From The Sun Online (at http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2001320029-2007260336,00.html):

Springwatch eclipses Big Bruv

By MARTIN PHILLIPS
Senior Feature Writer
June 07, 2007

IT’S got sex, squabbles, nocturnal fumblings, a few foxes and some real bitches – but so far there hasn’t been a tit in sight.

There are cute but feisty chicks, vicious sibling rivalry and occasional orgies, and all the action is watched 24 hours a day by banks of cameras and a peak TV audience of millions.

No, it’s not Big Brother 8. It’s survival-of-the-fittest for real in BBC2’s gripping wildlife show Springwatch.

The programme, presented for a fourth year by celebrity “twitcher” Bill Oddie and bubbly blonde Kate Humble, is running almost neck and neck with Channel 4’s BB, with around four million viewers.

But when the shows switch to their late-night format it’s the wildlife reality TV which Britain prefers.

E4 got just 90,000 viewers watching the nocturnal activities of the BB housemates on Monday, while 300,000 “twitched” to Springwatch Nightshift on
BBC2 to watch the ASBO-worthy behaviour of badgers.

So what’s Springwatch got that Big Brother hasn’t? Well, for starters it’s already featured sex, murder, cannibalism, attempted gang-rape, vandalism, mating rituals and adultery.

All that’s missing is Kate Humble’s tits — bluetits and great tits, that is.

Meanwhile, Big Brother has managed a lot of grooming, preening, squabbling and twittering birds. Yet the closest to any action has been a bit of flirting, a few tears, a couple of food squabbles, bubbles in the bath and wee in the shower.

He says: “I wouldn’t like to think we are competing with Big Brother — we are four divisions above them and they are due for relegation.

“Or maybe we are playing a totally different game.

“This is REAL reality TV. We don’t put together people with the intent of seeing them tear each other apart.

“Big Brother is rather like putting an owl into the same nest as a bluetit.
It’s completely artificial. Our wildlife soap opera is totally natural.
We’ve got characters that people get involved with and you do get dramas.

“We have many births and deaths on this programme and, as far as I know, Big Brother has not yet had either — though it wouldn’t surprise me if they had a death if they carry on as they are. And I have a horrible feeling they would be pleased.”

The undoubted stars of Springwatch are the wildlife. The daily activities of tawny owls, barn owls, badgers, pied flycatchers, squirrels, swallows, hares, otters and pipistrelle bats have hooked an increasingly loyal audience.

The bluetits and great tits who were the stars of the show in the past have hardly been seen because spring came up to four weeks early this year. That meant the birds had flown the nest before the show went on air.

Instead, viewers have been awestruck by the brutal reality of nature as baby owls kill to survive.

The programme has so far seen:

A barn owl chick eating his brother — alive and whole

A mother barn owl killing one of her seven chicks and feeding it to its siblings

A buzzard chick beating up his smaller sibling, then eating him

Two tawny owl chicks squeezing their brother out of feeding range of their parents so he starved to death. Then they ate him

A tawny owl chick fighting for its life with a rabbit

Seven male hares trying to gang-rape one female hare. The female beat up each of the males in turn

Badgers vandalising cameras

Frog orgies, birds mating and a tawny owl attacking a fox.


The main action takes place on a 400-acre organic farm on the edge of Dartmoor. More than 60 remote-controlled hidden cameras and microphones capture every movement of the wild creatures of this small corner of Devon.

Separate cameras film a barn in Heligan, Cornwall, and the Scottish island of Islay, where co-presenter Simon King is on wildlife watch.

Bill Oddie reckons the programme has turned a whole new group of people on to nature and adds: “I think Springwatch has given the green light to people who are not experts to incorporate wildlife into their lives.

“Gardening that attracts wildlife has become the norm and most gardeners like to see the birds and animals in their gardens — unless they are Jeremy Clarkson and would concrete over the space for somewhere to park their 4X4s, a place where a bluetit landed once by accident but they backed over it.”

On Springwatch, every night has the drama of reality TV. Executive producer Tim Scoones says: “The best thing is we can never tell what will happen next. We don’t write the scripts. But if you want to know which reality show to watch, on ours, Big Brother eats Little Brother!”

So who stays and who goes? Neither the TV crew nor the audience decide.
Nature does.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From icWales (http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/features/tm_headline=joys-of-spring
&method=full&objectid=19216695&siteid=50082-name_page.html):

Joys of spring
May 30 2007


Simon King, Bill Oddie and Kate Humble experience wonder first-hand as they monitor the heady mixture of Britain’s habitats, landscapes and climates for the BBC production Springwatch

Western Mail

WHEN Simon King arrived back from the bush in Kenya after filming Big Cat Diary for the BBC, he headed straight to the Western Highlands of Scotland, to look for the first signs of spring 2007.

The Highlands are a far cry from seeing to seeing leopards and cheetahs in Africa, or killer whales in Patagonia for the Blue Planet series.

But nevertheless, he believes the remote corners of the British Isles provide some of the best wildlife experiences to be had anywhere in the world.

Together with fellow wildlife watchers Bill Oddie and Kate Humble he has been keeping watch on birds’ nests and blooming flowers, to monitor their progress as they burst into life for BBC television’s Springwatch.

He said, “I am just as blown away by the wildebeest migration in the Masai Mara in Kenya as the next bloke and since Kenya is where I was born, it too feels very much home to me.

“But there is something about British wildlife that just gets me tingling.

“Here we have such a wonderful mixture of habitats, landscapes and climates on such a compact, human-sized scale that we don’t have to travel far, live rough, or work too hard before we can be immersed in the wild world.

“We feel that a blue tit is just as fascinating as a golden eagle, if only you take the time to get to know it.”

Perhaps we appreciate our wildlife more, when we come close to losing it for good.

In 1916, the very last pair of sea eagles bred on the Isle of Skye and it became extinct as a breeding bird in Britain.

But since the successful re-introduction of the white-tailed eagle, commonly known as the sea eagle, to Scotland, the Isle of Mull has become a major stronghold for this rare species.

Britain’s largest bird with a wingspan of over eight feet, its poetic Gaelic name Iolaire-suile-na-grein means “the eagle with the sunlit eye”.

Mr King added, “If you had to pick a figurehead to represent wilderness and freedom you’d be hard-pressed to find a better one than a bird whose wingspan covers an area about the same size as your front door.

“Sea eagles are impressive and last year we were able to concentrate on a well-established pair of eagles, which nested on the banks of Loch Frisia.”

In 1985, after two decades of conservation effort, a pair of sea eagles successfully raised a single chick on the Isle of Mull.

So in 2005, Mr King went to Mull for the first week of Springwatch, hoping to bring us the first ever live pictures of a pair of sea eagles at their nest.

And we have since got to know Skye and Frisa and their offspring, Itchy and Scratchy.

The island’s Tobermory, where the children’s television show Balamory was filmed has helped attract families to the remote spot.

And 10,000 visitors have travelled to watch the sea eagles, netting £1.7m for the local economy.

But could the sea eagle ever return to Wales? Simon King thinks it could.

He said, “Sure they could, they can spread out over a wide area as long as there is enough foodstuff about for them.

“They are good hunters and feed along coastlines picking up the occasional small duck or gull.

“But this year we are concentrating on the golden eagle as an indicator of what’s going on.

“And they have been nesting as early as mid March, like everything from choughs through to blue tits and robins, it has been a wild spring – a bit mad.”

Mr King said for him, the most singular event that signals the start of spring is the melodic, subtle call of the willow warbler.

He said, “It is such a sweet and beautiful song that pans out from the edge of woodlands, like pure spun gold.”

Mr King says he often visits Wales to see his son who is studying at the University of Wales, Lampeter.

But for Springwatch, he spends most of the time in Scotland.

He added, “Isla for example, is an extraordinary island, with a population of just 3,000 and a real variety of habitats.

“It has lots of different wild creatures.”

Springwatch is one of the most popular programmes on BBC2, with an average audience of over four million people in an episode.

And viewers are finding out for themselves that spring is arriving earlier.

The focus is on six key signs, sightings of bumblebee, seven-spot ladybird, frogspawn, peacock butterfly, hawthorn and swift.

And evidence that springtime is arriving earlier, submitted by Springwatch viewers include:

Wildflowers appearing several weeks earlier than they used to;

Moth and caterpillar emerging several weeks earlier than previously;


Birds such as the nightjar and Dartford warbler and butterflies including the comma and peacock moving northwards, and

Arctic alpine plants and birds that rely on snow cover to sustain their lifestyle, such as the ptarmigan, dotterel and snow bunting under threat.

The earliest spring signs recorded were in November a year ago, like frogspawn in Pembrokeshire on November 1.

Springwatchers have also recorded the first bumblebee seen, on December 6, and the seven-spot ladybird and peacock butterfly were both recorded on Christmas Eve.

Snowdrops, lesser celandine and rooks nesting were all seen before Christmas.

And there have been several reports of house martins and swallows overwintering.

Book contributor Stephen Moss believes there is “cast iron” evidence that spring is arriving earlier and our long-term climate is changing.

He said, “On average, temperatures are a few degrees warmer, month on month, year on year, than they were say in our grandparents’ day.

“This means that over time, signs of spring will start to appear anything from a week to a month earlier than they used to.”

Bill Oddie explains how Springwatch is a celebration of the natural world.

He said, “It records the undeniable fact that wildlife and human beings are potentially good for one another, and indeed often depend on one another.

“One of the things that makes Springwatch unique is that it is arguably the most elaborate live wildlife television series there has ever been, not only in Britain but anywhere in the world.

“By the summer of 2005, it was clear that the Springwatch phenomenon was here to stay and the book tells the story of that year and more besides.”

Kate Humble believes that much of Britain’s wildlife is reliant to a greater or lesser extent, on people – whether it is a family who have discovered the benefits both to themselves and the birds, of putting up feeders, or those who have dedicated their lives to the conservation of rare species.

She said, “Bill (Oddie) had never seen a mole until he made a film about them for Springwatch 2006. My wish for that series was to get to one of the biggest animals we will ever see in Britain and to attempt that, I had to go to Mull.

“We were looking for sharks. Basking sharks are second only in size to whale sharks and can grow up to seven metres long.

“I put my fins and mask on and and dry-mouthed with nerves, slipped silently off the boat.

“Then I saw it, a shape emerging from the greenish gloom, getting bigger and bigger, until all I could see through my mask was shark.

“It’s mouth, agape as it approached, suddenly – luckily – closed a metre or so in front of me otherwise I’m sure I would have been sucked in without it even noticing.

“This leviathan passed calmly just beneath me, its eye making contact with mine for the briefest moment and then it swept past, the tip of its tail just grazing my knee with its final, farewell flick. And then it was gone.

“It was one of the most memorable, most exciting wildlife encounters I’ve ever had.”

Once Springwatch is over it will be time for Autumnwatch and to look for its six key seasonal signs: Ripe blackberries, the departure of swifts, ripe hawthorn fruits, ripe horse chestnuts (conkers) ivy flowering and the first brown tint on oak leaves.

And the results show that autumn is starting earlier too.

As part of studies to monitor the changes, Simon King focused on our largest terrestrial mammal, the red deer.

Celebrated as one of the great iconic British wild animals, the image of The Monarch of the Glen, originally painted in the mid to 19th century by Sir Edwin Landseer, is one of the best-known of all wildlife paintings.

Male red deer weigh up to 225kg – about three times the weight of an average man.

That bulk really comes in handy when the annual deer rut begins.

Watching two big males in what is effectively a life or death struggle to pass on their genetic inheritance makes gripping television.

Mr King said, “I had a complete ball watching deer all day on the Isle of Rum.

“Like the fights between elephant seals, or the epic conflicts between male lions, it gets to the very heart of the way nature works: a winner takes all encounter, from the end of September into early Novem-ber.

“If successful, the winning stag can spend the winter putting lost weight back on, secure in the knowledge that he has sired a number of calves, which are generally born during the following spring – usually in May or June.”

Stuart Thompson, head of RSPB public affairs, Wales, said, “The RSPB has been involved in white-tailed eagle projects elsewhere in the UK and, if there were plans for reintroduction in Wales, we would be keen to review any plans.

“With 27 species on the red list in Wales, the RSPB, which is a registered charity, is directing the majority of its conservation resources to securing a future for those species that need our help most.

“We do already have a wonderful variety of bird species to view and enjoy, from ospreys to choughs, and this should be celebrated.”

The new three-week series of Springwatch is on BBC2 Wales now.

Springwatch and Autumnwatch, in illustrated hardback, is published by Collins at £17.99

The most singular event that signals the start of spring is the call of the willow warbler, a beautiful song that pans out from the edge of woodlands, like pure spun gold.