#SIBCLive with Iolo Williams – Episode 43

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good morning everyone he just made it just me you just bit from chewing chewing something they shouldn't chew no to be a large piece of thorny thorny material last thing we need is a poodle with a thorn in its gun good morning good morning it's a sort of a blustery day down here isn't it move yeah but it's not gonna rain but it's it's it's jolly windy it's only windy I don't what about that for parent wind check paraplegics of course we've got breaking news it's a morning that our thoughts had hatched which is really exciting because we believe that of course that egg would not so yeah really brilliant use the hundred percent success rate for those Peregrine's up there yeah been brooding successfully every single year that they seen there which is greatest take a look now cuz I think we've got a clip of them feeding those four chicks just ordinarily sort of delicate behavior from such a ferocious predator you contrast the behaviour this is basically a natural you know homes it cloudy of old killing machine Bluetooth Bluetooth strong the peregrine falcon and then it becomes this feeding the chicks and one of the things that makes a species so successful is the extraordinary range of prey which they can you know use to feed those chicks and themselves throughout the course of year so given the opportunity parents very successful so I guess they're taking things from you know as large as Widgeon sighs dark Mallard sighs dark but brought across that respect for milk feed on things down with smooth is the Goblin press very occasionally of taken and copied around not much scavenging behavior but when it comes to birds it's a very broad range of species when they go out hunting there's absolutely no doubt at all they can play now at this point in time when those chicks are really young it's a male that's going out and doing hunting and bringing that food back you mind then as he's getting me hold that both will stop yeah and sometimes very broad range of prey there it can be difficult to identify it because that mile will pluck it before he brings it to the female it would be ideal of course when you're watching these webcams if the male will just fly straight in with all the feathers on the bird with the head and feet there some of those obviously make it easier to identify the species but typically no he plugs he does all the work basically all the preparation so that she hasn't do doesn't have to do much and also of course I'm trying to keep the nest clean because you don't want all the bits of Nathan head and other things those chicks are not going to eat lying around the net so they are on another poor bill not a part of that Cathedral all that works being done well out the way of the nesting and to a great extent I suppose you know it in terms of predators peregrine falcons don't have too many predators so they're not trying too hard to not make that nest obvious that's in the UK in other parts of the world they do have significant predators we've already spoken about them actually it seems like people owls will type Peregrine chicks out of their nest so keeping the nests you know low profile without lots of fluffy feathers blowing around might also be a consideration in other parts of their no idea bit of prey that came into that nest and it was very but generally they used to do some experiments believe if they were put hides very close to them and then they whip they had a little sort of a vault with a clamp on the end of it and they got the birds used to the fact that when the male brought the food in they would reach out unseen who are holding them hide take the prey bring it back into the high identify are Jeff this is fishing I'm not judging this is true and then pass it back to the birds and I know that they did that with sparrowhawks in the UK is bra again the male part of the birds completely but when they've got them there they could take samples or see little details which in to identify the species so they kind of swallow it check it over the scientist and then hand it I must say thank you that's the extraordinary abundance and array and generosity shown yesterday when many people were thanking we're sending in birthday wishes yes I can't get my words ours at me no it was remarkable said some of the things that you said were very very flattering to the point that they were not rude but it was very kind so thank you very much enormous birthday wishes yesterday but thankfully we can move on and never mention that birthday ever days I'll have to stop making your next batch right so onto our quiz of the day this week of course we are doing guess the feather and this one look at this dark pattern there got that far in the shape of the feather as well kind of gives it away a little bit you've got that dome it's quite wide isn't it quite wide I don't taste much about this because I think yeah well I mean what we can say is we've said that all the feathers this week are from country birds that in the UK and this species is very widely distributed so if you are taking the daily walk exercise even on the edge of towns and cities then these birds are I'll tell you who else is about and though police that he's about this morning this Yolo Williams our great friend William naturalist he's up in his garden in Wales joining us today and from the look of it it's got a bit of a blustery day as well good morning Yolo good morning Chris good morning Megan yet that the wind has picked up at the Sun the Sun is just trying to come up over the horizon at the moment so we're it's a glorious morning and I tell you one of the joys of getting up early here these days is being able to hear green finches again a bird that was common and widespread you know when I was a kid and of course about 2005 2006 they were hit by this disease try c'mon and that really really did knock them back a night I didn't hear any here for well over a decade about three four years ago one pair came back to the garden over the way and this year between their garden and my garden we've got four pace so it's lovely to hear green finches back again note what I was gonna say exactly the same things happened down here if I'm honest with you not for such a long period we lost them for a couple of years but they've they're back in abundance this year and I've been keeping a keen eye on them around the feeder and there were no sick birds and every afternoon just here and here we've got two trees and two males get up there and make that there was electrical which is very tight screeching Electric wine yes yeah that's right and this is a little bit of a staccato in there with it as well usually in there there it's a cracking burden for male green which is just such a beautiful I've got apple trees in my garden here and one of the male's perches up on a yachty nests in a little Andy a just over the way but he perches up on my apple tree and sings every morning and it's an absolute joy to hear them back in my garden once again I like know if you remember I was on about a month ago now but I'm just a little bush literally 2 meters to my left here was a done X nest and I taken a fall tour but a week before I came on of it it was it was perfect it was just finished it was empty there was nothing in it well actually after that they laid four eggs in there and I managed to watch the mail and of course that the the the life of the dunnock it's the poorest to shame you know the the sex life is just incredible and so I had a lot of fun watching the mail keeping an eye on the female he'd eat sing to her from the post the head would appeared up to the bush and he'd accompany her off to feed making sure she didn't go off gallivanting with any other males so while she was away I took this photo of the nest and you can see this one big fat chick in there and there's only the one chick that hatched out but it's done well it fledged last week beginning of last week and I still see it open about in the garden here and one of the adults is still attending to it and feeding it what is the other one the male is already got another nest the far side of the garden there but I've also got a quiz for you I'm gonna give you a nice easy one I think last time I was on it was a it was a stingrays thing wasn't it which is quite a difficult one one or two of you did get it well done you but this one's a lot lot lot easier it's something I found on the road out here last week and this is it so all I want to know is what is this and what I suggest is that you let the youngsters it's an easy one it's such an easy one I suggest you you maybe let the youngsters take part they let them have a go and see what they think that is all I'm going to do today is talk about some of the things that I've seen in my garden or just outside the garden in the lane here over the past month or so we've enjoyed some glorious weather of course it's been absolutely brilliant up till four or five days ago and that really has encouraged the wildlife with a vengeance and one of the things I've seen lots of this spring is butterflies and again you know they bring so much joy to so many people they're beautiful things and the first one I saw was a brimstone now I saw my first brimstone on the 23rd of March now this photograph I'm ashamed to say isn't mine Luke Philips sent this in he's a much better photographer than I am because mighty brimstone wouldn't stay still it just whizzed through it it had far too much coffee that morning I think just wouldn't perch up it really wouldn't but you can see why these overwinter as adults because imagine having that hanging down say from a my Evie Bush it just blends in so so well it just looks like a leaf there they beautiful beautiful butterflies but as I say they very rarely hang around and how look at this or the perch on his finger I do not know I really don't so so that's the the brimstone as I understand I forgot to send in the quiz photo so I've made a real real hash of that so don't worry buddy it was it was the tale of a slower and that have been left behind on the road out here so that's what it was anyway maybe if I come on again I'll get another easy one for the kids but that's the brimstone another part of life that I'm seeing a lot of this year it's having a really really good spring is the orange tip butterfly and again these don't land very often I find it very difficult fall and I find it very very difficult to get photographs of these as well but this one perched up briefly for me it's a male you can just about make out a little bit of the orange there its wings are closed of course but you can just about make it a little bit of the orange on the wings there and they've got a goodie I think partly because of the weather cuz it's been lovely it's been beautiful weather but they've had a good Ian as well I think partly because a lot of the Verge's are only have been left alone they haven't been kept by the council this year so hats off to Powys County Council well done and I know quite a few councils have delayed this year so if anyone from the council's listing please please please can we have this as a norm not an exception leave the verges along because it's brilliant for all kinds of old flowers and it's fantastic a lot of the pollinators as well now the next butterfly I've been seeing quite a few of this year more than usual is this one it's the comma and I guess the English name comma because on the undoing if I was to lift that over you see a little white comma on there very distinctive marking the Welsh have got a brilliant name the Welsh nearly always give our wildlife a really good descriptive names and the Welsh name for the comma is iodine gas hog which means raggedy wing so if you look at the wings they they look like they've been torn along the edges look like I you've been attempting to a bit of origami there and it's a real Raggedy edge so raggedy wing is the comma butterfly in in Welsh doesn't look a little bit like the small tortoiseshell she's one you'll see in your gardens quite a bit from now on but it's the it's the sort of raggedy end to to those wings I suppose more than anything else that separates those two I'm the last one another common one it's one it's a peacock no it's not the best of photos again apologies for that I'm not a photographer but what I want you to have a look at on this one is they've got these big eyes on the wing and those eyes to do a couple of things really first of all is to make it look bigger than it actually is and scare away any potential predator and also scientists believe that any bird that's gonna have a go for the peacock is going to go for those eyes and if you look carefully at this individual you look at the eyes you'll see that in both eyes there are small tears in there so it looks like it actually works it looks like whatever bird attack that has actually gone for those eyes there and it's pecked at the wing it hasn't got hold of it and it's a loud that peacock butterfly to escape so it's it's a it's a good mechanism it's a really good mechanism allows I was overjoyed when I found that particular peacock which can have proved up theory if you like lockdown has been going on for what six weeks whatever it is now it's allowed me to cut a few things I bought a new moth strap ib moth trapping for about ten years about a new moth trap and that was out last night I am going to look at it yet this morning I'll go over after this and have a look and I've also got into my bees and anyone who wants to get into bees they're fascinating things I would highly recommend this book field guide to the bees of Great Britain and Ireland by Stephen Falk and Richard Livington I hope you can see that there it's a cracker of a book it's helped me no end and either the couple of the beasts that I wouldn't have recognized before lockdown this is the a she mining be fairly common thickly in parts of England and Wales now I'm finding them first on a local just down the road here locals lon this whole colony in holes in the lawn and they were scared they think are these gonna sting but the a she mining bee is very benign it really is aggressive at all and it's a fantastic pollinator of fruit trees when my apple trees were up there best about a week ten days ago it was alive with a she mining bees and honey bees one or two bumble bees as well but the a she my name is if you got them in your garden then you're very lucky and the other B that I've noticed for the first time here and again it's it's not rare it's just me getting to know my bees is this one this one is the gray patched mining B these are both the ashy money beat the this gray patch that mining berry solitary bees and quite widespread quite common but if you weren't into your bees you probably pay them little attention but they are so important as pollinators not just for the fruit trees for a flowers here dandelions I've had all over my lawn this year it's been a fabulous show and it's been absolutely jam-packed full of bees so just bees it's not just insects I've been out the back up the lanes and quite a few fungi your uncle if you bracket fungi big old bracket fungi in some of the Oaks and the ash and also this one on elder the name for this is jelly here you can see why it gets that name it looks like it like in a year like a jelly it's quite flexible but I grew up with the name of juicier and a lot of people might generation if they know that fungi will know that one is juicier of course that's non-pc now we're not supposed to say that anymore which is a shame because what happens is we lose the original name because the original name of this one is actually Judas easier and Judas is here because Judas Iscariot of course betrayed Jesus he was so overcome with guilt it said that he then hanged himself on an elder tree and that soon after these years began to appear out to the elder and they thought it was because of what he'd done so hence the old name for these Judas is here which gradually became juicier which has now become jelly yeah so when you rectify do go and have a look from the quite common especially on on elder they they're quite common and they one of the easiest fungus for you to be able to identify as well that's enough of that I'm going to talk a bit about birds now um I've got a bit of paper down here just to remind me of the list of other stuff and as you know if you're watching me on here at a month ago I'm a big one for going out on the boat and finding bird's nest I I don't interfere unless the birds are away I just have a look I make a note I send all those records then into the BTO and I've got a pair of ravens nearby they'd been cranking over my head most mornings and they've had a fabulous here just look at this they've got five chicks in that nest I'm not that was last week that was the beginning of last week actually so those chicks are fled now I see them I can about being mobbed by the local carrying cos of carrying tall nest just over my left shoulder he and they mob the Ravens when they're in the air trying to tumble and play and if you think about it if you want to know when the first egg date was laid you've got to go back something something in the region of seven weeks so if they fledged last week towards the end of last week the first egg would have been laid at the end of February so that is really really early and it's one of our earliest nesters it really is and up here I suspect that that's a tactic because the Lambs lambing takes place up here in the Welsh Hills late March early April Lucia on the low ground it's much earlier but here it's late March early April time and so they will have timed it that they've got chicks in the nest demanding food at a time when lambing takes places a lot of afterbirth got a few dead lambs open about this well so there's a plentiful supply of food for those chicks nature thinks of absolutely everything this is an interesting nester nest in some scrubby woodland down the road here this is a pheasant nest but it's got nineteen eggs in it there were seen pheasant nest laid by where the eggs have been laid by one female and it's can be you know usually eight nine ten suppose lambda twelve eggs if you get nineteen eggs it's a sign that it's been late like females two females would have laid those in one nest and the other liter and that actually happens quite a lot with a lot of these game birds and ground nesting birds as well and the other interesting thing is that you'll see that the eggs there are in two different colors you've got the usual pheasant colour of sort of all the people like just don't and another interesting nest that was found by a friend of mine Steve Roberts is this one here it was originally a mallard nest in a tree in a hole in a tree this is in then an older that hangs out over a pond so in some ways it was ideal for the mallard she's off the ground she's safe there and she laid those four bigger eggs in there but then she was evicted by a Tornillo that laid one egg in the middle of those four and she was incubating all of those eggs now luckily for the mallard chicks the Tornillo leg is the only one that hatched out and that chick is it is a big old lump of a thing by now but that this again isn't unusual I found this kind of thing in the past to wear something like a mallard I've in front of goose under the illness in hauls it in in trees and they've been evicted by owls and the owl has taken over that it's just lucky as I say that those chicks don't hatch out and before the owl egg hatches like that and a couple more that have that have been sent in to me here now a couple of black bird nests and this is quite worrying this is quite an indictment on the human race really these are both black bird nests the first one is this one this was in a garden up in North Wales it's a black bird that's used plastic to line its nest and we're starting to see this more and more I see lots of bits of plastic in black bird nest in song thrush nest no and I see Baylor toying that sort of plastic string that you have I see that commonly actually a happy ever find any black witness with active anaplastic these days on the second one here again this one's come from North Wales this is the black witness with tumble dryer sheets in it and it makes you think doesn't it please you know if you've got to use plastic and because plastic is everywhere now if you use these sheets in your tumble dryer please dispose of them carefully recycle recycle or put them in the bin don't throw the Magna vote because these black birds have obviously picked these up and then use them in those nests there and who knows you know they could they could suffocate the chicks the chicks could get tied up in it could be a major danger now the final photograph that I want to show you now Chris you like this it's a picture again this came from somewhere back on the village up in North Wales sent in by a lady there and it's a great spotted woodpecker on her feeder but this great spotted woodpecker the underneath the tail there the color is usually red but on this one it's bright yellow and that's an example of xantho crow ISM I've never seen it it's son so crow ISM and it's a lack of red pigments and where you get this lack of red pigments the yellow pigment then comes to the fore so that's an example of zanthor crows I'm and Chris I'd be interested to know whether you've seen a woodpecker or any bird for that matter that any wild bird showing an example of xantho truism you like that word Santa Pro ISM you know I love a bit I've never seen one myself but like you I've seen photographs of Great Scott woodpecker and also other species that it occurs in are things like water Warbler yellow work tail and these are birds which are already yellow of course but it increases that the the nature of it and I think that in great spot woodpeckers it's the lack of red pigment like you say but the red pigment it's obviously joined with yellow and orange pigments as well which build up that intense crimson color in their plumage so if you take one out there's still enough of the yellow left there to color those parts of the body and I have seen photographs where it's not just the ven but also the red markings on the head of the mile as well so the entire body where everything should be red is switched to to two yellows but an interesting bird and I don't know I said about three sets of photographs in my in my lifetime I think so obviously it's something which occurs regularly you know but but sparsely I should say we've got any questions questions coming in from you from social media and Laurie what's your top bird and why my top bird is a hen Hardy that's a simple one because I grew up in the village of Sun Oven would you lick rune reality be reserved encompasses all that area now a lot of heather moorland and then from the age of about seven or eight a little dog called bit too a bit too nice to go up on the moor by ourselves you spend all day up there and I'll never ever forget seeing a sky dancing male hen her year for the first time I think I was nine years old and from from that day on you know I've just I've just loved these birds they're fantastic birds captivating sight oh yeah it was stunning absolutely stunning it you're they they do this like a Big Dipper flight over the moor and are once seen never forgotten so another question Yolo do you collect skulls feathers please pellets and anything else more odd than Chris I can't be any other than Chris surely I used to I used to and I select skulls I used to collect wings you know it's to find dead birds I used to collect wings my mother my pregnant he was a long year Dowell wing and that I found it each of about fourteen but but actually when I was about thirty I gave my whole collection to a young local lad who was just getting into wildlife and just to try and encourage him I gave him my whole collection of skulls wings fossils as well so he's got them all now it must be quite a collection that he's now caught in his bedroom or wherever it's well I tell you Mike my wife was very glad to see the back of them I think why would the mallard eggs not hatch when the owl egg did yeah that's that's an interesting question and I suspect what had happened is that the female Mallard was incubating those eggs the toriel came in evicted her and possibly didn't lay for a while or just laid one egg and was gonna lay more eggs which means that the mallard X would have chilled but because the Tonio leg hadn't been sat on that could survive there for several days without being incubated and I suspect that that's what happened there one more question and is it right the price we're seeing now just emerged yes that's right yeah that yes that's right these will have over wintered and then the next generations will be ones that have emerged from caterpillars that we'll be feeding on nettles so if you've got a nettle patch please don't destroy don't spray don't cut it it's really valuable for things like peacock butterfly caterpillars wonderful yay thanks so much for joining us thanks for your Sansa crow is this is homemade shortbread trace I still I still lament the lack of cake free here bakers absolutely I can send you I can send you a video of me me eating your difficulty is that the cake needs to be vegan cake these days as well so of course yes yes I did I tried to make Chris the birthday cake and I was looking I didn't think this through of course you need very specific ingredients make a vegan cake so when I went into the dark depths of our cupboard well I might be disappointed not to receive the cake but I wouldn't I wasn't disappointed not to have to clean up the mess that would have you know being made in the kitchen [Music] not so yesterday we got sent in this photograph from Louise Stanhope now she didn't take this photo and but it was put on her lancashire group so this is a squirrel which has something called pie bowl vism I have never seen anything like it before in my life it is incredibly seen lots of high board animal yes lots of piebald animals but NOS coeurs not a squirrel and i really understand exactly what high borders and was because we see animals with this pie buddhism all the time but we wouldn't necessarily associate it with being pie board unless he knew what it is do you know why we see them associated with you know a lot of puzzled animals right because it's associated with a gene in those mammals which allows us the domestic open so the lots of domestic animals are piebald as part of that process when we select for the traits of being friendlier timer less aggressive all those sorts of things then associated with those traits are jean complex which leads to animals being piebald and when they domesticated red foxes in russia in the 1970s and 80s that became tribal might if you think about beagles lots of our dogs are horses too and lots of herbivorous proficient how exactly but what is it exactly well what it is it is a group of unpigmented spots or patches on a pigmented area pigmented body what you're looking at with this grill photo is a gray pigment and that it has those Unforgiven patches and the reason that this happens is in the embryonic stage when things called melena blasts which are responsible for pigmentation migrate from the neural crest and into the skin if they don't reach certain patches then those patches are not pigmented so this is happening in the early embryonic development of the animal it is but the interesting thing about the squirrel is that it's symmetrical it's incredibly so much when this can happen it can be symmetrical but it's incredibly rare which is very unusual but we know that pi buddhism dates back a really long time there's depictions of the in Egyptian period so we know that it's been happening for for a really long time and but one thing that's quite interesting so when this you're like this this is the clown I love this in the medieval time when jesters were entertaining the lords and ladies kings and queens they were often referred to as being in costume as pies they were pied jesters and that is the piper yeah I suggested as a gesture but yes but basically that it bold from you know having these pipe justice because the contrast in their costumes made them look pie therefore it then evolved into the Pied Piper so it's all down to the neural crest down gesture to the neural crest their migration we'll get on that of course that's not the only interesting thing about pigmentation when we think about the lack of pigmentation we think about albinism right which is of course and the congenital abscess any weather so everything is plain white the eyes are red listen recessive and gene which basically means that if both parents carry albinism and the offspring of the parents will be and they can be and helping which is quite interesting when it's about 1 in every 10,000 mammals will be born Albina and in fact it's quite interesting in alligators they believe that if Nana going through this form with albinism it will only survive for approximately 24 hours because it hasn't got any protection to the Sun and it's also very visible to predators which is a problem with a lot of those Alvin and anabolism albinism they're quite frequently taken out the population so people were sending photos I've seen that of starlings house sparrows green finches they may have been logistic the green finches and and people take them and they disappear quickly unfortunately but there was a pair of Albie no grey squirrels living in just on the outskirts of chitester for some considerable period of time and Farlington marshes in the 1980s a pair of Albee no coupes and they survive for quite a long period of time but of course faced there were not so many problems down there was taking up resources a couple of weeks ago we were very pleased to be joined by Chris Howard from his garden near Bristol Chris if you remember that had put in one of those tiny little things that we'd encourage people to make using up our washing up Bowl letting that into the mall and seeing what turned up he's been working throughout lockdown to improve his garden from The Blob life perspective and he's gonna give us a bit of an update yeah hi Chris Hoy makes welcome back to Somerset in another beautiful day we're pre recording this one at the moment Jay said I don't make as many errors and faux passes last time but yeah it's been a beautiful day we've been out looking at the bluebells today the brushes seem absolutely stunning this year probably just cuz we've got more time to go and find them well suis seen some swish recently our first wish came on Thursday while we were doing the clap the NHS that was pretty special and we've got a black bird nesting right behind and over there so that's exciting too so time for an update what's been going on here well our newts have been getting more and more busy in that pond now I've got one hopefully and they've been really getting on with their breathing so you can see that this is a male par mate new now I mentioned the other day about the chin and the fact of fact that the Parliament news don't have a spots on the chin but also males and breeding season have this filament to the end of their tail and their back legs you can see there the back feet up are mate so that they have that real kind of distinctive palm shape to them so that's what the male Parma newts look like and when it's in the water it has this beautiful crest and you can just about see the colors as well there so they have been getting very very busy night said the other night I went out and try to take some video so excuse the quality this is me with a head torch my phone about centimeter away from the water but you can see right in the middle there there was a male knew and two females either side of them the females are bigger they're fatter full of eggs so the male is in the middle and you can see if you look very carefully he's fanning his tail straight at the female what he's doing there it's not a visual display we'll talk about later what he's doing is actually planning pheromones towards the female he's fanning these sex hormones trying to entice her to breed with him if he think she's interested what he'll then do is he will turn away keep finding the tail towards her and then move forward if she follows he then deposits as spermatophores on the sperm package onto the substrate that leaves the weed whatever and then try and lead the female finding that tail over time over the spermatophore so that she can then pick in her quaker fertilize the eggs go off and lay them in the pond it's an absolutely beautiful system it really is there's nothing like a solitary mass orgies this is subtle it's clever its really a really beautiful system you never have a chance to go out at night and watch it I really really do recommend it and what's even more interesting is it's happening in the pitch-dark that clip obviously I've got my torch on if I wasn't there that would be pitch dark and scientists have shown that actually the visual cues the the crests the colors don't actually matter at all the female can exhibit this behavior without any male being presence just following a certain pheromone crow so it's really really fascinating what's going in your pond at night and we know it's working just quickly because I've got this photo of a little new little EFT and you can see it's got the the gills still sticking out on the back of its head that's very young you and hopefully that'll be the next generation in our pond so that's the pond but the big question I know on everyone's lips is have we had any hot hog action well let me tell you we have we have we think we have so last summer you were here we had to we knew we had to hedgehogs from our cameras and then about two or three days after that we came out one evening and we heard this very strange sound this was happening at night as well and I took this little clip just over there in the foliage and pushed up against a brick and a piece of wood was a hedgehog and kind of circling it if you look very carefully is another Hedgehog and one of them is making a noise and we think what's happening is this is the female it's being circled the male going around her and she's kind of making this snuffle noise to say you know I'm not ready yet I'm not ready go away so that seemed to be what was happening that night it was definitely the female that was making the noise so we thought okay sounds like the courtship is starting so he kept an eye on it more like we kept in here on it because we started to hear this noise more and more often this kind of snuffling snuffling snuffling constant noise and so I went out and I caught this clip now this we thought was happening right under the window but when I came out it was actually about 10 meters away down the firing in the garden so that's how loud this is and you can just about make out I hope in this clip but you can definitely hear this constant snuffling noise so let me just hear that a second constant noise and the female is in the middle the male is circling constantly and he's now making the noise he's trying to call her and try and make have sex with him now what's really interested in I did some research in the Germans are really into this of course they are and they have a word for it they call it eagle Caruso carousal so it's eagle is the Hedgehog and carousal excuse my German that's awful eagle carousal the krauser is the the carousel so it's a it's a hedgehog carousel of you like so that male Hedgehog will go round and round him making these noises until she allows him to have sex do we know that they've definitely had sex no we're pretty sure it must be happening the noises are going on for three or four hours every night in fact the other night we had two pairs we were sat in the middle of the garden here we have one pair and then pushes down there one pair down there and actually a fifth one came behind us as well so we know we've got five hedgehogs in the garden which we never would have known had we not been isolated here at home for so long and really get to know our local package and really focus to actually get to know things so the trampoline started off behind me so that's good that also goes on constantly that sound but it's great to hear the kids getting active and the one thing I do want to say before they Colin was a big star last time and got a big lot of love actually from the audience further in a hole in this fence but I'm doing Joe the other side it turns out have a hole in their fence too and we caught this clip actually the hedge on using that hole it's on the driveway there's no cover but the Hedgehog just goes straight through that hole and that's connecting up at least three of our Gardens which is just fantastic the hedge of they're quite big home ranges so big up try and enjoy as well because they're doing their bit too and look sit big got to mr. Val who he made upon last time after I asked asked you guys to make a pond and many of you did but she made upon that morning and by the evening she already had her first frog earnest and well done Isabelle that's fantastic right that's it for me maybe we'll catch you again but for now it's back to christen eggs in the new forest Thank You curse the diversity of life and on his garden is amazing newts I love newts when I was a kid massively into news massively into news yeah I was so fortunate we had great cresteds and I had them in a tank in the garage and was watching them doing their display when the mayor bends its town it fans the female you know dynamic stuff big crest of course newts looking their best at this time of year all three of the native British species looking their best at moments of their Quitely cover underside you know what I was doing last night about quarter to one I mean I know I was painting apples I mean at this point that was meant to be my breakfast I was painting apples so that here's a green apple an apple that I painted blue and here's an apple that I painted all in can I ask you a question yeah why did you paint an apple blue an orange well I normally put in better business pretty scrappy scrappy better painting actually it's acrylic on an apple at one and nearly one in on why I think the main question okay because I wanted to explain polymorphism we've been looking at this morning Sam for crow ISM so here's a pigment deficiency in woodpeckers which is leading them to be yellow rather than red we talked about piebald ISM in mammals but what about polymorphism and this is where a species has different color morphs in its population and as a standard so this is something that occurs in that species all of the time well it can be an enormous benefit to the survival of the whole species imagine if you're a predator and you eat apples and you go out and you start eating all of the green apples well then you develop something called a search image and this allows you using your senses primarily vision of course to see these green apples more easily than any others so you feed on all of the green apples in that population and this means that the number of green apples goes down and the number of Baux and all in apples same species specific color starts to show us because they're not being targeted by predators because effectively the Predators haven't trained themselves to see them well then it gets to a point where the predator not finding enough green apples but make this work so they switch and they switch to feeding on an another one of the color morphs in about species so they might switch to switch to feeding on the blue apples and then they target those and the number of green apples is allowed to recover and it gets back to a balance until in the end there were less blue apples and they switch again and then they start feeding on the orange asses so what you can see that this is offering species is a chance to hide parts of its population because predators are not finding them and you see this polymorphism in a tremendous range of species it's been studied in the UK frequently in snails things called Sapir new Morales and another snail it tenses sepia it tenses and these have different background colors pink yellow and brown and different numbers of bands on little banded snails when predators go looking for them things like song flashes or even rodent predators of these things they latch on to looking for one of these color moths and then the others can prosper you see it on the beach in in things like periwinkles which can range from being wet all the way through orange yellow into green same spacings they're interbreeding the whole time but this polymorphism is allowing them for chance to survive so that's another reason why we see coloration at variance in animal species and we humans are all so polymorphic can you guess what it is about us which is polymorphic and offers us an enormous survival opportunity but they tell you it's not our different skin colors to do that at all blood types we've got polymorphic blood types so there are regional variations across to the across the world in the oh oh oh so Oh a and a B except for a mix of blood types because each of these blood types offers a different degree of resistance to a particular suite of diseases so some people with some blood types are more susceptible to things like cholera for instance as others with other both types are so if you get a covert epidemic that's been used to get frequently across the world then at that time those people would be more resistant blood type would be more likely to survive and it would ensure the survival of our species are not everyone wiped out point so polymorphism occurs even in humans it's not always color that's blamed on the bed to a job actually a painting me out will blow that Justin you can peel it and eat it there's nothing wrong with it's just acrylic time yeah so I think we should go on and see if we have any questions or um do you to share their palms with folks yes they do ant they do obviously you've got the problems with eggs being eaten you know things different things eating eggs but um Hans and newts will share their together and the both give rise to new polls they look very different you won't confuse a tadpole from a frog or toad with a new poll they look very different because the new polls have noticeably external gills these feathery appendages that come out the side of that cheeks but is that a couple quick birthdays to go through as well so Rheem and Langley it's a 17th birthday to say happy birthday you sent in a message to say that your own Dave number 47 of our installation week 12 of lock down because if your asthma and you haven't missed one of our broadcasts yet so thank you so so much for tuning in and watching and we both wish you the best birthday and also it's green mangles your 17th birthday happy birthday to you and also Helen pray your husband and son whose son is called James much other husband's name we wish them both happy birthday too now on ms:i birth birth happy yesterday and we got sent a photo this lady and sue Edwards was having her bar when she realized she forgot her peanuts out for those badges so she quickly rushed down and she got call from her own camera trap and she both did this both day of her outside in her dressing it's a Commons that we all do it want to see what I wear then I take that box into the woods we forgot we did we have lots of people getting this one right yeah it's been really good so we've got on Twitter we've got they're extremely Natasha Kate Becky Christine Diane mark Twitter pool of the she'll leave Verity Karina and Gayle Kristen needs you - Hannah Paula ELISA a Vivian exchange Julie I can go on okay these are the feathers form the common Buzzard the common Buzzard and what tells you that is of course the background colour is quite diagnostic and but also you've got this banding pattern on here regularly spaced bands that go to the edge of the feather here so these are the secondary feathers of a common facet they're large relatively conspicuous they don't break down they don't take it away to be put in other birds nest by smaller pass one birth certificate that so you frequently pick them up and as I mentioned common bugs that have recovered their bones you can find them over than most of the UK's they're likely to find these things that go out about walking on the edge of cities or in the countryside one thing to say is that these come from the typical morphed into are more common Buzzard and common buzzards come in a great range of different colors and you get very pale ones in fact their french name is booms are very hard the blue is very hard so it's the variable Buzzard due to its part it's different image but these have come from and especially been caught on a camera trap especially especially if you have a camera why don't you get caught on it in the most outlandish costume that you possibly can okay I'm gonna see who can look the biggest Burke on there oh you can we try I love like their costumes but then you can get caught on your own camera trap in ordinary wear so we do expect gentlemen in tutus and ladies dress the Cybermen really obviously thank you yeah I didn't quickly okay tomorrow Lindsey Chaplin make sure to send in your pips and questions and we'll be sure to answer the vent see you then bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Chris Packham

Views: 5,419

Rating: 4.9310346 out of 5

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Id: 7MBaUoMfnsw

Length: 54min 23sec (3263 seconds)

Published: Tue May 05 2020