And introducing Springwatch in the Afternoon, part of the new BBC's Summer of Wildlife season. Springwatch in the Afternoon will be broadcasting across the first two weeks of Springwatch, with live broadcasts from 3pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. The new show will be hosted by renowned naturalist and regular Springwatch guest Nick Baker, and will be all about getting out and about this spring and summer. 

On Wednesdays, Martin will also host Springwatch Unsprung straight after the main Springwatch show, with the usual mix of your photos, questions, special guests, rarities and oddities.

To get us all started, the Springwatch Webcams will be online, on BBC Red Button*, tablets and mobile, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from Sunday 26th May at 6pm with Euan McIlwraith returning on Springwatch Extra each night after Springwatch.

So what’s going to be on Springwatch this year?

Chilly Beginnings

The cold weather dominating March and April has resulted in the latest spring for decades, and it’s now a national news story. We'll be finding out what this remarkable spring means for the UK's wildlife, from barn owls to hedgehogs. We’ll also be looking into what triggers spring, what prompts the flowering of bluebells and the bud burst of the horse chestnut - the traditional indicators of the start of spring, and why has it all been different this year.

Live cameras

This year we have more cameras in more places and are using new technology to bring you the best of Spring. Our nest-cams will be back in place, including picking up the stories of our favourite families, like the barn owls. And just down the road, at the Wildlife Trust's Dyfi Osprey Project, the ospreys are already creating a drama worthy of any soap opera.

We’re planning to get our mini-cameras into new areas of the RSPB’s Ynys-Hir reserve, including a wet woodland, reed bed, and rare bog. Fingers crossed we’ll get intimate access to the lives of lapwing, redshank, teal, reed bunting, sedge warbler and, with luck, stonechat and bullfinch.

We’ll also have cameras rigged around a new farmyard site, aiming to follow nesting jackdaws, swallows and house sparrows.

New camera technology

We’re sure many of you remember this clip from last year.

We are also bringing you detailed views of our micro-worlds in three key local habitats - pond, bog and woodland. These high-tech techniques should reveal sundews catching flies and worms dragging leaves underground, as well as the aggressive behaviour of dragonfly larvae, and life in an ant colony.

The very best of UK wildlife

As always we’ll be celebrating the beauty of the UK’s wild places with some of our country’s top experts and amateur naturalists. We’ll be revealing new science and new behaviour - never seen before.  From dolphins hunting salmon in Aberdeen harbour, to plunge-diving gannets in ultra-slow motion, and the extraordinary story of long-tailed tits, where relatives come together to raise one nest of chicks.

Our teams are out filming as we speak, and if you’ve spotted something interesting please do share it on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or drop us a tip by email. 

We'll post a full schedule of broadcasts shortly.

*We’ve got our best ever schedule on BBC Red Button but do have to hand it back occasionally for other shows.

News in March was dominated by the cold weather and its effects - lots on that to come in the shows. Early migrant arrivals have not fared well. Many spring flowers are late this year and the Woodland Trust finds that some bluebells are lagging by weeks.

The BTO report that by last week house martin, sand martin and swallows had pretty much caught up after a very slow start to their migration here. For early warblers it is a very different picture though. Chiffchaff, willow warbler and blackcap are all running about two weeks behind.

But 10 Springwatch points to capribluegenie for this somewhat bedraggled looking swallow - taken on the 29th March and the first swallow on our Flickr group this year. 

Chris the cuckoo seems to be taking his time round France instead of continuing to the UK. But ospreys have been returning including at the Lake District, Rutland and Dyfi ospreys, who we'll be following again during Springwatch. (There's quite a story in Dyfi already)

If invertebrates are your preferred spring marker maybe you've seen an Orange-tip butterfly? We've not had photos uploaded to the Springwatch Flickr group yet, but thanks for Ian A Kirk, for this Brimstone spotted at Badbury Rings, Dorset.

Brimstone butterfly, by Ian A Kirk

And if you need an excuse to get out this spring, BBC Things to Do has plenty of suggestions, as do the National Trust, the Woodland Trust to name a few. If you want to do your bit, the ‘Big Beach Clean Up’ is running this week.

We've been following your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and on email (thanks as ever for sharing).

We'll have more news soon on Springwatch next week.

There will be hints, tips, identification guides and useful links on both days to help you take part as well as a discussion about what everyone has been seeing. To Jjoin the conversation you can tweet the @BBCNature team and join them on Facebook BBC Nature. You can also add your photos to the BBC Winterwatch Flickr group (http://www.flickr.com/groups/bbcwinterwatch)

To can take part in the world’s largest wildlife survey here visit the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch site and the BBC Nature Live webcams start at 8am Saturday morning.

British estuaries hold internationally important numbers of birds during the winter months, hundreds of thousands of Redshank, Golden Plover, Knot, Oystercatchers and Dunlin gather to take advantage of the food-rich mud. Some of the biggest gatherings can be witnessed in The Wash, the Humber Estuary, the Solway Estuary and Carmarthen Bay.

Redshank by Al Downie

The best sites to see wild swans, Bewick’s and Whooper are the Ouse Washes, the Nene Washes, Severn Estuary, Loughs Neagh and Beg, and Loch of Strathbeg. These sites will also hold large numbers of ducks, such as Wigeon, Pintail and Teal. To see ducks at this time of the year you may only have to travel as far as your local gravel pit. As the cold weather bites and the water freezes, birds often gather on larger waterbodies and large numbers of Tufted Duck, Pochard, Mallard and Goldeneye can congregate.

Bewick’s Swans by Andy Mason

Freezing conditions and heavy snowfall often prompts cold weather movements, and the last few days have seen birds starting to move. During these conditions birds tend to move to the coast, and already there is evidence of Kingfishers, Grey Herons and Lapwings arriving along the east and south coasts. If you have access to the coast anywhere in Britain this weekend it is likely to be the best place to be to see the birds that can escape the snow and ice inland.

Water Rail by John Harding

If you are snowed in you may well be treated to an upsurge in the number of birds that visit your garden. Blackbird and Bramblings numbers are already increasing in gardens along with other finches and tits. During these conditions anything can turn up and birds such as Water Rail, Snipe and Woodcock, and buntings, such as Yellowhammer and Reed Bunting could well take advantage of the food we put our for our regular garden visitors.

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You can also find places to go, using BBC Things to Do

This was our first live Winterwatch. We passionately wanted to capture the challenges facing our wildlife in winter in the UK, as well as its beauty. You could spend your life in the Highlands and never see a pine marten - we're proud and privileged to have been able to observe this creatures lives. We had a similar aim with the beaver project here at Aigas.  

We tried to cover the a wide range of subject in the pre-recorded films, such as the grey seal diaries, reindeer, flooding, waxwing and peregrine features. We hope we did them justice.

We'll be back for Springwatch, and as ever we'd love your comments on our first live Winterwatch. 

We've had a fantastic time and its be great to share this week with you. Please continue to enjoy, and look after, our amazing wildlife till we're back in spring. Our colleagues at BBC Nature continue all year round with news, features, videos.

Thanks in advance on behalf of all the Winterwatch Team

Answers will be on the show (and we'll update this blog too)

What animals are jumbled up here?

A. 

B.

C.

D.

What bird is this feather from?

Winterwatch Extra - 9pm on the webcams
And don't forget to get your internet going at 9pm for Winterwatch Extra with Euan McIlwraith, who's joined tonight by Chris Packham, wildlife sound recording legend Gary Moore and wildlife expert Simon Foster from Scottish Natural Heritage.

Here's Euan, but what's landed on his shoulder during this interview..?

Feel free to drop in your questions for Chris and Gary and we'll do our best to respond to as many as possible.

UPDATE: Well done to everyone who got it right. Chris is holding a long-tailed duck feather and on Euan's shoulder is a wood wasp

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Feeding birds during winter can give them a real helping hand, improving their prospects of surviving into the breeding season. However, feeding can be an expensive business and economic times are tough. So, what can you do?

• Use your bird food wisely – make sure that you don’t put out too much food as this could go soggy and mouldy. Provide enough for a day or so, then top it up again.

• Protect your food – larger bird and squirrels can demolish a lot of food, so you can try excluding these with feeder cages.

• Make your own fat cake – it’s pretty simple to make a suet-based fat-cake (always use a hard fat like suet, as soft fats can coat a bird’s feathers). Mix in some seeds and mealworms to make it extra nutritious.

• Grow your own – you can even start up your own Mealworm colony if you want to save some pennies! Grow Your Own mealworms.

• Use (some) kitchen scraps – a few decades ago, feeding birds was based on the provision of kitchen scraps and there are plenty of tit bits that birds will enjoy. A few bread or cake crumbs will be fine, and apples or pears past their best will be taken. However, avoid meats (could attract vermin), greasy foods (might coat feathers), salty foods (could dehydrate or be toxic) and dried fruits/coconut/rice/pasta.  

• Avoid false economies – it might seem sensible to opt for a budget seed mix, but often this contains a lot of ‘filler’, such as corn, which is OK for some birds (such as Woodpigeons and House Sparrows) but not much else. Save money on other things. Quality seeds, such as sunflower hearts and nyjer seeds, are fantastic for attracting and supporting lots of different bird species. Such foods seem to be particularly important this winter with natural seed and nut crops appearing to be down.

Swift Chick by Graham Roberts

In the UK there’s one bird that occasionally goes into a sort of mini-hibernation during cold snaps in their breeding season.  Swifts arrive back in the UK around the end of April and immediately get on with the business of producing a brood of youngsters.  Swifts are supreme aerial feeders; when they have youngsters to feed they are on the wing all day, trawling for insects with their gaping mouths and turning them into a ball of protein to feed to their chicks. During very cold or wet weather these small insects are not so readily available and the adult birds have to forage farther away from the nest, sometimes hundreds of miles away.  Most young birds, such as tits or thrushes, would die without regular feeds but young Swifts can enter a state of torpor, reducing their metabolic rate in the hope that the weather will improve and food will be provided. 

Roosting Great Tit by Leo du Feu

Even common birds, such as Blue and Great Tits can change the way their bodies operate, so as to see them through tricky winter conditions.  On a nest camera, you can see just how spherical the body becomes, as feathers are fluffed up and the surface-area to volume ratio is reduced, and how the bill and head are tucked away, these being the parts of the body which lose most heat.  What you cannot see is that the bird also drops its temperature by as much as ten degrees, to further minimise heat loss. This is called nocturnal hypothermia; by reducing the difference between body temperature and outside temperature, the flow of heat from the body drops.  None of our wintering birds use torpor, which would also involve reducing the metabolic rate.

Cuckoo by Steve Ashton

The main strategy for coping with the extremes of cold weather is to move, and many of our birds do just that – not that it is an easy option though. Some of the birds that visit us for the summer months travel huge distances to suitable overwintering areas, journeys that can be incredibly hazardous. The BTO satellite tagged cuckoos brought this home in 2012 as the five birds tagged in 2011 struggled to get back to the UK to breed, and birds that were tagged in the summer of 2012 struggled to make it to Africa. Fortunately, five of the birds did manage to find enough food at their stopover sites and avoid the summer storms, making it back to the mighty Congo Rainforest, Including Chris, the BBC Springwatch cuckoo.

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Every now and then something happens when you are out filming that’s really special. That’s why, as wildlife filmmakers, we are prepared to sit around and wait for hours in the cold, the hot,  the wet, the windy etc. etc….  because we know those great moments can happen. During my two weeks living at Blakeney Point National Trust Reserve that special event happened when a large male turned up on the outskirts of the dune system that was home to our featured young pup, named Millennium.

This intruder turned out to create quite a story for us, showing that not all males just charge in with great bluster to steal other males females. Some can be very sneaky about it – which is what gave this character his name – Mr Sneaky. In the end, Mr. Sneaky couldn’t avoid a confrontation, which is as brutal and intense a fight as you will see in the natural world, anywhere on the planet. But perhaps what will stick with me more than the fight are the lengths he went to in trying to avoid such a battle.

It seemed strange to me that Mr Sneaky was so reluctant to fight because he was a really big bull but maybe, when it comes to Grey Seals, it’s not all about size. Perhaps he was old, perhaps he was young and inexperienced, or perhaps he was “scared,” if seals can be so.  Whatever the case, he didn’t want to fight; yet he clearly wanted to mate.  

I found myself wanting him to succeed; he was certainly putting in the effort. How strange to side with an animal, how odd to be routing for another species, when the outcome would not affect my life in any way.

Indeed the whole experience of watching Mr. Sneaky reminded me why I think so many of us are fascinated with the natural world. Whether it’s right or wrong, beyond simple scientific fascination, we find admiration, empathy and solidarity in the events of individual animal’s lives. They reflect back to us what we think about our world, our family, our friends and our foes. And of all the events I have filmed in the UK, the drama of the Grey Seal breeding season at Blakeney Point connected with me in ways that few other filming trips have.

These animals display an intensity to survive and to win in life that has to be admired and I look forward to many more Winters in their very special company. Thank you to everyone who helped make this seal diary happen, particularly the team at North Norfolk National Trust who are rightly proud of having these amazing animals in their care.

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There seems to be a moment in every Grey Seal rookery when breeding behaviour hits a peak, and on our visit to Blakeney Point, we certainly hit it.

Pups were being born left right and centre, even though the beach was already littered with hundreds of them. The females who had given birth early were coming into season, which meant loads of bull seals were turning up hoping to mate. With so many males around threats and posturing were commonplace, and fights were guaranteed everyday.  It was a loud, hustling, bustling and smelly place to be!

Without doubt things got the most raucous at high tide. All the seals were pushed up into the smallest area of the beach possible and this brought males into contact with each other on a regular basis. I hoped to catch a serious fight on camera but often they happened a good couple of hundred yards down the beach and to be honest most were pretty quick. As you’ll see in the film, fights are clearly a damaging experience, blood is always spilt, so the quicker its over the better, and most bulls seemed to be able to work out who was top dog pretty sharpish. A prolonged fight is in no one interest. That’s not to say long fights don’t happen, when two very evenly matched animals clash it’s an almighty and epic encounter, which you’ll see in film 3.

There is a downside for the pups in all of this, as well as for the bulls that lose. With males throwing their weight about pups can get squashed in the cross-fire, attacked out of frustration or even accidentally separated from their mothers. We saw several lost pups during our filming and they might well have been the ‘collateral damage’ of one of these battles.  At these moments your instinct is to intervene, especially because these cute looking characters are crying out and desperate for help.  I personally found one pup’s predicament incredibly upsetting.  And yet as a wildlife filmmaker you know that you can’t get involved.

The policy of The National Trust is that any seals that are on their own out in the rookery are to be left to their natural devices. Only pups that are washed away and end up out of the reserve are to be rescued and taken to the local RSPCA centre. It’s a difficult line to draw, when to help and when not to. But it does seem right that part of the deal when being allowed into the seals world, is that you relay the wonder of these animals lives, not interfere with them.

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Being asked to make a film on the Dart was an absolute dream. It’s a river I love a great deal and practically runs past my house.  Over the period of a week my friend Glen and I explored its fifty-mile length, from source to where she meets the sea at Dartmouth. Clearly a week isn’t long enough to capture a fraction of its beauty, diversity, animals and people, so the best I could do was attempt to get across a flavour of this magical river.  Its different moods and ages.

We started high on Dartmoor pre-dawn. A deep Hoare frost coating the boulders and coarse grass. As the sky to the east coloured coral pink we started to pick out the hardy sheep, ponies and cattle that call this windswept wilderness home.  The frost was deep and the small pools and rivulets that feed into the source of the Dart were frozen solid.  The animals would have to drop lower off the moor to find liquid water. The sun rose giving us stunning views all the way from moor top to the coast, the whole of the Dart’s journey.

Lower and later the stream was crystal clear and gushing but still cold enough for icicles to hang from ferns and low branches.  A heron leap-frogged down the stream ahead of us, but like the elusive wren glimpsed darting about in the undergrowth I was unable to get a decent shot. 

Over the few days we had to film we had frost, sun, cloud, drizzle, rain, hail, fog and wind… But I guess that’s Dartmoor for you.  One morning I went to a lovely bridge I know and sat quietly with my camera and was eventually rewarded by a king fisher coming to perch a few metres away.  A real treat.

Day 3 saw us tackle our ‘cable dolly’. A wonderful toy that runs a camera down a tort wire give lovely flowing shots – that’s the theory anyway!  The problem though was how to get the cable across river?

Solution. We had to wade across in our underpants.  It was colder than you’d think!  And frustratingly the light was really poor so even though we got our equipment working the shots didn’t capture the real beauty of the place.

As we got lower down the river its mood changed. We left the forests and the Dart broadened while her waters slowed. I borrowed a boat from a friend at Totnes and we drifted gloriously down river on the high tide.  We spotted swans, shags, herons, geese and ducks, and the sunshine joined us for an hour or so, which was beautiful.

As we reached Dartmouth the River Dart was really wide and full of yachts, river taxis and fishing boats.  The fresh water flows out past the castle and heads into the salty sea.

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A dormant silence cloaks the trees in winter, by shutting themselves down they endure the harshest elements. Short days and cold weather stop them growing their beautiful foliage. For frost would freeze the water within their leaves, causing sharp ice crystals to pierce and damage the delicate cell walls inside.

Though the trees themselves may slumber they continue to support life, offering shelter and food for many woodland creatures. Noctule bats love to hibernate in tree hollows and woodpecker holes make very desirable roosts. Their favourite foods are large moths that sometimes still fly in winter. On warmer days the bats may rouse and set out to hunt.

Great spotted woodpeckers drum on trees to define territories, and the distinctive sound carries further in winter without tree canopies as buffers. Deadwood is especially attractive for them as they peck out wood-boring insect larvae and glean spiders from cracks in bark.

To call any wood ‘dead’ is rather misleading because, standing or fallen, so-called deadwood is teeming with life. Wood decay fungi send out their mycelial networks, breaking down tough cellulose that few others can exploit. Deep inside rotting wood the grub-like larvae of magnificent stag beetles spend of the most years of their lives. The transformation to beetle comes only when they need to mate, and they die soon after.

Detritus fills tree rot holes and crevices, providing homes for centipedes and woodlice. These then offer a delicious meal for nuthatches and tree creepers that dart up and down the trunks. Some butterflies and moths lay their tiny intricate eggs on trees to overwinter until spring; purple hairstreak eggs can be found at the base of oak buds. Others survive the winter as larvae and some as hibernating adults.

On the forest floor fungi and bacteria work hard to decompose leaves shed in autumn, recycling nutrients back into the soil. The warm leaf litter provides an excellent refuge from the winter cold for spiders, millipedes, woodlice and larvae. Ladybirds find it a perfect place to hibernate.

Tiny springtails (1-2mm) are some of the myriad species that feed on decaying leaves. If disturbed, they spring uncontrollably into the air to escape. Amazingly, a single bound can cover a distance around 100 times their own body length.

This gathering of insects entices hungry birds to forage for prey. Blackbirds can often be seen flicking dead leaves about and rustling around the undergrowth searching for tasty morsels. Whereas high up in the branches rooks are found tending to their nests, gathering together in rookeries. This is a prime time for some DIY before the nesting season.

Hungry tawny owls are on the wing at night searching for unfortunate small mammals and birds. Favouring mature trees, the male hoots and the female screeches echo eerily through the woods. The common shrew is a favourite owl food, as they themselves are nocturnal hunters. With such tiny bodies and high metabolisms these little rodents cannot hibernate during winter like some mammals.

The roots of trees and their fallen leaves offer prime hedgehog and dormouse hibernation spots. This sleep state drastically lowers their metabolism, temperature, heart rate and breathing. Living off their fat stores, they conserve energy and survive cold winter months that offer little food. As the weather warms they awaken ravenous, searching for any bounties on offer.

Piles of leaves also attract hibernating frogs and toads that nestle deep within them. But even as early as January they can be seen heading toward their breeding ponds. Brumation is the reptile form of hibernation, but rather than truly sleeping they slow down right and eat rarely. Hidden in piles of logs or rocks, or under leaves or roots, snakes and lizards can go all winter without food.

Ferns, mosses and lichens still decorate trees and woodland, bringing welcoming flashes of green. The hart’s tongue fern with its long slender leaves is a pleasing sight. Lichens adorn bark and rocks with their many forms; some crusty, some leafy and others like unruly beards.

The UK does have a few native evergreens, and the berries of holly are an important source of winter food for many birds and small mammals. Yew trees keep their needles to give wildlife shelter from the freezing winds and pounding rain. In Scotland, the Scot’s pines of the ancient Caledonian forest retain their greenery too.

Although many think of ivy as a tree killer, it can be a fantastic wildlife resource. In winter it keeps its leaves, offering hiding places from the elements. It flowers in autumn providing a late pollen source, while its berries supply early sustenance in spring. Ivy uses trees to support its growth but is not a parasite. In woodland settings it is seldom a problem for healthy trees.

Few plants grow in winter, but in January elegant snowdrops push through the cold soil and dead leaves to herald a new year of life in the woods. These and other early flowers offer insects important pollen and nectar supplies. Fertilised queen bumblebees spend winter under the soil. Emerging as temperatures rise they busy themselves making a nest for this year’s brood.

At all stages of development trees are filled with life. The older they become the more creatures’ call them home. It is vital we cherish and protect them all because one ancient tree can be a habitat to more species than a hundred young ones. Regardless of age or season, trees and woods provide the world with so much wonder to be thankful for.

Roosts of rooks can number in the tens of thousands; as they wheel in the sky, they form ‘smoke clouds’ of birds in the same way that Starlings do. Rooks hardly ever roost alone though and are often joined by hundreds, if not thousands, of jackdaws, leading to a much more evocative experience for the observer.  As individuals of both species in the flock call constantly to each other before falling silent in the roost, the resultant cacophony is amazing to hear.

Knot by Dawn Balmer

Both of these corvid species start to gather during the late afternoon before dropping into the roost site as dusk falls. For coastal waders, however, the timing for going to roost is governed by the timing of the high-tide. As the tide rises and the mud covers, flocks of waders can be seen wheeling around the sky, looking dark one minute as they show their upperparts in unison and white the next as the underparts come into view. The numbers involved can be truly awesome, with as many as 100,000 birds involved. These large flocks will largely be made up of Knot, Redshank and Dunlin but may also contain smaller numbers of other species too, including Bar-tailed Godwit, Oystercatcher and Grey Plover.

Redshank by John Harding

You don’t have to travel to a far-flung corner of the country to experience roosting behaviour. Many of our villages, towns and cities will hold smaller roosts of Starlings and Rooks and, to experience the magic of a communal roost of pied wagtails, you often only need to visit your local supermarket or hospital. These buildings seem to provide just what a cold wagtail needs – some wasted heat, shelter from the wind and artificial light that makes it difficult for hunting Tawny Owls. Our gardens also provide safe roosting sites for birds. The nest box that was used during the spring and summer to raise a brood of youngsters might now provide a snug bed for the night for a single blue and great tit. These tits really do seem to prefer their own company during long winter nights but for wrens it is definitely a case of the more the merrier. The record number of Wrens found roosting in a single nest box stands at 62. If you turned your nest box camera off at the end of the summer it is worth switching it on again. You never know who might be using it as a winter residence. 

Gulls by Mike Weston

It is also worth casting an eye skywards from mid-afternoon onwards.  At this time gulls start to head towards a reservoir or gravel pit to spend the night, sitting in safety on the open water. Even the most land-locked of counties hold some impressive gull roosts that will contain thousands of Lesser-black Backed Gulls , Common Gulls, Black-headed Gulls and Herring Gulls, the composition of the flocks will vary in different parts of the country though. 

First up. What's this?

You've sent us lots of blog posts, tweets and Facebook comments about garden birds, winter feeding and how the snow & wet weather has been affecting wildlife. So keep those coming please.

We love to hear your top keeps for keeping warm in the winter, more stories of unusual wildlife sightings, plus your photos of wildlife in the snow. We’ll also be setting another quiz and keeping up with action from the live wildlife cameras. So drop us a line with any questions, and we’ll do our best to answer them (Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and Email)!

Join us online at 9pm, straight after the programme on BBC2 and BBCHD for some more Winterwatch Extra!

UPDATE: Here's the answer to the quiz above. Well done to everyone who got it right. It's a baleen plate from an Sei whale