like a third of the 59 species

that are normally recorded in the UK on this site.

What - right next door to Lea Bridge Road,

you have a third of all butterflies found in Britain?!

Absolutely. They're such beautiful creatures. They are indeed.

There has been a bit of a downturn in butterflies. Why has that happened?

Well, agricultural issues, pesticides and so on

have played a part in that, I'm sure.

But of course, in an urban environment like this,

particularly one that's been constructed out of a lot of concrete

and filter beds and so on, maybe we're a little less prone to that.

That's really interesting.

You'd think that in the countryside it'd be much more pristine,

but urban environments are actually better

because we don't use pesticides like people in the countryside do.

Butterfly meadows like this one

aren't to be found on most London streets,

but one thing we are most certainly not short of is rooftops.

And right next to King's Cross Station,

they're using the roof of an office block

to help another endangered species.

The bee has been in such decline that the government

are even getting involved.

Somebody calculated that one in three bites of food

that you eat are actually being pollinated by bees.

And so, if we don't have that, we'd have to do it manually,

which is crazy.

They are an intrinsic part of our food-growing production.

On the next roof across from here, we've got a couple of beehives.

So I'm planting plants that actually will feed them because,

up to now, London's been a really good refuge for bees in the UK.

It's away from the agri-farming, no spraying,

but there's a slight problem here - everyone's very keen to have hives.

John Chapple, a very famous London beekeeper,

when he first started he was the only hive in his area.

Now he says he's got 19 other hives around him.

We've got to actually ramp up food, more fodder.

We all have, I think,

a responsibility to actually do as much as we can.

This building overlooks the canal, and back down on the waterway

they're doing their bit.

They're planting floating meadows to give the bees even MORE food

as they make their way alongside the watery corridor.

This is a rather faster, less leafy highway.

It's the Westway, one of the main arterial roads into Central London.

But just a stone's throw away,

there's a garden that shows what we can all do.

Jackie St Clair has, up to now,

been best known for her glamour modelling,

but it's her love of birding that I've always known her for.

I only started modelling so I could go on trips to exotic locations

and see the birds there.

I'd take my binoculars when I was shooting a calendar in Mauritius,

or the Seychelles, or Bali, or Fiji.

And I'd often extend my trip by a few days

and I'd go around the islands to see what was there.

I'd always said if I was lucky enough

to have a garden of my own, I'd make it as wildlife friendly as possible.

Together with the expertise of her gardener Phil Ram,

Jackie has created a birder's paradise.

But before we got into the birding, they had something else to show me.

I can see a tiny little prickly back.

If you just hold back that ivy a little bit...

Like that, hold back the ivy.

Tucked in there, almost the same colour as the hay...

..is a little spiny back.

'They'd rescued a beautiful hedgehog.'

So there she is. I don't think we should get her out.

Oh, not at all, not at all, let's leave her.

For me, I almost feel like I'm in the edge of a wood.

So you must get a lot of good birds here as well.

Yes, it feels like that.

We've put up 27 nest boxes - different ones

and they have attracted a lot of different species.

High up in that sycamore is a woodpecker box.

We were lucky enough to have a family of great spotted this year.

We've had blackbirds, robins, blue tits, coal tits,

long-tailed tits, wrens, thrush, dunnocks, greenfinch, chaffinch,

goldfinch, the odd pied wagtail, even a grey wagtail -

very surprisingly.

Apart from planting things that provide seeds and berries,

we've added extra food for them,

we have a tiny pond so they can drink and bathe.

The feeders were really the first thing, weren't they?

When the garden was newly-planted,

obviously nothing was going to sustain any wildlife or anything,

so the feeders were a key way of bringing stuff in.

This is niger seed to attract goldfinches

and the moment we put it there, they arrived. Really?

And that's incredible in itself, isn't it?

I mean, the fact that you put in niger seed and then...

..within days, they know it's here.

Now, why do they know it's here?

Well, they do circuits - birds do circuits.

They visit the territory, they know, eventually,

when things are put up and they come and feed and that's it.

Yeah, that's brilliant.

Do you think they also have a little bit of jungle telegraph?

You know, do you think they let their mates know about it? Yes.

Absolutely.

So, even in a jam-packed city like London, there's things we can all do

to help the birds, the bees and all manner of wildlife to live with us.

It's wonderful, isn't it?

Woodpeckers next to the Westway,

dragonflies hatching by Lea Bridge Road,

even lizards lounging in Hanwell.

So you see, this great big capital of ours really is an urban jungle -

it's just knowing where to look.

If, like me, you want to find lots of places to visit to check out

London's wildlife,

or find out how to get more involved, go to our webpage...

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd