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Private Notes
It is May Bank Holiday and Springwatch is back for a special 90-minute opening show - broadcasting live from the Sherborne Park Estate in the Cotswolds. Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan host, with a plethora of live cameras trained on brand new nests across the Gloucestershire countryside. They are joined by Steve Backshall, the first in a series of special guests on the show this year, and by Gillian Burke, who spends the next three weeks travelling the length of the UK - starting at its northern tip in the Shetlands, where she hopes to see killer whales.
Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan are live again once more from the Gloucestershire countryside, where overnight events have already thrown up plenty of surprises. Gillian Burke is on Shetland's rugged coastline, getting up close with one of the most important breeding seabird colonies in the UK, and Steve Backshall has been out looking for adventure around Sherborne.
Live from their base in the heart of the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan share the latest news from the wildlife cameras over the past 24 hours, joined by this week's guest Steve Backshall. We have the latest update from the raven family on the Gower, and Gillian Burke has arrived in a new part of Shetland where she is hoping to catch up with a special family of otters.
It is the end of the first week of this year's Springwatch, and the team reviews the extraordinary events that have already taken place. Gillian Burke is looking back at her week on Shetland including the orca, otters and gannets she has been following. Michaela Strachan and Chris Packham update on what has been happening on the live cameras, and Steve Backshall is on one last adventure in Gloucestershire.
It is the second week of Springwatch, and Michaela Strachan and Chris Packham are back to catch up with all the latest news and goings-on on the nest cameras from over the weekend. This week they are joined in Sherborne by Iolo Williams, who went out with Michaela to test a golden eagle against a white-tailed eagle in a Lord of the Wings spectacular. Expect bad hobbit puns and fancy dress. Meanwhile Gillian Burke has moved south, and is just outside Leeds to see how a series of disused mines have been reclaimed as spaces for nature - with extraordinary results.
Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan are live again from the Gloucestershire countryside, where the camera team has been staking out the badger sett overnight to try to catch these elusive mammals in action. Gillian Burke is in Yorkshire investigating how bitterns have returned to this post-industrial landscape, and Iolo Williams has been out looking for adventure around Sherborne.
Live from the heart of the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan share the latest news from the wildlife cameras over the past 24 hours, joined by this week's guest Iolo Williams. Gillian Burke has moved to another part of Yorkshire's industrial heartland, on the trail of more surprising conservation success stories.
It is the end of the second week of Springwatch and the team looks back at another hectic week on the Sherborne Park Estate, with Chris and Michaela joined by guests Iolo Williams and Lucy Cooke. Gillian Burke investigates Oddball, a piece of mining machinery that was once the largest machine in the world - but since being mothballed has been colonized by all kinds of birds to become what could be the largest bird box in the world.
It is the final week of Springwatch and Michaela Strachan and Chris Packham are back to update on another busy weekend. The goldcrests fledged early on Friday morning, followed by four of the 11 blue tit chicks, with the remaining seven leaving the nest in the early hours of Saturday. There is more dramatic news from the blackbirds, where one of the chicks returned to the danger zone over the weekend and fell prey to the little owl after a protracted battle between the parents. In the farmland there are also new nests, with a second yellowhammer clutch and a reed bunting in the field margins, while the yellow wagtails also fledged over the weekend. A recent study is also brought to light, discussing how we define the value of a species might change the way we think about conserving them. Also at Sherborne is new guest presenter Patrick Aryee, who takes us through some new camera kit that anyone can build at home with a few simple elements. Lucy Cooke is also back and on the trail of Sherborne's otters, as well as reporting on a project to make a home for this charismatic mammal in Cambridgeshire. Gillian Burke has moved once more, this time to her home region in Cornwall where she is rock-pooling, meeting some of the toughest creatures in the UK making a living at the intertidal zone. Also on the coast is a new nest - a family of parakeets has set up home in a pub in Thanet, Kent, and we meet this brightest of families for the first time
Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan are live again from the Gloucestershire countryside, where once again the little owls have been causing a ruckus. After destroying the first blackbird nest, they have now found another in an adjacent barn and have started to attack that too. But despite that there are also plenty of new nests to report on, including a beautiful blackcap and a stunning natural robin nest, while the empty hole that the mandarin duck used has some new potential tenants, including a barn owl and a greater spotter woodpecker. There is an update on the goshawk chick in Wales, who is growing healthily on a diet of grey squirrels and small birds, and the team looks back at a year's worth of data from the collared badgers on the estate. Gillian Burke is on the cliffs of Cornwall, most recently made famous by Poldark, searching for two conservation success stories, the chough and the peregrine. Luck Cooke is looking for Sherborne's water voles, and Patrick Aryee explains just how impressive a badger's underground existence really is. There is an update on the parakeet family in Kent, where there has been a successful fledging; Chris has been to Dovestone in the Peak District to see an incredible conservation success story, where some of the UK's rarest waders including the curlew are bouncing back; and as the tides ebb and flow around St Mary's lighthouse, so do the animals that flock around this beacon.
Live from the heart of the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan share the news from the wildlife cameras over the past 24 hours, joined by guests Lucy Cooke and Patrick Aryee. Gillian Burke is in Glasgow to meet some unlikely urban residents - water voles that are living miles from the nearest water source, right in the heart of the city.
In the final Springwatch programme of the year, the team looks back at another series on the Sherborne Park Estate, and the last series to come from the Cotswold countryside. Gillian Burke is back from her travels and joins Michaela and Chris, along with Patrick Aryee. Together they review the excitement and drama of the past three weeks, and look forward to the upcoming summer and beyond.
