Archives for May 2011

Thanks to everyone who played along with last night's question. Here's tonight's... Can you guess what animal is making the sound I play on the show?

Post your answers here, or on Twitter (#springwatch), or on our new Facebook page. Good luck!

Update: The answer was little owl. Well done to everyone that got it right!

Guest blogger: Emily Joáchim on her passion for and research into little owls.

I've always been fascinated by the natural world and have been researching little owl ecology in Britain for the past three years. Using nest box cameras to help me, I'm investigating dispersal behaviour, breeding biology, diet and feeding behaviour.

Me with one of the little owls from my project

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Guest blogger: Ace sound recordist Chris Watson was up in the wee small hours to record the dawn chorus here at Ynys-hir this morning.

Tuesday 31 May

0235h Woken up by hail rattling on my bedroom window.

0240h Alarm ringtone gets me out of bed.After a stormy and very cold night the weather miraculously clears as I drive into the reserve and I can see starlight through the tree canopy. The wind has dropped and in the woodland it's calm, still and very quiet. The microphone cables and connectors are really wet so it's an anxious moment when I plug in to listen if everything is still working after an over night soaking. The system powers up and through my headphones I hear... virtually nothing.

Ynys-hir's beautiful woodland

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Okay, here's a little quiz for tonight's show. What species does this feather belong to? Answer by commenting below or on Twitter using the hashtag #springwatch.

Did you get it right? The answer is... red kite.

Welcome back to a brand new series of Springwatch. The big news this year is of course that we have a new home: the stunning RSPB reserve Ynys-hir in Mid Wales. We're really excited to be at this wildlife haven. Already live on the webcams we've had barn owls, woodpeckers, osytercatchers, buzzards and redstarts... and we're expecting a whole lot more where they came from over the next three weeks.

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This series we'll be looking at easy ways you to attract wildlife to your garden. So please have a look at the sneak previews of the films on the links below and let us know if you've got any other great ideas to share.

Helping bees: If you provide bees with resting places and food, they'll pollinate your flowers and help your garden to burst with colour in the summer.

Food for the birds: With just a few minutes in the kitchen you can cook up a feast for your garden birds. A very simple recipe

Attracting pond life: Having a pond will attract a multitude of flora and fauna from damselflies to frogs and newts. You don't need to have a large garden to have a pond. You can make one out of a range of different containers that don't require any digging at all!

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There are loads of ways that you can help wildlife in your garden. Having a pond will attract a multitude of flora and fauna from damselflies to frogs and newts.

You don't need to have a large garden to have a pond. You can make one out of a range of different containers that don't require any digging at all!

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There are loads of ways that you can help wildlife in your garden. With just a few minutes in the kitchen you can cook up a feast for your garden birds.

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There are loads of ways that you can help wildlife in your garden. With bees it's a two-way thing: If you provide them with resting places and food, they'll pollinate your flowers and help your garden to burst with colour this spring.

Here's one idea we've tried and tested.

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Guest blog: River lover Dr Mark Everard blogs on his passion, the minnow.

Although much of my life is spent by the river, springtime is a special time to watch the wildlife wake up and migrate back. Swallows and martins return, willow leaves unfurl, and the spring blossoms burst out. But, above all for me, the little fishes start their elaborate courtship rituals.

I simply love the little fishes of our rivers and ponds. It's a shame that they are so overlooked and underappreciated. They are truly beautiful and fascinating, not to mention being a fun way to get up close and personal with wildlife.

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Guest blogger: The Springwatch Adventure Team Producer Richard Taylor-Jones asks what you think about the reintroduction of beavers to the UK.

Beavers are once again living wild in the British Isles. It's an idea I've heard talked about pretty much ever since I've worked in wildlife television. But it's never come to pass, until now.

Beaver and reeds © Scottish Wildlife Trust

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On tonight's show you'll see Chris meet adder expert Sylvia Sheldon. In honour of this we've decided to celebrate the best adder photos from the Springwatch Flickr group. So here they are...

Checking if the coast is clear © Lindsay McCrae

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Were here! At Ynys-hir. I rode up on a bike yesterday from Somerset - I had forgotten just how extraordinarily beautiful Wales is.. . Nearly fell off at one point - the sky was suddenly thick with red kites - I've never seen anything like it. I pulled over and counted over 50 in the air at the same time - an amazing sight .

Me and the Unsprung team - Sam and Level-headed Joe

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Pretty much the whole of the Springwatch team is onsite at Ynys-hir now, from the wildlife cameramen to the caterers. The difference in atmosphere from when I was last here on Thursday couldn't be more pronounced as everyone makes last-minute preparations for the first rehearsal tomorrow and the first show on Monday.

Our new home for 2011

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Guest bloggers Kimberley Tew and Beverley Gormley look back at the records the Woodland Trust holds that document spring happenings dating back 275 years.

Here at the Woodland Trust we are getting really excited about Springwatch starting next week. We love spotting the signs of spring, and judging by the popularity of Springwatch and the records you send in to Nature's Calendar, you do too.

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It has been a much quieter week this week, reports the BTO's Paul Stancliffe. Migration has been suppressed by the wind being in the west all week and times being pretty strong. But most of our migrants are now here, with the exception of house martin.

House martin © John Harding/BTO

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For our third week, Liz Bonnin joins the Springwatch Adventure Team to explore a rather strange and surprising world.

Prepare to be intrigued and amazed by the world at the edges of our human landscape, the places we like to forget about - the apparently empty docklands, the industrial "waste grounds", the seemingly dreary railway embankments and more. Intriguingly, these places provide wildlife with a unique opportunity to survive very close to us, creating a living landscape where humans and nature co-exist in close proximity, often unbeknownst to us.

Liz Bonnin will be exploring the strange world of the places we like to forget

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For week two, Welsh wildlife expert Iolo Willams and the Springwatch Adventure Team celebrate spring at what is we think is one of the finest of Welsh wildlife locations - Skomer Island. It's a small rocky island, one mile square, sitting off the western tip of Pembrokeshire.

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For the first time in 400 years, beavers are once again swimming in UK waters. As part of a major scientific trial, the first nationally extinct mammal ever to be re-introduced to the UK is living free once again. This year, we're sending Charlie Hamilton James and the Springwatch Adventure Team to the home of these released beavers - Knapdale Forest in Scotland.

Charlie Hamilton James

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Three friends of Springwatch return to the gang, with new wildlife missions...

For 2011 we'll not only be enjoying the wildlife riches of our new base at Ynis-hir in Wales. We'll also be reporting from across the nation from other wildlife hotspots. After the success of our weekly guest presenter slots on Autumnwatch 2010, we're continuing the tradition by inviting back three friends of the series - Charlie Hamilton James, Iolo Williams and Liz Bonnin - for each of the three weeks of Springwatch 2011.

Our guest presenters for 2011: Charlie Hamilton James, Iolo Williams and Liz Bonnin

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I promised some more behind the scenes photos from our new location at Ynys-hirearlier this week. As luck would have it I was there yesterday. The sun shone, the birds sung (especially loud were the black caps and willow warblers in the woodland) and I had my camera to hand...

The mini-cam team prepare to rig a new nest camera

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Ynys-hir, our stunning new location, (see some photos here) is a hive of activity this week as Portakabins arrive, golf buggies get delivered (it's a long way from the studio to the production village) and the marquee (our office for the three weeks of the series) gets erected ready for the first programme. You won't see much of this in the show, of course, but what you will see a lot of is the studio. At the end of April it was a tractor shed by 8pm on 30 May it will be a cosy home for Chris, Kate and Martin.

You'll be able to see exactly what it ends up looking like then (a clue: it's gonna be good), but in the meantime we thought we'd post a few photos taken while it's being transformed to give you a feel. Apologies in advance for the fuzzy quality - they're all mobile phone shots.

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Just a week to go before we decamp from Springwatch Towers and make our way to our new home at Ynys-hir.

Things are hotting up in the office, and here on the web the excitement's building as more and more exquisite wildlife photography floods into the Springwatch Photo Group.

So here are our mid-May picks of your fantastic photos...

Common blue © Jason Elmore

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Although the predicted sociable plover failed to show, it's been an extraordinary week for migration, according to the BTO's Paul Stancliffe. Especially for rare waders. "At least three buff-breasted sandpipers were reported and singles of broad-billed sandpiper and Kentish plover in Cumbria, spotted sandpiper in Buckinghamshire, and lesser yellowlegs and great snipe in Norfolk," he says. "The snipe was in full display for one evening only."

Rock bunting © Kevin Carlson/BTO

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The whole team are now crazily busy, getting everything ready for another hectic month of Springwatching, starting on 30 May. Camera teams are out all the time now, catching the best of the action, and our amazing technical team are doing their most ambitious build ever in our new home at the RSPB's stunning Ynys-hir nature reserve in wild west Wales.

Right in the thick of peak preparation, we've had the most unexpected and delightful interruption... Springwatch just won a BAFTA!

The 2010 Springwatch team at Pensthorpe

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Guest bloggers: With all this talk of the arrival of spring and what it means for the summer, our friends Kimberley Tew and Beverley Gormley at the Woodland Trust wanted to get their two cents in.

Ever heard the old rhyme "If the oak before the ash, then we'll only have a splash, if the ash before the oak, then we'll surely have a soak"? If it's to be believed we could be in for a pretty dry summer.

It looks like oak is leafing first this year. Image © John Mccarthy / Woodland Trust Picture Library

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We promised the mass arrival of swifts in the last migration blog post. Judging from your response and the BTO's records they're swooping in all across the country now and already investigating nesting sites. If you haven't yet seen any screeching overhead then get out there this weekend and start looking!

Sunlit Swift © forgetfulelephant

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After three wonderful years at Pensthorpe Nature Reserve in Norfolk, Springwatch is moving its base and going wild in Wales! Our new home is the remote, breathtakingly beautiful and biologically fascinating RSPB Ynys-hir nature reserve in Ceredigion, Mid Wales. We're delighted to be in Wales this year, discovering the best that Welsh wildlife has to offer.

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Over 30,000 spring wildlife pictures have been shared on the Springwatch photo group since we reopened it in March.

Here's the latest selection of stunners from the group... beautiful badgers, sneaky spiders, magnificent macros and a whole lot more.

Orange tip portrait © Stephen / Steb1

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