Presenters Meeting: Things are hotting up...
Everyone is gathered in the glamorous Portacabin to discuss this evening's programme. There is good news and bad news. The good news is that lots of the chicks have been fledging over the weekend which means that there is plenty of material for tonight's episode. The bad news is that lots of the chicks birds have been fledging over the weekend... and there are still two weeks' worth of Springwatch to fill. Yikes!
It's a tricky situation. The animals are the stars but the stars are walking off the set. What was it? Did they not get the 'riders' they wanted? Were the worms too long? Were their nests not painted the particular shade of apricot that their agents had demanded? Did somebody look them directly in the eyes? Was their air-conditioning not working?
Actually, air-conditioning is pretty much the answer. The weekend was so hot, and the nests were getting so stuffy, that the birds - unable to sweat, as Martin points out - were doing an awful lot of panting. It is therefore decided to make a 'pants' video for the show. But with what music?
Hannah, the assistant producer, gives us a rendition of Hot In Herre by the hip-hop artist Nelly. "It's getting hot in here," Hannah sings. "So take off all your clothes..."
She's right - it does seem to be getting hot in here...
Further bad news comes half-way through the meeting when Nigel the birdman gets a call to say that the whitethroats have now fledged as well. Or as Jo, the remote cameras chap, says when he pokes his head in the door: "They've all f&@%ed off!"
Luckily, the producer says, Springwatch has kept some 'superstars' in reserve and one bird that keeps making an appearance is the cuckoo. Since Martin Hughes-Games appealed for people to report their cuckoo sightings and 'hearings', over ten thousand people have done exactly that. This is not just good news for us but also for Kate's neighbour's child who is worried that "the cuckoo clock is in danger of becoming a myth'. So that's where all our cuckoo's have been going - it's the dastardly Swiss cuckoo clock makers!
Chris says he has some great news on woodlarks which prompts Kate to try remember the bird's scientific name. "It's something onomatopoeic," she says, beginning to ululate like a singer at an Egyptian wedding. "Lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu...."
She is right. The scientific name for the woodlark, as it turns out, is indeed Lullula arborea. But no one can remember it at the time. We are all hoping that Kate will go on to give us a belly dance...
The meeting finishes with Chris talking about his plans for a feature on nettles, "the unsung hero of the countryside". I mention a pub I once visited in Dorset where a contest is held annually to see who can eat the most raw nettles. Chris, it turns out, has entered the contest in the past and plans to eat some more nettles live on the show.
Some people will do anything to get those 'bee-sting lips'...
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~26~RS~)
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woodlark are nesting near doncaster right now
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If you are running out of ideas why don,t you look at plants,as I have been saying for more than a week> Can,t you see them?
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Hi Diapensia,
Just to let you know that Chris is going to be looking at the wonderful world of nettles today and Kate is going to be in the wild flower meadow.
Yours,
The Mole
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dear Chris and Kate,
NO, NO, NO!
Because we all report the sighting/sounding of cuckoos does not mean we ALL love them. some of us consider them to be vermin along with rats, head lice, magpies et al. If you need a herald of Spring, then look to snowdrops and bluebells (even if it means pre-recording). Does Mother Nature sit there thinking 'mmm...not heard a cuckoo yet, we cant move until we do.'
If you were a parent would you happily mark the beginning of a new school year with your child returning from school with nits? thought not.
When I hear a cuckoo, my first thought is 'break out the ammo.'
And to anyone pea-brained enough to ask, NO, I wouldn't consider shooting a kestrel for eating a fluffy peewit. We all know Nature is red in tooth and claw, but lets consider the figures. say there are ten thousand breeding pairs of cuckoos in Britain (check the figures yourself) and they lay one egg per pair. If only half of those eggs are viable, thats still 5 thousand alien birds. If each one removes four eggs from a nest, and only half of those eggs are viable, then thats still 10,000 fledgelings that could have heralded Spring. I don't know which you prefer, but I'm on the side of native chirrupping song birds,and not an ugly two month visitor.
One last word. If you saw someone out in the woods destroying nests 'because its in their nature' would you say 'fair enough, but stop when you get to 10,000.' answers on a postcard please.
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I agree with cuckoosarescum (although I think that's a terrible user name). It seems to me that cuckoos are the thugs of the bird world. I wonder how long it will be before other bird species evolve some brain cells which recognise cuckoo eggs for what they are and turf them out before they hatch?
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I'd rather keep the cuckoo for a couple of months a year and each bird affecting a certain number of nests than have magpies all year round decimating and killing young birds and destroying nests.
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Fret not about the birds fledging so soon. What about some features on non-feathered wildlife, such as flora, as suggested by someone else on this blog. Or something maybe less exotic - everything on SW seems to need to be a 'first' - but I'd like to see some more humble things featured as well (not instead). Earthworms, moles, any number of different types of insect, mice, rats (yes really!) - and, dare I say this, I'd like to see a CatCam. A camera attached to a domestic moggie so we can actually find out if they do kill as many birds as we are guessing at. I'm a cat lover and keep mine in at night during this season, but the figures are so wildly different (from 1 million to 20 million deaths are placed at the door of the cat) that it's time we had hard evidence. CatCams on a selection of young hunting cats (not old soppy ones who couldn't catch a cold) across the country might settle this argument once and for all and then we can work out how to deal with it.
My favourite bird never gets a look in on this sort of programme. It's not a cute ball of fluff, or long-legged and elegant, or a majestic bird of prey, or colourful eye-candy. But it's beautiful and intelligent. It's the crow - absolutely necessary to the eco-system and clever with it. I'd love to know more about them.
BTW could someone (Chris?) do a little feature on the different sorts of sparrow? I get easily confused ... it's my age.
Many thanks.
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