#SIBCLive with Hugh Warwick – Episode 64

[Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] good morning hello good morning happy friday happy friday what about those white bellied seeds pretty cool in australia and there are not species we see in this part of the world at all i think they perform the same sort of ecological role as our ospreys do really they're principally coastal though but they're very widely distributed you get them around the coast of india i mean they can be quicker then there's the cheap i know to be quite common and of course they're dead easy to spot they've got that well when when it's not yeah but it's not in infrared in in the dark um they've got a lovely pale lavender back and and a bright white it's not cream it's a white head and chest so they're when they're flying around they're dead easy to spot and uh they'll fish along the coast about 50 of their diets fish the rest they'll take us as carrion and they're a medium-sized eagle i mean they're nowhere near as big as the white-tailed eagle which catches fish here um so i guess they're actually probably about osprey size to be quite honest with you from memory um all the way around as i was saying around the coast of india throughout the indonesia um all the way down papua as well you see them and then ringing the coast of uh australia where these birds are in in sydney yeah this uh this wildlife camp is brought to us by birdlife australia so if you want to keep up to date all you have to do is go to www.birdlife.org.edu where you can find this live cam and keep up to date and what does these little chicks develop i see little chicks they're quite large yeah they're doing well aren't they yeah the thing is um bird life is something you should be checking out fairly regularly as well bird life of course we call them um an umbrella organization so lots of people work in partnership with bird life all over the world and they have an array of amazing projects birdlife europe is certainly worth checking out they don't just deal with conservation in in in that form they also deal with all of the other problems faced by birds so looking at worlds biodiversity hotspots trying to protect those they also help us campaign haven't they in the past when it comes to cyprus and malta and those sorts of things yeah they've been great brilliant bird life are absolutely fantastic so do check out their both their regional as you mentioned what's this one a you australia australia word life australia but check out the other bird lives as well they do have plenty of these cameras there's quite a lot scattered around the world as well yeah i mean obviously fewer now we're heading into autumn but obviously on the other side of the world yeah then it's you know very different story we're going to spend our winter looking at sunny times down south yeah we all need that don't we in the winter we need a better sun hey listen i wonder if there were any good penguin cameras that we'll be able to log into because penguins obviously at the other end of the planet do they're breeding in our winter their summer well it'll be more in the warm environments wouldn't it you know yeah i mean wonderful antarctic yes antarctic can don't worry folks if they're up there we'll find them okay so we're gonna be looking out we'll find them we're gonna be scouring the web for penguin can certainly will like what we've got coming up today then oh lots of great stuff okay we're going to be joined live by the one and only hedgehog hugh hugh warwick who has joined us a few times but we just can't have enough of him no no who's going he'll be back more about hedgehogs and some great projects there and of course his new book yeah and we're going to be uh talking well indie green is doing kind of a mindfulness film for us you know fantastic indie we absolutely love to have on the show so he's done a fantastic film that's coming up uh we've got a soapbox that is a bit of an important statement oh it is today i'm afraid yeah but we're joined by dominic dyer that give you a clue as to what it's about and dominic gives a very forceful presentation dominic is a great champion of of wildlife per se he's a fantastic orator absolutely brilliant archer and we've asked him to give us three minutes on what he thinks about the badger cult being expanded and that's worth hanging on for so we'll have a little chat about that later on uh what else we got of course the natural history museum stephanie west contacted us a little while back now to tell us a bit about their brilliant butterflies project which is a project that's running on the south side of london she's joined by people from the london wildlife trust and butterfly conservation to tell us about some very exciting new science that they're doing and great conservation work so they've made a film for us which is fantastic steph's always really really uh sorry dropped the camera they had a minor earthquake with my knee my patella has been destroyed but don't worry about that um yeah and so she'll be coming up and we've got your photos and videos too so that's always good we always enjoy that we love when you send your images into us what you've been seeing around the country actually around the globe to be honest and with that we've got lots of hellos coming through every morning kate is overwhelmed by your messages saying hi so we wanted to say hi back so we've got edward in yorkshire susanna in northumberland we've got michelle in birmingham barry and basingstoke we've got anna and edinburgh heather in north wales janet in north lincolnshire andy in glasgow wanda in the netherlands and vivian in durham hello everyone hello everyone watching thank you very much for sticking with us okay fantastic stuff fantastic stuff um right should we have a quiz let's do it go on then you do the first part of it because i've got an impromptu quiz no no yep sorry just some stuff i picked up welcome to my childhood anyway every year every every year every week we give you a quiz we get a sound and we ask you to identify who is making that sound so this week is a pretty good one i think yeah it is it's a beautiful beautiful song let's have a little listen now you might have heard some barking there yeah and the quiz is not now the answer is not poodle just just so weird sure on that and i hope i hope you did hear that properly because nancy decided to bark at the worst possible time but it's a very distinctive thing yeah though it is well it's only tricky because the birds have become a lot less frequent than they used to be um when i were a kid when i were a kid but they didn't live around where i was but i go out in the weekends in the summer and i'd hear this that call very frequently quite melodious short not too complex a song but certainly diagnostic of of that of that species i've just noticed we got that we mustn't forget this look oh yes of course we had a lovely comment sent in to us and we wanted to um well just read it aloud to surprise joy edwards and so joyce sent us a message saying i've realized this week how much the club means to me i was told by my boss that i will be going to work all week so i will miss friday's sibc i'm being overly am i being overly dramatic by saying how devastated i feel it's very sweet yeah thank you so so sweet thank you so much you can get it on catch up you better watch it oh exactly lunchtime so i hope you know when you watch this at lunch break or when you're watching this and you get home from work that you've had a good day at work and that um you know this is a nice thing to come home to and watch and catch up okay impromptu quiz in two parts okay so this is the first part it's back to the skull of the day so here we are i picked this up in the woods this week so look underneath here are the teeth remember they were really important when we was talking about skull of the day all of those months ago talking about how you identify uh animals by looking at their teeth and the shape of the skull they are gone give it to you head-on like that look at where the eyes are positioned side facing eyes yeah there we are and look at the size of it here's my hand the scale okay so here we are so this is a small skull that i picked up in the woods here in the new forest it's lost a little bit off the front it's been nibbled actually it's been nibbled by a fox i imagine here because i picked it up somewhere where the foxes are active so it's lost a little bit of its nose but not much it knows would have only have come out to about there okay so that's first skull what i would draw your attention to are these indentations here see that in front of the eye yeah in there and i would also draw your attention to these sort of ridges that run down the skull like this and the teeth of course right that's the first one the second one yeah yeah i know i know why because it was a little bit smaller um but you know look at this but this one's got a story to it this is why i'm including this one okay so that's the side view look see those teeth there then there's a gap and then these other teeth here the color of those and sizes yeah the color of those incisors makes us right look at that see they're like orangey color and then uh okay here it is from the top view okay and there it is from the front view like a 3d scanner so people can like yeah do you know what you know yeah and then you get like a what i like about this skull though i picked this skull up under the nest of the goshawk so what i like about this is that this animal okay has been nibbled by goshawk chicks at some point this spring this skull's got predatory history yeah so at some stage at some stage some stage out in the woods a goshawk swooped upon this animal killed it took it back to the nest the young have nibbled it leaving the skull intact on this occasion probably they maybe just didn't want didn't want the head and then maybe the flies and the maggots did the business anyway it's now got blown off the side of the nest and i picked it up underneath the nest so this has been in the draw in it it has been in the in the talons and the beak of young goshawks i love that maybe maybe even our goshawk we've got that's nothing we've got coming up today we've got a slow-mo image of you releasing the ghost hawk oh yeah sunday poodle forget about that i mean slow-mo goss goss talk about that in anyway i'm loving the fact that this is a skull with history if skulls could talk eh if girls could talk oh i'll tell you a story okay we need to we need to move on a lot of there's lots of people putting in their answers already they i really want for them for all of them i thought that we've got a few oh i excellent okay well let's come back to that yes should we go to our first guest britain's most popular animal is not the goss hawk it might be around here might be around here but anyway not not i have a soft spot for what's coming there yes i think we all do britain's most popular animal is the one and only hedgehog but very sadly we know our hedgehogs are in big trouble 97 decline in some areas and again when we were a kid we'd find hedgehogs on our way when we were walking to school they were in all of our gardens they were just part and parcel of our life and we took them for granted if i'm very honest with you we never imagined today when you'd moved to a house here we've been here for 12 years never seen a hedgehog in the garden on the trap cameras there are just no hedgehogs here which is incredibly sad but if there's one person who singularly because a lot of people work hard to look after hedgehog but if there's one person who has singularly become a hedgehog champion it is of course hedgehog you hear hugh white he joins us live now good morning hugh good morning chris good morning megan how are you i'm i'm doing well i i've a new t-shirt well i've decided to dig out the hedgehog t-shirt there we go this okay take the cleverness of this one my wonderful friend stig designed it a little hedgehog with the dreaming spires of oxford and your hedgehogs um i wherever i go the hedgehog goes and it remains uh despite the best efforts on the part of my family and my wife in particular to make me more normal it's just not seeming to happen at the moment but the hedgehog thing is is growing and growing as an idea and you two have been so instrumental in helping to promote the petition i've been running on change.org and every time i come on uh on the club there's another few thousand people sign up to the s uh to the petition and it's just a small petition asking for all new developers to put holes in the fences when they when they do a new build 13 centimeter holes it's the essence of the hedgehog street campaign that we do and um i have just been astounded by what's happened in the last five days uh the numbers have gone up 140 000. um the petition now stands at 947 thousand six hundred and nineteen we are seriously at risk of hitting a million signatures of people who care enough about the hedgehogs to go to www.change.org save our hedgehogs um and it's just a stat it really really thrills me that we've got people out there who care that much just to take that first little step but all of the other work which goes on so much other work going on and i i'm hoping that you can cover in more detail later um some of the work that's coming from dorset uh but i was lucky enough to get a piece uh pushed a piece out to a few of the newspapers at the beginning of this week i don't if you saw it about the ghost hedgehogs and um i i even made my own there we go um i must thank my neighbor who did the actual soaring because um it was pointed out to me that that if i did it it would be rubbish so hugh the other hue down the street did the soaring um and i managed to paint it and even that i managed to up but the idea of the ghost hedgehog is very simple it was the dorset mammal group who came up with this idea there was one village in dorset which had had 21 hedgehogs killed on its roads last summer and it was just this is such a ridiculous waste of life there's so many other threats that the hedgehogs face let's deal with this one um and so the idea is you make a small white wooden hedgehog and when you find a hedgehog corpse you put it up beside the road uh on it has to be on private property and you have to have the permission of the owner because you mustn't cause distraction and things but you know you do that as a reminder that lives have been lost here and then i posted this um on on social media and the amazing writer rob mcfarland who um is just one of my favorite writers at the moment he just said well why don't we do this for all all of the stuff that's missing leave these messages out there because actually we need constant reminders of what's missing we we can become immune to it with the whole idea of shifting baselines we're used to what we used to remember and we haven't really noticed how degraded our wider landscape has become and so i think these messages are really really important and just this morning dropping my son off on his way to school i noticed a um missing poster on the side of a lamp post and you know you're missing pets type poster and it was such a fantastic idea did a double take and he was like oh my goodness that's a hedgehog who's missing a hedgehog no no no and it was just a message it was a message out saying these hedgehogs are missing but it was a way of attracting that mess that attention back to the subject it can be things like the living planet report which came out yesterday which reveal the most horrendous statistic 68 decline in all vertebrate life in the last 50 years in my lifetime um there has been you know we've lost over two-thirds of everything that's out there that can be shocking that can be such an enormous thing it almost wipes out your ability to understand it but when you bring it back to an animal that we love and we care about like the hedgehog then it can be much easier to make that relationship make that point of understanding you haven't seen hedgehogs where you are i live in the most wonderfully hedgehog rich potentially garden backing onto a park surrounded by people whose fences are as degraded as my fences are or with holes in them it's very accessible i haven't seen a hedgehog in my garden for seven years it's not right is it it's just like they should be him we're in the middle of a like a new forest yeah but like if they can't then where are they yeah it's just um i don't know i mean it's really you know enlightened that your petition has done so remarkable it's incredible people really connect with hedgehogs people really care about them so you know i'm sure it's gonna hit a million isn't it it's gonna i really didn't think it was going to make it to 900 000 and um then suddenly there was an absolute absolute whoosh uh i should say there was a spike in people signing it which um which is just just that's that's spring watch level that one i'm sorry i should really help myself to that but it was just a moment it was so delightful because it was coinciding with the ghost hedgehog stories and um obviously the new hedgehog book coming out but it was just this um wave of evidence of caring and i think sometimes you can become you can maybe feel a little bit like actually you're fighting on your own i don't know whether you've ever felt that i mean you you have such an audience maybe you don't worry about that but sometimes i do and i'm in my shed and i do worry about that but then you get this sort of affirmation of people who too care for something as much as you do who have made the holes in the fences who have made their gardens hedgehog friendly have signed up on the hedgehog street uh campaign all of these things and beginning to make those steps and each one of those steps at some point they cross a line this is what i like to think at some point you go from just liking and caring about stuff and then you cross this line because you've recognized you love things and then you really truly start fighting for it uh at the moment you know it's so easy you do a little bit and then that's enough but no we need the fight to really begin extinction rebellion's been on the streets of london all the last week and a half my wife's been down there filming it um and you know this level of energy this level of action is absolutely crucial and it's great that you've got dominic dyer coming along uh again because he he embodies this level of of enthusiasm and passion to campaign to to try and help uh turn back you know the figures that we see from the living planet report yeah stagnant stuff hugh just in case people aren't aware of hedgehog street in in a in a nutshell um just tell us what hedgehog street is about absolutely so the the campaign is run by the people's trust for endangered species and the british hedgehog preservation society and it's based around the very simple thing you can make your garden amazingly good for wildlife um but be seduced by all these things that fly and forget that actually there's a whole bunch the most important stuff can't fly um and uh and as much as the rspb tries to lay claim to the hedgehog it's not a bird and um so the hedgehogs can't get in unless you've made your hole so you make your hole in the fence and you make your garden hedgehog friend you talk to your neighbors obviously but your neighbors then talk to their neighbors and their neighbors talk to their neighbors and you spread hedgehog love down the street you create a hedgehog friendly street you spread it wider than that the great thing about the hedgehog street is that it then lends itself very neatly to the idea of the hedgehog street party the hedgehog street party obviously when we have reached a point where more than six people can gather um you have your hedgehog street party and this means that you get hedgehog bunting which is a thing and and lots of cake um all of these things lead to great happiness on my part in many other people's parts so um yeah the hedgehog street campaign is is sim a simple call to not just rely on your garden being big enough for hedgehogs we know that um hedgehogs male hedgehogs will easily cover two kilometers a night female hedgehog's a kilometer on average um that they have a home range they don't have a territory they defend but they have a home range which they will share albeit grumpily quite often um but that can be 30 30 hectares for males 10 hectares for females and a viable population of hedgehogs needs nearly a square kilometer of really good habitat and nasty will be suburbia really good suburban habitat and so this is why we need to break down that fragmentation the fragmentation which is absolutely rife throughout our landscape whether it's the fragmentation caused by busy roads fences canals oh hs2 probably the biggest fragmentation happening to our countryside at the moment all of these things fragmented so we need to overcome that fragmentation to join up the pockets of goodness that are left because there are pockets of goodness you've got a pocket of goodness eye garden's a pocket of goodness we've got goodness we just need to join them up because without that each of these islands is is obviously just on its own and it isn't enough to support a viable population of hedgehogs or much else my brother is um 11 years old and something that i've been encouraging him to do is to go around the street and post letters into people's um you know doors and just say do you what do you think about a hedgehog highway do you mind if i put one in and for him you know you know he's not been to like a protest or an extinction rebellion thing i mean i'll don't worry i'm i'm on the case he will come and but you know he hasn't at this point yet so for him that is quite rebellious that is his way of being active in his environment so that's a great thing to do as a family you know put letters through doors not talk to your neighbors and say hey do you mind if i put a little hole in the fence you know it's not big and it's you know it's something that can be really positive and as you say then you get these connected streets which is what makes the difference and i think that's really important is also it can feel like um oh my god well there's there's chris and megan speaking to millions there's the people for extinction rebellion uh rebelling and being arrested and i can't do either of those things so i should probably not i am i with with my wife so the filmmakers say brought me made a film for the quakers uh called non-violence for a change all about non-violent protest and in that we look at the whole spectrum of what protest looks like and it starts with the people handing out a leaflet the people putting a letter through the door and without that the person who who takes a hammer to a war plane and disables it um and more power to their elbows without leafleting in the first instance that doesn't work you need to have this entire continuum you need to have everything from the individuals picking up elastic bands on their way to their school and popping them along the central column of their scooters because this is another thing which when i talk in primary schools kids end up doing this because hedgehogs will get caught in these elastic bands they'll collect all the ones they see dropped by the posties and they will you'll have competitions who gets the highest stack of elastic bands these small acts are stepping stones they're the beginning of a process which which will lead to great and fundamental change i really really hope and if we didn't hope that would be the case you almost feel like giving up so you've got to remain optimistic yeah absolutely and then you know all the optimism is in here really this is your new book the hedgehog book very aptly named i have to say yeah what's about um [Laughter] here we're running out of time you've got you've got a minute to sell your book off you go a minute starts now okay so the book is available from graphic uh the publishers and it they will give a pound to the british hedgehog preservation society for every copy they sell you can buy it from your local bookshop if you go to wild sounds they have been selling it at a really decent discount and that is in itself a very wonderful and lovely thing uh i will give a shout out to kennel worth books a fantastic local bookshop just south of birmingham north of oxford and they do amazing work with wildlife authors they get people in to come and talk when we're allowed to do that sort of thing you know find your local bookshop if you really can't find your local bookshop well there's always the people who don't pay their tax um but maybe go to local bookshop all the publishers okay and it's a book about hedgehogs and it's full of pretty pictures and it's a very okay that's it that's your minute that's your minute really hard hedgehogs there we go for the love of hedgehogs put in a hedgehog highway it's a great book because it's it's it's it's good because it encompasses everything it's an introduction to the animal it explains the plights it's got the art it's got the history it's got the culture and also it's got the science too all in one small volume what more could you want it's really really we wouldn't just say that because you aren't either you know what we're like honest but it is it's great hugh thanks so much one more thing before you go come on we've got to be thinking about the million where do people go to sign your petition if they haven't done it change.orgs and it's www.change.org save our hedgehogs and i was the only hedgehog petition up there which is currently at nearly 950 000. you can't miss it um it splashed across um social media and um hedgehog hue is my um is it what's it called a tag a handler name or something whatever um hedgehog you it's sort of it's it yeah it's got a lot of h's and i'm out there so so follow that and you will be reminded repeatedly uh uh to sign and to share thank you both for all you do it's wonderful to be back thank you thank you soon have a great day thank you cheers aside from that we didn't get into all of his hedgehog knowledge this morning but he's a top a top bloke and yeah i mean look hats off 950 000 signatures that's an astonishing achievement absolutely astonishing imagine if we do get to the million a million people in the uk saying that they want new developments to have holes in the fences it's a hole in the fence we're not asking for a fun fare in everyone's backseat material you're saving money we're not even saying everything buy a house you get a free ferrari we're just always saying is you have a hole in there you're going to start that petition aren't you i could start that one but the uh 1950s racing fry all right but they want that enough don't want me to go around um the key thing is that um but we're just looking for a hole in the fence we're actually asking for an absence of something we're not asking for something extra if we're asking for something less just to hold an offense come on that's gotta be good hasn't it and then you know what the next thing will be after when that happens million signatures something and some developers are on board let's be clear some developers are on board already who's had success with some quite major developers to be quite honest with you so some are on board when they're all on board next we move to swift bricks yep mandatory in new builds you've got to have swift bricks up in there maybe house sparrow bricks yep you can get bee bricks you can get all sorts of you can't get gosh hawk bricks they don't nest them in buildings that would be cool you get white stalk white stalk um things above your house on your chimney that's a few years ahead that one yeah that's when the store projects maybe when i'm like 80 i'll start campaigning can you imagine that imagine if you get to the point where you live like okay here's the thing when i was a kid we never thought that we would see gosh hawks in our neighborhood peregrine falcons and red kites flying overhead ospreys and white-tailed eagles being reintroduced to the south of england that would net that was not on the cards right but imagine you know when you grow up if you've got you know what's on the cards is stalks nesting on your house could happen that'd be cool could happen that would be pretty cool could happen yeah you never know when i walked a hedgehog just before we move on just before we move on to the next piece look here's our little certificate michaela if you were watching last week here michaela uh has adopted an african penguin called meg chris uh on our behalf as a gift yeah the only thing is it says reason for admission underweight there we are and you can find out more about these penguins if you'd like to from san cobb s-a-n c-c-o-b it's a great place it's where mckellar was talking about last week in cape town yeah so african-american sand cob oh there we are look there's the address there s a n c c o b dot co dot z a that's at the bottom of this yeah so if you'd like to find out more about thanks for that mikayla we're very very that we've now got a fat penguin and um we don't know it's much better than being thin it's got our own fat penguin down in south africa they're looking um yeah looking actually like quite chilly yeah quite like he or she you know is looking quite yeah quite happy really even a little bit smug should we move on snug penguins anyway uh next up we have the fantastic indie green indie has been out filming for us and he's put together so such a beautiful film for us to show you so i think it's just nice to sit back and relax with this one it's a bit mindfulness moment but it's um lots of knowledge yeah about sherwood forest a little bit about ancient woodland so have a look at this dawn in shelled forest as the sun's warming rays penetrate through the trees this magical forest slowly spins into life walking amongst the stunning ancient oaks makes you feel small in the best possible way the beauty of their form attracts a sleepy tawny owl from this to this astounding some of the forest trees simply look out of this world twister may have lost its inner strength but is still fighting fit the aptly named medusa snake-like branches still rising from its base of course shelled forest is home to many more ancient oaks a whopping 997 the largest collection in western europe the forest is home to a unique array of bird species including the lesser spotted woodpecker [Music] red start and the lovely marsh tip many rare invertebrates depend on decaying wood to survive for this reason fallen oaks are left to naturally decay the dead wood inside of a tree supports hundreds of species of invertebrates it's always important to look down as well as up whilst walking through a forest all of these colorful characters are all part of the forest ecosystem eyes should be forever peeled great efforts have been made to preserve some of the more fragile trees in the forest metal bands have been secured around the girth of the trees a metal tree hugger a good way to appreciate a forest is to lie down look up to the canopy of trees and listen as the evening draws in the night jars cheering begins through their very existence over centuries ancient woodlands have developed a rich species of plants fungi and insects they offer unique habitats complex biodiversity formed over hundreds of years ancient woodlands are of course irreplaceable it is up to us whether we choose to preserve them excellent stuff it's beautiful indie's quite versatile yeah you know really well put together great little film yeah really about indy although he's a relatively young person um where he's young compared to us yes yes young okay he's not relatively young he's a young person um he's very versatile in his thinking isn't he so he's he's sort of into his birds because he's made films about you know just going out and looking for woodpeckers yeah and then he did his vulture stuff and it was there was a conservation thing behind that we were all very very worried about that vulture because of what he did he's still going out looking yeah seeing it and everything he's doing that but then he did the diverges local conservation yeah and now he's doing mindfulness as well he's got a great breadth of not only interest but the fact that he turns that interest into something tangible like these films yeah star indie green thank you very much indy thanks very much keep it keep it coming keep it coming yeah privilege to be a platform for your work actually and we really appreciate it so thank you very much i'm sure all of our viewers do do the same okay i hope you're all calm and you know why should you be centered as we go on to the soapbox well this week's soapbox is is is there's no choice about what it's going to be it's about the badger cull which has been running since 2013. it's caused no end of pain and aggravation and frustration and disappointment and anger in the humans unfortunately that powers into insignificance with the pain anguish that have been suffered by the badgers that have been culled um you know it's been a travesty to be quite honest with you from the outset yes um it's been divisive it's divided farmers from conservationists um it's it's been obviously political it's led to all sorts of political arguments uh and we followed it and we fought it as as hard as we possibly can and unfortunately it's it's still going on um we're very fortunate however though that throughout the course of this cull there has been one man i mean a lot of people again have been campaigning against the magikarp brian may notably uh of of course um rosie woodruff as a scientist who has taken a very scientific approach um to to to you know revealing information about the interaction between badgers and cattle and the spread of bovine tuberculosis so there are key players but um undoubtedly there are centers a remarkable man dominic dyer and dominic dyer leads the badger trust at the moment he has a long experience uh in terms of wildlife protection he's a fantastic orator there's no question of that at all he's extraordinarily motivational and when it comes to the badger cull i'm tempted to say that no one knows more um dominic has had his heart and his soul and every cell in his body um over the last seven years you know and longer i'm trying to stop this heinous cull so we thought that before we have our say we better hand over to the country's leading expert on this and let him tell you what's been happening this week because it's i'm afraid it's bad news and our badgers need us you know we we we love those animals and we shared our badges on spring watch this year we i've been photographing them you've just been looking at some of the photographs that i've been taking recently of those animals but here's dominic to tell us about how the color's actually been expanded this week don in a major u-turn this week the government have announced they're going to expand the call with 11 new licenses that's 54 areas geographically the size of wales stretching from cornwall to cumbria 65 to 70 000 badges to be killed this year a total of 165 000 could be killed by the end of this year since 2013. we estimate the cost of the coal policy now is over 70 million pounds large numbers of those badges are being killed by a controlled shooting method that could take up to five minutes for them to die of blood loss and organ failure we have no evidence that most badgers press spread tb to cattle we have lots of evidence of industrial pollution of tb spreading from cows into wildlife into domestic animals and the farming industry are not dealing with the problem and the government are letting them get away with it we're killing badgers for nothing this is a tragic case of ecological vandalism on an unprecedented scale and we could be pushing badgers to the verge of local extinction in areas of the country where they've lived since the ice age we have the complaint before the burn convention a treaty the british government is signed up to for protection of badgers in britain where we have over 25 percent of europe's population i'm pleased to see the labour opposition this week have come in to support that complaint both with the secretary of state george hustis but also with the burn secretariat as well and it will be discussed within burn next week but it's a critical time for our poor badgers we cannot keep destroying badgers to protect declining farming industry in this country we have to change we can get on top of bovine tb but that will be as a result of better tv testing biosecurity and movement controls getting on top of the use of slurry where we know that tb can survive for over two weeks and let's get serious about badger vaccination we know it works we know it's far more cost effective than culling there are millions of young people in this country desperate for work that could be put into badger projects up and down the country to help farmers landowners to vaccinate their badges why don't we just get on with it and then of course we do have cattle vaccination trials now but it's taken too long the government needs to move that forward vaccinate cattle vaccinate badgers get serious about biosecurity and cattle control movements and improve the tb testing that's better for taxpayers better for farmers and better for the future of our poor badgers thanks dom hitting the nail very you know firmly on the head there um unbelievable absolutely it's just you know the science is obvious yeah it's blatant there is no ambiguity about the fact you know that the cull has you know next to no effect i well i see i've got something here here's an interesting thing okay so i'm just going to read you this piece that was in the guardian um so the national farmers union here stuart roberts who's a spokesperson on behalf of the nfu um has said that they've always supported the government's 25-year eradication strategy which provide farmers with a lifeline for tackling bovine tb using all available measures to tackle this horrendous disease including strengthening cattle movements enhanced biosecurity and controlling the disease in wildlife so then it goes on to say um the chief vet has said that proactive badger culling is currently the best available option to tackle this disease there's clear evidence that badger culling is working the thing is right in those peer-reviewed papers by the national pharmacy union the 67 66 reduction that they measured the following year by a 130 percent increase in btb they don't like to tell you that bit do they the nf you don't like that science which suits them in the first year there was a 66 decline they don't like the fact that the following year was 130 percent increase we don't hear them talking about that without the way that the badger car isn't working we don't hear them talking about when the badges are culled this is the most absurd when the badgers are shot you would suggested to see whether they were carrying bovine tuberculosis and therefore whether they had died you know you know necessarily in some people's eyes then we would have an idea you know which parts of the badger population were carrying bovine tuberculosis were the ones that were being had it and therefore it warranted killing them in some people's minds but no we didn't do that they're not tested we don't even know of all of these these seven up to seventy [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] technical issues sorry everyone internet suddenly went down pretty quick so we've had to switch devices and um or megan's phone come back again i kind of like the fact that um you know we use such low technology i don't like it when it fails like that though so i'm sorry about that sort of lack of professionalism we can um well it wasn't our fault the internet just went down anywhere in the middle of okay look i was in the middle of a rant and i was saying that basically those animals which are killed the badgers which are killed are not tested for btb i mean come on that's day one isn't it you would test to see whether the animals you were calling or actually carrying the disease you're trying to prevent the other thing is of course that these animals are being shot at night when they're on the ground and there's evidence to suggest that you know the standards that have been set by defra natural england into in in what they term as a humane method of killing and not are not being met because you know when the shooters are shooting the badgers some of those animals are not killed instantaneously they're struggling away into the bushes into the woods and they're taking more than five minutes to die well that's just just horrendous there's nothing badgers are being found in the countryside but with gunshot wounds that haven't been recovered and other animals are are shot and and and left in extraordinary excuse and the money 17 million pounds worth of taxpayers money you know and it's more expensive isn't it i mean you know badgerco is something of course i'm hugely passionate about but all the details you know is there's so much that goes into it but isn't it that it's more expensive to actually cull them massively more expensive than it would be to vaccinate or test yes well the two things that need to be happening and this is what the government the reason why we're particularly angry now is that the government threw us a lifeline in the spring when they said that they were going to improve biosecurity i.e cattle to cattle transmission of bovine tuberculosis they were going to it you know rapidly increase the speed that we look at a cattle vaccine and make sure that that was put into play and that we would expand badge of vaccination and now some of the areas where they're set to start culling include areas where badges have been vaccinated so we know for a fact that those badges are going to be shot that are harmless you're going to be sure all that effort that goes into vaccinating and there is a lot you know there's a lot of people that i follow on twitter that are always out trying to complain against the budget and vaccinate these animals and they're just going to be shot anyway it's absolutely ridiculous what a waste of taxpayers money what a waste of conservation a waste of everything what what what oxfordshire lincolnshire leicestershire and derbyshire and in derbyshire they've had one of the most effective um you know well put together derbyshire wildlife trust i've been vaccinating the badgers they've been doing fantastic work with farmers liaising with them effectively to to to to vaccinate those badges and now it's become part of one of the coal zones i mean what on earth honestly an embarrassment the uk conservation staff at the moment is just an absolute shambles i'm afraid that that level that it is okay bottom line what can we do about it then because we've all been fighting really hard um what can we do about it well firstly share your concerns on social media remember shout above the noise make a noise politely politely there's no need to be offensive about it at all just be kind to everyone but but have your exercise your voice to complain about the badger car secondly of course you voted for them whoever they are um write to your mps and say that this is giving you ongoing concern and if you need any information about you know to shape and structure your letter then obviously the badger trust is one of the places you can you can go yeah for that also support if you're able to those vaccination schemes um that we mentioned derbyshire wildlife trust they're not the only people that are doing vaccinations around the country if you're feeling really like you wanted to to support that of course don't just give give them money or or social media support actually do something volunteer go out and learn the trade of of how you vaccinate badges yeah and lots of people been doing that recently i've seen lots of people have been getting trained it's a fantastic thing to spend time out in the countryside and protecting the species that we all love and is in serious trouble i don't know anyone should we move on to something positive now because that's what we need to do uh stephanie west works at the natural history museum in the angela marmol cintamar mom center and marmals sorry after the mod center and there uh she trains people in uh identifying animals and and and developing their skills when it comes to biodiversity amongst other things and she's made some film first before she contacted a little while back i said would you be interested in this brilliant butterflies project that's run in conjunction with the london wildlife trust and butterfly conservation and we said yes and you know what i haven't heard of it in fact that it started last year i think um south of uh croydon in london there are some chalk grasslands and short glasses are incredibly rare habitat you know you only find chalk gardens in northern europe and in the uk we're fortunate to have i think probably more than anywhere else in europe when you think of the down land and so forth but of course in the wake of the second world war when agricultural intensification took off most of those chalk grasslands were plowed up and turned into arable fills um only those on the sort of steep slopes or protected areas survived and they have a very particular flora and forms anyway here to start the this little film that steph has instigated is anna uh from the london wildlife trust to tell us all about the brilliant butterflies project and it's good news an antidote to all about bad news that we're going on about the badgers take it away anna hi i'm anna i'm the nature reserves officer on the brilliant bus flies project it's a partnership project between london wildlife trust butterfly conservation and the natural history museum supported by players of the people's postcode lottery i'm here today on one of the six chalk grassland nature reserves where i spend a lot of time working with groups of local volunteers to restore these valuable habitats just one square meter of chalk grassland can have up to 40 different species so every metre really does count as well as restoring the chalk grassland we're also creating new habitats engaging with local people and leading on groundbreaking scientific research my fantastic colleagues at the natural history museum are working on pioneering environmental or e-dna technology they're going to tell you a bit more about that in a minute we've also been working alongside butterfly conservation across croydon and bromley right in the heart of urban communities to build butterfly banks these mini chalky habitat islands help to develop a living landscape and provide the perfect place for butterflies and other insects to thrive and be enjoyed by everyone hi chris hi megan hi everyone uh so you've just been introduced to the brilliant butterflies project which we're working with london wildlife host and butterfly conservation on and katie and i are finally out on field work after a season of missing out on most of what we should have been doing this year but we're out today for the first day of our field work season and we're on some of the london wildlife trust reserves this week setting up a few traps so katie's just going to introduce you to what we're doing today so yeah we've got our two different types of traps here so here is a malaise trap which is uh essentially like a tent which collects flying invertebrates so we put it in line with a sort of invertebrate flight path and then the invertebrates will fly up into the side of the net and then they'll go because they tend to have a tendency to fly upwards they'll fly upwards into the collection pot which has got 100 ethanol in which we're then using for molecular grade identification which we'll explain further later um and then we've also got some um pitfall traps which you can see there in a little triangle shape here essentially it's just a little cup in the ground like this and it sort of is a level with the ground so all of the ground dwelling invertebrates will then sort of fall into the collection pot and we're also taking some soil samples as well which we take and then we'll use for dna analysis and we put them in these little tubes here and we use spatulas to collect them as well so next week we'll come back and we'll collect all these traps up and then we'll take everything that we've caught back to the museum and to our laboratories what we're doing there is trying a new pioneering way of i'm taking something called edna which you might have heard of before for single species but what we're trying to do here is see if we can get the complete species list from everything we're collecting in the traps all in one go the problem with doing this in the traditional way of going through and by hand identifying every single insect in a collecting trap like this is it can take a very long time and potentially be very expensive and particularly for conservation sites and things it means it doesn't often happen and invertebrates often are missed in conservation research and conservation practice as well so what we're hoping to create through the brilliant butterflies project is a new way of quickly and rapidly assessing invertebrate populations and hopefully that might be something which will be of use to conservation research in the future fantastic new science that was a new science but well it is relatively new science of course the advent of our ability to analyze dna to the extent that we can identify species with tiny fragments of it metagenomics they call it metagenomics the one came here once actually just behind us here they they dug a hole in in the garden that patch where those wildflowers are at the moment took a little soil sample away and then threw it into a machine i'll simplify this thing threw it into a machine like that and then probably put it in very gently actually put it into a machine and then it identified about 400 different species of bacteria that were living in the soil in that patch instantaneously nothing under the microscope no one looking down there trying to tell the difference between different bacteria just fragments of their dna allowed them to tell me exactly what was in that patch they did another one over there and because the front of the house at some stage had been used as the farm yard where all the cattle had been standing in front of the house going back a long time they found a different component of bacteria just between here and there about 15 meters apart so that sampling technique that steph was telling us about there quick affordable um would tell us you know instantaneously about the biodiversity of those community communities and better allow us to conserve them because the project of a whole is what hugh was talking about fragmentation got all these little fragments of habitat around the south side of london on that chalk grassland and by building those new patches and building them into into schools community areas other nature reserves then hopefully we'll build a web of connectivity between those fragmented habitats and those wonderful species will be able to move move between them so top were people's postcode lottery people's postcode lottery come up with a million pounds yeah good good good good work so that's people you know people playing the lottery that's where the money's come from and one last thing just before we move on the wart biter cricket you saw a photograph there of that wart fighter cricket uh well they're called wart biters because they've got very powerful jewels and it was said that they have the capacity to bite a wart off of a man's finger or woman's finger for that matter um so quite a few years ago now about 25 years ago get you know what's coming but it's true oh no you didn't try it listen no you didn't we were reintroducing wart fighter crickets to this site and we thought you know we'll make a film about this good conservation story um but what we'll also do is to see if the name you know lives up to its its billing so we've got the walk by to crickets no i know i don't have warts but this and in fact we found it very hard to find anyone who does have warts because they're so eminently treatable now if you get a wall you treat it it goes away well in the old days of course when they were named walked by two crickets people got wars and couldn't get rid of them anyway eventually eventually after a very very long search we found a man with a wart on his finger how did you search for that i know it was pretty what do you put in you know google no no it's pretty good adverts oh this was an advert in the local newspaper in the 90s this was pre-google and so yeah so yellow paper isn't there yeah yeah fingers when i get their fingers nibbled by a cricket listen whatever we found we found a man all right this is this is great we found a man who had a war on his finger who also was prepared to be filmed right and he joined us on a nature reserve and i think it was in kent and he came down and without a word of a lie like this is true i held the walk by to qriket up to the wall on his finger and they're relatively yes relatively nibbly right and and it kind of sort of nibbled a little bit at the wall on his finger right no it nibbled at it it didn't bite it off so i think they're misnamed steph so they're kind of like nibbling quickly they should be called wart nibblers what nibblers i'm going to paul brock but is it specifically i mean it would nibble anything surely i know but what you know you know it's a tough and scary yeah they're tough and they'd be harder to bite off than anything else you know so that that's that's just if you're eating your breakfast i'm very sorry it's a true story it's a film that we made for the bbc so good those were the days those were the days when we had you know orthotrons nibbling the warts of members of the british public ah that's what you pay your licence fee for and there's the phrase that you always come out and seeing good anyway moving on from some curious science to some well pretty good conservation initiatives so in the news you may have seen recently there has been a lot of talk i mean there's been talk about this for a long long long time since the 1860s i found out yeah yeah it has been it's been a long conversation um about this particular reintroduction but it hit the news recently in on august of the 6th 2020 and when otter beavers were allowed to remain in the river otter river otter river after these so beavis were allowed to remain they were deemed by the government that they were you know could be really beneficial for that environment promoting biodiversity flooding and drought so it was a huge huge success there's been a lot of work going into beaver reintroduction recently a lot of work and the pioneer of that is derek gao he's he's amazing he's had the most amazing life and he's kind of the pioneer of reintroductions in the uk he's been involved in so so much you've got water bowls missed the water for a long time but he was releasing that 25 000. a year amazing and you know he's been involved in the white stalk project he's now looking at wild cats but beavers are something that are very very close to his heart he's been working with him for a long time he lives on the border of cornwall and devon where he has his 300 acre farm and he has been kind of taking in beavers into these pens and trying to re introduce them for a really long time and i have to say he's just written the most fantastic book so this is called bringing back the beaver it's got all the information you could ever want about beavers and their reintroduction and their value to the uk countryside in here um i had the pleasure of reading this book over the weekend and interviewing derek himself a couple days ago was released yesterday so you can find that interview over on the beaver trust and also on chelsea green which is the publishing site it was a really great chat so hopefully you're able to watch it and it is an absolutely fantastic book and one thing i wanted to read which is so right it's a great um so this is a just a a clip from george monbiot who's a fantastic writer writes for the guardian about the book and i thought it sums it up really well so bringing back the beaver is a hilarious eccentric a magnificent account of a struggle against bureaucracy pigheadedness and sheer human irrationality in order to reintroduce a species critical for the health of our ecosystem derek gao has done more to restore this missing fauna than anyone else in britain this is his astonishing story of what it takes it is funny it is honest it is informative it is an absolute amazing book it's a must-have book actually um and i've i found out something something must have booked for me but i found out something i never knew about beavers never knew about them and i found honestly i was absolutely grateful right so this is you know goes to show how little we know about these animals and you know how much more we have left to understand and so when you know obviously you've got instant mortality all species a certain percentage of them will unfortunately pass away after birth when they're young do you know what the adult beavers do they actually bury their young in their borough and they like really take a lot of care and bearing their young and the females trade this really interesting behavior yeah but that's not because they're being sentimental well we don't know that's because they don't want the that you know oh yes yeah because they don't evidence but the way that they go about it there's some really interesting behavior in the way in which they bury them it's done very very carefully and it's that it's the way in which things i think they're burying them because when they when they begin to decay they don't want the risk of infection with the other young well yes but the way they go about doing it you have to read the book you've got to read the book because i mean i think we you know people have found evidence in the past that when a badger dies underground they will sort of entomb it in that part of the set and then the other badgers don't use it yeah but i think this is just would you want to sleep alongside a decomposing badger no you're a beaver no no but but no no i agree i'm not disagreeing with you it's fascinating and you're you'll see the science behind it it's really interesting knowing you about this before but of course for me it's a really important topic at the moment please get this book if you can it's really enlightening and it highlights the importance of why we need beavers we need them they've been gone for 400 years in the uk the conversations that derrick and i have had over the years on the letter g when it's kind of being you know reintroducing these animals and the hurdles that we're having jump over even at this point now natural england have not said that we can reintroduce the beaver into england and they're putting off the decision um due to covid now they were meant to have made a decision already but now that they're holding back because of covid oh come on everyone knows we need the beavers it would help with flooding and everything ranting sorry second soapbox yeah sorry we'll do a beaver special hopefully at some point in the coming weeks anyway should we move on yeah go on so we're gonna go on to looking at some of your photos and your videos of course that's one of our favorite things when you send them in to us um so let's have a look at this this is a photo that was sent to us by christian rogers can anyone help me identify this bird please it sat on the rocks on an estuary at rsb uh rspb conway well it's a it's a wheat here yeah and wheaties are migrants so they migrate to and from africa and there are a range of different wheatier races so although it's a wheatier you have to look at the wheat ears and if you get yourself a field guide you can look at the wheatier page and you'll see that they they're all the same shape but they come in a different range of tones and colors and that's because there's a sort of a geographical difference in in the way that they look and we get for instance greenland wheat ears and these are wheat ears guess where they come from um and australia yeah and they come back through the uk they're a bit larger because they they're obviously they're breeding further north so they need to be bulked up a little bit and um and and so you get the greenland wheat ears and now they'd like coming to beaches beaches is a good place to see migrant wheat here because they like feeding on the sand hoppers in the seaweed and you'll very often see them on on the other thing the other reason they come to beaches is that they're a bird of open country they're not a woodland species you find them on grassland short grasslands on heathland and moorland and on sand dunes and things like that so the bird of open country so i guess um you know the beaches around our coast were that's a sort of a habitat that they would feel comfortable in and of course find their food in so yes it's a wheat here on migration one of the first migrants that we see coming through in the spring get wheaties in in march going through and then of course from any time from mid-summer onwards we get them going back the other way they've gone north and they fail to breathe and they'll start to move back south to um think of the winter yeah and as a group of birds they're the remember the chat family so they're you know they're related to thrushes which is why they're a bit like robin shape really because they were flush too and uh and across europe and uh asia they're actually i don't know how many species of wheat there are actually i have to think about that but there are lots there are lots of species of wheat here i would say somewhere between well definitely 30 maybe 40 species of wheat here maybe more maybe more they're very successful yeah beautiful birthday that's a gorgeous shot um so this next photograph uh this is from stormchaser a al um and this well this is quite interesting this is and so to my rspb and bird friends can anyone help tell me what this is please photograph in the field alongside a canal just outside slim bridge well it's a different morph isn't it it's a booze fairy art so basically it's a common buzzard and they are very variable in their color so we typically see the brown ones which are sort of a milk chocolate brown on on the top with a barred chest underneath with a generally a pale top to the chest and that's not maybe your typical buzzard but then there are two other very distinct morphs which are repeated so there's a very pale morph which is a creamy color and then there's an intermediate one and those are patterns which are almost sort of fixed patterns and obviously as i said the milk chocolate brown the typical buzzards are the most common uh but then you do get animals like this which is sort of a mixture between all of them um or maybe they're molting between them i doubt it though i think that bird is a is a um is the you know it's one of those uh messed up ones but yes it's a common buzzard and there is a lot of variation in that yeah interesting stuff yeah i could go on and talk about wider variations but let's move on yes we did a piece about it on autumn watch once so um and we spoke to uh ian newton i know i'm starting you're going off again no no go on go right anyway so last week if you remember we released a gossip that was in the most amazing experience and um we had quite a few cameras on it as you can imagine because you want to make sure that you're going to get the shot and in one we did slow-mo yeah well you know we like slow-mo so we did slow-mo goshawk go on oh yeah that was the title that's amazing it goes it goes i wonder what it's doing now oh i don't wonder where it is out there somewhere hopefully it's doing well yeah i mean she did amazingly well she's quite a small female and then you know she was the one that crashed into our window and uh was taken to the um hawk conservancy birds of prey hospital to recover because she ended up she had a really bad toe not due to the window not due to the window crash it was due to an injury that was done in the nest this is one of this year's juveniles um so they had to unfortunately had to operate on it they did save part of the part of the table the talent unfortunately was removed and she was there to recover and recruit she had an outside avery and she was brought back here last week to be released and it all went really well actually yeah fantastic so good to see that bird going back into the world yeah my neighbor went she had an absolutely fantastic time she said she said that the uh social distancing and all of the hygiene around kobe was absolutely top drawer but the staff were extraordinarily polite she said they were amazing there was not a grumpy person in the place they were extremely helpful and she saw one and a half of the displays and uh and she said yeah she had to leave halfway through and let her have it and the uh don't go there but anyway and she said and she anyway that she had an absolutely first time she'd been said absolutely fantastic time can't wait to go back this is lovely place you can book online and it and it is brilliant she didn't get a chance to see the burrowing hours they've got this borrowing our walk through you go in with the burrowing hours little owls running around benches on the ground yeah i let's have a little look at this [Music] look at the fish and the sound as well the water we see that again yeah maybe there's no chance you could run that one again because that is so good so so good look at that initially you just see the sort of splash of white and silver and then the bird just sort of appears out of it and you can see its head and its feet and the fish that's an amazing shot so who did that andy howard on twitter howard yeah in the kangols that is something else big bc apparently thank you so much and if you have if you have any osprey stuff analogy honestly please do send them in we'd love to see it because i mean how did you do that that's amazing so cool i know yeah i know that was cool that is well i tell you what fabian come on okay let's just see it one more time i think it's it happens so quickly you do need to re-watch it a few times right here we go oh my goodness me that is amazing all the bubbles everything i mean this is perfect place isn't it right in the middle honestly andy when andy played that back and looked at it for the first time i bet he was excited oh my goodness me believe it would you oh you must have maybe just cameras everywhere maybe andy can tell us how he got it yeah very interesting andy if you are watching then tell us how you got that shot because you think it's pretty sensational pretty amazing and you know any more stuff like that that you've got us very well just or anything just yeah that's great anyway wildlife art this is pretty cool oh yeah yeah oh this is what is it yeah right so yes okay paul hartley has been doing some um some drawings and we featured him on our sibc so basically he chooses a bird he illustrates it beautifully and then beautifully and then he finds from his extraordinary wardrobe as we found out some matching attire does a bit of makeup in a subtle way we tried to usually we were watching a few weeks ago in a less subtle way well you know you you were relatively because here is uh a young person connie aged seven connie where's connie there she is there's been very creative yeah so connie's looking great i'm loving the shirt it's a cool shirt i wonder what if you can imagine what she's doing there based on paw patrol she's doing paul hartley it's not a bird it's not a bird it's not a bird superb connie absolutely surprised i really like the shirt actually yeah it's really good yeah i can imagine you wearing that yeah no i do i really like it there you go it's an orange tip oh instead no orange pit butterfly cool idea connie does shirts with all the butterfly patterns on it's fantastic yeah that's cool okay we are just about out of those yes we are so we've got our mindfulness minute now so this is from jane masters on facebook every night is a party night with these starlings in my garden so here is jane and her starlings lovely sound yeah i love stuff i could just listen to the sound right yeah and the pictures are nice all those young birds that are there if that's taken at this time of year then that's a flop of young starlings when i was a kid when i was a kid that's the third time i've said it today i used to go out into the field and i said let's go out to the field at this time of year and all the young starlings would flock up and they'd all be grey as opposed to the darker adults you could always see their flocks of youngsters and and they'd be sort of rolling like this across the fields or foraging and then um things like sparrow hawks and kestrels would sort of focus on them because they're a bit easier the adults of course but yeah that's a lovely sound of all of those yeah it's nice thanks for that who sent that that was from jane masters on facebook thank you very much okay towards the end but i just want to say i know we've been doing quite a few books this morning but there was this one that's just coming in the post i'm so excited about it yeah look so these are a new type of field guide but i've already got the dragonflies here and they do a bird excuse me they do a bird version as well uh but uh the but they've been out for it well the orchid one has just come through and i'm telling you this is pretty special sean cole and mike wallace they're published by wild guides in conjunction with the botanical society of britain and ireland and um what i like about them in the mean these are they've got beautiful illustrations here and they've got detailed you know information about the structure i got the lateral pattern i love that i love that but what i like as well is there's a mixture of illustration traditional and the photographs here helpful very very this is the modern field then look you've got a little bar chart at the top and flowering time and when the leaves come out that's pretty cool isn't it yeah okay then you've got your obviously you know you've got your distribution maps here right but then hold on i just want to find one little thing if i can find it look at this so look here are all the hybrids of common spotted orchid this is detail this is so fantastically detailed look at this lizard orchid some great photographs as well but then it shows the flower and all of its different stages that here is unwinding and there is the lizard orchid when it's completely open smelling like an old goat and um yes well that's what they say they do this malachod goes i mean this is you know these really sort of redefine the field guide you know when i were kid when i were lad sorry that's four right when i were led field guys had to be illustrated and when the first photographic field guides come out everyone turned their nose up and they said oh no no the illustrations are the best the illustrations are the best well look at this the photographs are absolutely outstanding and they are really useful photographs in terms of helping you identify the plant and explain its biology but it's got the illustrations as well both really helpful in different ways this is the future of field guides look at this listen okay imagine you fighting all do you have a boy in a speech no it's imagining fun right but it's not in flower oh bit of a disaster oh no not now just the leaves oh yes i rest my case i cannot wait to get into sean cole and mike wallace british orchid britain's orchids published by wild guides okay yes very cool anyway great get your bird get your guides in your orchid guides your dragonflies your birds your beavers your hedgehogs everything in let's go to our quiz reveal you can continue hold on hold on no no hold on i'll just open the front there's a little there's a little picture here of all the other guides they've got let's see which ones i've got right have i got britain's ferns no i haven't i've got spiders and i've got insects i've got butterflies well i haven't got day five months i haven't got home flies either i've got reptiles and amphibians birds mammals arable bryophytes britain's plant galls i've got europe europe sea mammals that's another cracker in the series you're not getting paid for this by the way people don't think you pay to plug it i know you're not getting paid at all i just love this book i absolutely love it christmas [Laughter] i look forward to christmas morning there won't be any bra fights out in the fields what am i going to do with my new book you have to wait it's all about the anticipation anyway on to the quiz third time lucky let's see if we can get to it this time let's have a little listen to see what this hmm tricky yeah only a couple people got that right on facebook we've got a niece we've got jeanette we've got barbara and on twitter we have mike there's only four four people four people yeah tricky yeah yeah well sadly i mean a few years ago a lot more people would have got this because it would have been a more frequent species but it is of course the song of the red star yeah redstone red star african um african migrant comes to our woodland um would have nested in the woods around our house yeah not until about i don't know 70s or 80s so they would have been in the woods around our house but since we've been here they've they've sadly not been here like so many of those sub-saharan migrants they've declined dramatically principally of course because of um i would imagine loss of habitat is the first thing of course and then the second thing is the enormous decline in our insect fauna 70 declines we're recording in some parts of europe in terms of the number of flying insects and that's what they eat so 70 cents yeah don't have the birds without the insects can you okay so just to wrap up the other quiz the impromptu one remember i showed you this skull here we are so look it had anyone get this one well um yeah i read there's a list so this is kind of a combined list for both skulls people saying badger roadie muntjac sheep squirrel rabbit or stoat okay so well this is the skull of a mud jack so here are the teeth here which shows that it's a herbivorous animal and then i pointed out these these characteristic indentations here and the ridges that run down the top here and you can see when you think of this jackie type face doesn't it really yeah there we are it's also a bit of exposed but yes this is the skull of a monkey yeah so there we are it's got those incisors there it's in the gosh hawks nest gospel prey on quite a large number of these animals certainly in urban areas in berlin for instance pretty much living on them um it is a great squirrel grace grill yeah i mean you might have gone that but the cranium is much broader on a rat we've got a very narrow cranium so the whole skull is much longer and the squirrel skull is broader probably because they need bigger muscles for cracking open the nuts i imagine yeah right here okay should we do birthdays let's do birthdays lots of birthdays lots and lots of birthdays let me have a little look right i wanted to read this message out this is a message from ronald verhayan um who says on the 11th of september is my 69th birthday i never miss a broadcast of sibc i'm from belgium i always feel sad when your program comes to an end you're both fantastic people it's very sweet very confident um so sad i couldn't sign your hen harry petition because i'm non-british i'm a naturalist since i was young i started but a bat box project in my garden and have long eared bat in it wow look at bat and you fat bars that's brilliant it's really cool really cool um and every year he goes to the hey on y uh and hopes to meet us there once oh the festival book festival yes okay and then keep writing books good luck with awesome watch people that's very kind thank you so much nice to be beaming out to belgium it's lovely yeah um i'd also like to wish rory a very happy 11th birthday rory bracken happy birthday to you hope you have a fantastic day we've got graham smith as well a very happy birthday never misses a show apparently so thank you very much for that um we also have clive green thank you very much happy birthday we've got um flo blackburn your partner kevin newell birthday tomorrow so very happy birthday kevin we've also got um maria payne whose birthday it is on we've got susanna raynham who's 51 tomorrow and has never seen a badger that's a shame you've never seen a badger and andy howard who did the offspray clip the slo-mo osprey in the water which we showed you three or four times it was okay i mean it was all right i mean amazing it was really cool it's his 50th birthday today happy birthday andy happy birthday andy i hope you have a fantastic day and then you know you're out celebrating you know safely of course yeah um they might be moving away by now happy birthday for monday so lots of birthdays there we all hope you're fantastic birthday whatever day it happens have a great week i've got a wiz now because having gone on so much about uh let's start i've got to take the dogs to have their hair cut in the running late so we'll have to whiz so we're saying goodbye which remember emma was going to be on a couple weeks ago yes we had uh technical issues as we've had today very quickly i have to say about my hoodie yes i do have to so a couple weeks ago very very kindly i was sent a hoodie and a t-shirt by koala chess art you can find him on social media it's a guy called simon who makes the most amazing marsupial koala yes koala chess art and it makes sense in a minute because he does these most amazing drawings look i've got a velociraptor blowing bubbles of course you are what you know of course i also have a triceratops on a dance floor yes of course i have to try but you can get a t-rex playing tennis yeah you can get all these questions at tennis though when was the last time i saw t-rex when wimbledon oh you know it's a little while ago but you know they give it a good effort so you know they can only do what they've got shoot up the rackets shoot up the racket if you know anyone you know really into dinosaurs or the other animals too it's kind of animals doing the unusual things you never expect you know koala's painful which is why it's called koala chest art no then you could say what yes i don't mean that i mean the other koalas are good at chess but wow you know they spend a long time wrap around eucalyptus thinking get those two poodles together thank you very much everyone it's been a bit of a long one today so thank you for keeping with our ramblings and um we will see you well we yeah next week next week see you next week bye bye leave you with the eagles bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Chris Packham

Views: 5,530

Rating: 4.9205298 out of 5

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Id: slvjlwAdly8

Length: 100min 2sec (6002 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020

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[u/SolariaHues]

The petition they mention www.change.org/saveourhedgehogs