2013 Autumnwatch Unsprung

Welcome to Unsprung. I don't really know what that's all about, but

we've got a very special show for you tonight. We've got four

presenters. One... Come on! Two, can you come quicker than that? Three,

and four. We've got a live audience. CHEERING

I have a cold. Shame. We've got some fantastic mammals, and we've got

some absolutely brilliant guests, and they are all stuffed into a

small barn here in the middle of Leighton Moss reserve. It is going

to be a good night. You could say this is a recipe for the best kind

of night. We've had a bit of an artistic leaning this week on

Unsprung. We've all been very creative, some more than others, and

that isn't a comment about your log versus pumpkin tragedy. I saw it

under the caravan last night. Very sad. Later on we are going to meet

some art ises who have managed to turn paper and plastic building

bricks into the most fantastic wildlife sculptures. But first, I'm

quite good at this, I'm going to do a little bit of paper sculpture and

create a couple of birds for you. There are look. -- there you are

look, a seagull, a herring gull actually. And another one. I've been

practising. Do you want a drum roll? If you could, yes. What's that? It's

a duck. It hasn't hatched yet. Terrible. That was terrible. I do

apologise. We've also got Level-headed Joe.

CHEERING as usual, she is patrolling the

information highway and feeding us your questions and comments. Are

there any good ones? Steve Price said when I lived across from

Morecambe Bay, the foxes use to hunt on the mudflats for fish trapped

when the sea retreated. Any other nuggets? Lots of love for the show.

We like that. We like the love. Jo will also be taking the answers for

tonight's quiz, which reminds me, I had better set it. I'm calling this

who's flight line is it anyway? Where are my bird pictures gone? It

is all going very well! Here they come. We are going to give you birds

first. Chris, we know you like a waxwing. Michaela has already

admitted her love affair for the loveliest -- the ugliest bird in the

air. And that's the goose for Martin. These are, the idea is to

match the birds with their migratory route. This is the easiest quiz

we've had all week. The reason being is you should know the answers.

Chris and Martin and Michaela have been going on about this all week.

And on and on. There's route A, from green land to us. We've got route B,

over from the north of Europe. Lots of clues. And one leaving. It

doesn't get much easier. Even I can get this. We are hoping that

Level-headed Jo will be rushed off her feet tonight.

We are going to start with a little bit of audience interaction in the

sense of I think Jo is in the audience, Jo, we've been sent a

series of rather nice image as. Where is Jo? We can't find her.

Maybe she's migrated. But Jo sent in some fantastic things. She notice

that on her kitchen table she had left her mince. She doesn't have

mice but something was pinching her mince. What has been doing this? --

her mints. Like all dedicated naturalists and curious minds she

staked out the mint and this is what she saw. Wasps were nibbling her

mints. Really? This was early autumn? Five or six weeks ago.

That's perfect. They look like they might be male Wasps. They have a

longer-looking... The whole purpose of a wasp nest, it is an annual

affair, is to produce the general electionual generation. That's the

Queen and the male towards the end of the season. The Queen pretty much

gives up. The control of the workers disperses and they pretty much go

and hit the town and hit the sweet stuff. These males are fuelling up

on the mints. This is quite interesting, because there is no

such thing as a wasp. They've all got names. They've all got names.

You can identify them. One of the best ways is by their facial

features. I've got to get this in the right order, if you take those

two, you can have one there. Anyone else want any other wasp ? Let's

have a close-up. We are looking at several features on the wasp head.

This one in my hand, there's the malar patch, the cheek, and up there

a patch above the eye. All these give an identity but this marking is

the critical one in the middle. It varies between all our species. We

are looking at this wasp. Which one of them that we are holding up looks

like that one there? Oh, it's this one. It is working. You had diatoms

earlier on and now you are identifying a wasp. We are turning

her. And these are their names written on the back of their heads!

This is the common wasp, the one that you typically see. Who had the

blackest-faced one? That's the red wasp. Another way of identifying the

wasp is to look at the markers on the abdomen. The red wasp does have

a, often has a reddish-brown band as well. Continuing with the theme of

all the information you've shared with us, we've got some fantastic

things sent in here. Not just stories and questions but Barry has

sent in his entire collection. If you want an illustration of one

man's trash is another man's treasure, this is it. He's picked

all his items up off the bank of the Thames, not far from St Paul's. This

one is my favourite. Barry seems to think this is a carved stone. I

don't know if I'm destroying the value of Barry's collection but I

think it is better than a carved stone. If you look closely you can

see patterns. Can you see that on the camera? Another one there and

another one there. A symmetry going on here. That there is this lump of

flint. It is a fossilised sea urchin. I can't tell you much more

about that but it is a really nice item. I've got a whole house full of

this sort of stuff. This one is also interesting. This one here is almost

certainly a pig tooth of some kind, or a tusk. It could be a

domesticated pig. We don't know how old it is. But if it is over 300

years old it could potentially be the tusk of a wild boar. It isn't

but it is a possibility. When I hear the name wild boar it evokes images

of a time past. The last wild boar destroyed or shot in the UK was just

up the road at Wild Boar Sca in the Pennines. They are back. They've

been reintroduced. I like the fact that we've got wild boar back but

when they've been missing for so long there are often a few problems.

Meet this wild boar whose curiosity was nearly the death of her and her

family. She was descended from the wild boar reintroduced to the Forest

of Dean in 2004. For the most part these shy and elusive creatures

avoid contact with us, preferring to live and breed in the remotest areas

of the forest. However, where people feed the wildfowl some boar spot the

opportunity for fast food. This almost prove to be a death sentence

for her. Although there were no reported incidents of people being

injured by boar these are wild animals, with the biggest meals

often weighing over 140 kgs. For the Forestry Commission culling and

over-friendly boar is their only option. Alex runs a llama trekking

company in the forest of Dean. Earlier in the summer he received

news of a particularly tame boar which was due to be put down this

day. He went to investigate. To my horror I saw a lady with a very

young child feeding dog biscuits to a wild boar. I tried to persistent

out to her that what she was doing was a death certificate for the

boar. We decided to set up a plan to catch this boar and take it to our

sanctuary. Little be Alastair realise he had not just save life of

one boar but three, as three months later she gave birth to two stripy

hoglets. This was her first litter, so having only two is not unusual.

These stripy babies are often called humbugs due to their resemblance to

the sweets. They lose these distinctive markings at to four

months old. Sadly these piglets will never be released back into the

forest, as they would be unable to fend for themselves. Like their

mother, they associate people with food. My sanctuary is not a

solution. You've got to treat all wild animals with respect. They are

rather pretty. Just appreciate that and enjoy them. Ah. I want to point

out that Alastair was not pig rust until that film. That scene where he

puts it in the van looks suspicious. He has full consent from the

Forestry Commission to rehome the wild boar there. The serious side of

that movie is that it is that we've lived without these animals for so

long I feel we've lost common sense. It is like feeding the foxing, but

the boar's been gone so long. But they play an important role in

ecology, as they turn over the soil and promote regeneration of all

sorts of things. We need to adapt to them and be tolerant. I totally

agree. We've got an e-mail from Denzil Lloyd. I would like your

input on this. He's said, there is a resident group of roe deer on our

land and on one of their resting places we've found a pile of clean

damson stones. It is a bed where the deer lie. I initially thought no,

int won't be that, but I've never experienced it. I know these animals

will eat fruit. Chris, you are a connoisseur of... Damsons and plums.

Denzil thinks this animal, possibly, has been chewing the fruit and

spitting the seeds out. No. It would have to go right through. It is not

mixed with other faeces. I'm wondering whether it is another

animal which happened to have passed those. It is a bit of a mystery,

Denzil. We don't really know the answer but it is an interesting

observation. The only thing with this is to keep your eye open and

over time you might piece together enough "nuggets" - dare I say it?

There's chuckling going on over there. Over here, I did promise you

fantastic mammal as, and we have Terry and your daughter, Sally.

Welcome. You've brought with you some equally fantastic mammals. Who

is this? This is Poppy. We've got a hound and we've got a fox. This is

Archie. Arty the fox. You are lovely. We've had a lot of foxes on

Autumnwatch and Chris has been following the fortunes of the urban

and suburban foxes in Brighton. I want you to put the fox politics out

of your mind and enjoy the fact we've got a fox in the studio.

What's his story? About three years ago, he came to us as a very small

cub. He was covered in ticks and in the process of taking off the ticks

over a while, as there were all sorts of eggs on him and he wasn't

in a very good way, he became imprinted, so he couldn't go back

into the wild again. Normally when we rescue foxes we put them back

into the wild. Not locally. We have great relationships with local

farmers. We don't put them back on the farmland, we put them usually

into the wild of Scotland, where they are no bother. But he couldn't

go back. He has a life now of educating children really. We take

him to schools. And having the opportunity of getting that close to

a fox is unbelievable. It is pretty cool for us as well. The question I

really want to ask, what's the relationship between the dog and the

fox? This is quite an unusual sight isn't it? Originally we had a Jack

Russell. The Jack Russell kind of mothered the fox when the fox was a

baby. But unfortunately the Jack Russell died. Oh, no! . After that

happened we had to get a surrogate dog. We got Poppy as a puppy and it

became the opposite relationship really. They love each other and

they play with each other a lot. It is enrichment. We've tried other

foxes in with Arty but he thinks he's human, so he likes taking the

dog for a walk. Brilliant. Really nice to see you and it is Poppy's

birthday today. Happy birthday, Poppy. You told me a cool fact

earlier on. Can you share it with the audience? Yes. Different foxes

have different attributes in different parts of the country. Arty

here was brought to us from the North East, the wetlands centre in

Washington. A Geordie fox. Generally they've got longer legs than the

ones in the North-West, where we come from, in Cumbria. Fantastic.

Thank you for bringing your fantastic mammals. Lovely to see

them. We've got some rather... Look at

this tea cosy. This is a regular feature. This is Lynn Hardman. Thank

you for. This you create these things regularly. I do, yes. This

one is a fox. It is all in theme. Wonderfully creative. But I did

promise you a bit of a creative theme. We have got, I want to invite

to the crate, to the cheques Diane and Tom pulse son. Please --

Poulson. Please come and join us. APPLAUSE I've heard a lot about what

you are about to show us. And I think you are going to put my egg to

shame aren't you? I've brought in one of these. Martin, you've broken

it already. This is made entirely of paper, is that right? Yes. How on

earth do you do that? Well, I draw, I always look for photos in motion

of these birds. I draw a model on a commuter. -- on a computer. After

that I'd the legs and everything, and the wings. After that I start to

create the skeleton in paper and start to paste each feather. This is

the skeleton here that you've got and this is a starling obviously.

That is incredible. Fantastic. What and how but start doing this? Well,

as I'm from Colombia I love all kinds of birds. What made me feel

concerned about them was most of them were domestic. And then I look

it at the ones in the wild and studied their movement and their

action and their motion. That really caught my attention. I wanted to

represent them, to show them in real life. So all your birds are in

action. They are all flying. Wow! Oh my goodness me! Look at that. You

didn't choose an easy bird there, a bird of paradise. A blue jay as

well. Fantastic. And this is all made with paper? Yes. Fantastic. As

if one fantastic bird artist isn't enough, we've got two. Tom, you

create models of birds out of plastic bricks? Yes, I do. You can

see them dotted around the studio. These are fantastic. Which are your

favourite ones? My favourite is the robin. He was the inspiration behind

the whole project. It was a moment when I was gardening and a robin

landed on my fork handle and that gave me the inspiration to start

building birds. That's quite a jump from seeing a robin to building one

out of Lego. I've always been interested in the plastic bricks.

Have you got any plastic bricks? No. I have. My son does them and I had

to build the millennium Falconry. It took me four-and-a-half hours.

You've probably done a real falcon. It is in the pipeline. This is my

favourite, and it is not a bird. It is a badger. Absolutely fantastic.

It is so accurate with wits biological detail. You can tell it's

a maerlings because it has a wired tail. And if you look very closely

it has a subcordal gland as well. I love that. I could do that all day.

Brilliant. Thank you very much guys for coming in and sharing those gems

with us. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

We are now going for some man-made sculptures to some natural ones

with. It is where we all get our inspiration from. We've been sent

these by Jeff Franklin. He found these on his washing line. That's

the most beautiful thing. To someone who is into bugs that is just

tessellation. Those are eggs. We can do that. We've got a close-up there.

You can see the patterns there. The question is, we don't actually know

what eggs they are. We've passed them around the Autumnwatch team.

Have you got any idea? I think they are a moth egg, but which moth? Each

of those egg different. Someone out there who's been looking at moth

eggs for the last 50 years every Sunday with a microscope, made of

brass, bought from a boot sale in 1932, polished to perfection, would

be able to tell. But they probably haven't got a TV set. We've asked

around the Autumnwatch office and no-one's come up with the answer.

We've circulated this among various moth experts. The closest is someone

thought they might be the eggs of a large yellow underwing, but we don't

really know. They only said that because it's the commonest moth,

laying eggs on washing lines. This brings forward another little thing

nowadays, with all the technology and Autumnwatch, it is quite easy to

just ask people to answer your questions for you. Back in the day

when Chris and I were little boys, we used to see something like that

and we would rear them. We could cut your mother's washing line in

sections and rear those and see what cater pillars hatched out and see

the whole life cycle unfold and see the adult moth. That's how you

answered questions. That's the difference between the acquisition

of knowledge and getting information. Very profound. I just

eat the cake. We have got another interesting bunch of photos. These

have been September in by Ed -- these have been sent in by Edward.

They involve a pheasant. This pheasant. Do you notice something

going on there? No? The next image is the next pheasant. This animal

seems to be changing sex. I know all about bilateral butterflies split

down the middle. I don't know anything about sex change. Martin,

you do though don't you? I do. Somebody thrust some notes into my

hand before the programme. I didn't have time to read them, but the

personal story, because my dad used to have pheasants and we had a

golden pheasant. It was a hen, and it laid eggses. Gradually over a

period of weeks it began to change and it turned into a resplendent

golden pheasant cock, which became very aggressive and attacked us all.

I understand that one in 500 birds has... You did read those notes!

That was from my memory. One in 500 birds is capable of change sex. They

think it may be damage to the ovaries that does it. But then of

course some fish do it. Lots of molluscs. And limpets. And rass. And

their babies are viable. With this, as a female it is sterile and the

other males see this as a female. And she hasn't got any wattles. We

are running out of time, which is rather sad. We are going to have to

go to the quiz. Let's have a look at the birds. Let's look at the map.

We've got this bird. Which bird is A, moves from Greenland to us on an

annual basis? Shall we ask the audience? A lot of people got them

all right. They've been paying attention this week. Graham and

Debra and Hannah and Keith and Jo, finally I got the quiz right. It was

a difficult week though. Even I couldn't do any of them. B is?

Anyone in the audience knows which of these birds is B? Remember

Chris's prediction is we won't get many this year. We'll find out in

Winter Watch if he is right. And who is leaving this country? It is

Michaela's osprey. Brilliant. That is our little quiz. The answer for

you, give got the geese, the waxwing, and the osprey is C.

Fantastic. Jo, do we have any last comments from the audience, anything

of any interest? Lots of people love the cake and are saying, please get

on and eat it. And Jack says what do glow worms do in winter? Good

question. I believe they crawl under rocks. They do. They move out of the

grassland and in underneath bushes, so when they wake up in the spring

they can access snails to get them going. This is pretty much it, guys.

This is Autumnwatch, and it is over. I have had a great time. I would

like to thank all of the contributors, all the audience, all

the RSPB at Leighton Moss, because we've made a complete pain of

ourselves here. And the runners in particular, Ben and Tim, who have

been shuttling us back and forth across the marsh. There's too many

people, the Red Button team. Very important. It is too many people to

thank but thank you very much guys for inviting me into the family.

It's been a lovely team. We'll see you all in Winter Watch. Bye-bye.