The Secret Life of Birds (2010) s01e02 Episode Script

A bird’s life in Wales
must be wonderful.
A life made in heaven.
Anything but.
Birds have to work from dawn
to dusk to find food and water.
If they don’t, they die.
They have to battle
with the elements too.
Survival, especially during
winter, is always difficult.
And during the spring,
they’re busy raising families.
They also have to put up with us
and find a way of surviving
in our artificial landscape.
In this series, Ill be finding
out what a birds life
is really like in Wales.
I’m going to be discovering the
vast array of species we have here.
And I’m going to be probing
into their secret lives.
Llandegfedd Reservoir near
Pontypool in South Wales.
It's late March.
A male great crested grebe
is courting a female.
It's difficult to tell the male and
female apart. They look the same.
But the male is the one offering
nesting material to the female.
Everybody’s got their own
favorite signs of spring,
whether it’s the first primrose
or the first swallow,
but for me, it’s watching
great crested grebes
in their courtship dance.
There’s a pair in front of me here
and they’ve set up territory
in this shallow little inlet.
At the moment, they’re indulging
in a bit of head shaking.
They have been parallel swimming.
And this, more than anything else,
tells me that the long, hard winter
we’ve just experienced
has now come to an end,
and spring has finally arrived.
Great crested grebes have the most
complex courtship display
of any Welsh bird.
The grebes approach each other
and dance.
The elaborate ear tufts
only grow during spring.
The rest of the year,
they disappear.
The headdress is clearly an
important part of the display.
Birds court in a variety of ways.
These are mute swans.
They, too, dance.
Black-headed gulls drop
their wings in their display.
Sandwich terns court
by sharing food.
But in terms of survival
and raising a family,
the ability to provide food
is essential.
On the uplands of
Mynydd Hiraethog in Clwyd,
another bird uses food
in its courtship.
This is a male hen harrier.
And this is a female.
They look completely different.
The male is blue-Grey.
The female is brown
and a much bigger bird.
The difference in size
means that they can exploit
a wide variety of food
on upland moors.
They can hunt different prey.
A male hen harrier has
just come in with food,
probably a meadow pipit or a vole.
Shell sit in the tall heather
down there, just waiting for him,
because hell be the one who hunts.
Hell bring food for her
and when he gets above her,
he whistles this
low kind of whistle.
Up she then comes.
Hell hold the food underneath him,
she flips under him,
he then drops it last minute,
she takes that food
and goes off to feed,
in whats called the food pass.
When you watch it like this, in an
area like this, it's stunning.
It's absolutely fantastic.
On the east side of Anglesey
lies the beautiful quiet bay
of Fedw Fawr.
Rock pipits are found here,
as they are all along
the rocky coasts of Wales.
This is a male.
He's claimed a thin band of cliffs
as his territory.
If you’re going to live here,
if you’re going to establish
a territory here,
if you’re going to mate here,
you need to be able to communicate
in a particular way.
Rock pipits haven’t got a good song.
They’re not colorful birds.
So what they do is they display
and they display by
going up into the air.
All pipits do this.
They fly high up in the air,
call, and just drop.
They’ll perform this parachute
ritual over and over again.
And they’ll continue to display,
even when the female has been found.
The territory and the female
must be kept.
Having courted successfully,
the business of raising young
can commence.
And it’s not always
a romantic affair.
And of course, there’s
also a nest to be built.
I’ve come to a small patch of
woodland near Newtown in Powys
and Wales finest nest builder
has built a home.
This is a typical
long-tailed tits nest.
It's tucked out of the way in a real
jungle of thorns and bramble bushes.
They’re incredible things when you
consider that every single nest
has got at least 1,000
feathers in it.
Some have even got 2,000 feathers.
The difference depends
on where the nest is.
If it’s in a fairly open, exposed
area, it’ll have more feathers.
If, like this one, it’s in
a nice, sheltered, warm spot,
it’ll have fewer feathers.
When the female lays her eggs,
there’s enough space
in there for everyone.
But when those eggs hatch and the
chicks are about two weeks old,
like they are in this nest,
there’s hardly any room at all.
So what they do is they weave
spiders webs into the nest,
and as the chicks grow,
the nest expands out.
It's a remarkable feat
of engineering really.
The building abilities of birds
are quite remarkable.
They’re well accomplished
nest builders,
and they can build
a nest very quickly.
These are rooks
and they’re building nests
in the center
of Newtown in Powys.
They nest early in the year,
usually during late February.
And different birds have
different techniques.
Some do it the hard way.
They break off twigs
to build a nest.
Others do it the easy way.
They steal twigs from
other rooks nests.
This gold finch is building
a nest at the end of a branch.
When I see birds building a nest,
it always strikes me that they’ve
got a small brain and a beak.
I’ve got two hands
and a large brain
and yet I couldn’t do in 12 months
what they do in just a few days.
This nuthatch is building
a very different kind of nest
in Coed Crafnant Wood
near Harlech.
It has commandeered
an old woodpeckers nest.
A hole in a tree which has
been dug out by a woodpecker.
But the entrance hole
is too big for the birds,
so it reduces the size
by filling it with mud.
It takes the nuthatch pair two
days to achieve the desired size.
And there it is. They’ve finished
all the building work now.
Isn’t that amazing? They take a
hole that’s a little bit too big
and make it the perfect size
by packing it down with wet mud.
That mud is still
a little bit damp up there.
They’ll be leaving that now
for a week, maybe two weeks,
for that to dry out. And it’s
like concrete, it’s so hard.
Shell be lining the nest inside
with bits of bark, oddly enough.
And when that’s all done,
it’s only then that she thinks
about laying her eggs.
Not all birds nest in trees.
Over time, birds have adapted to
the habitat that suits them best.
Were in the Grwyne Valley
near Abergavenny.
And this is a dipper.
A bird that lives along rivers.
It's collecting food
for its chicks.
And it’s built a nest
on the riverbank.
This nest blends in so well.
It's just on the bank here now.
The bird itself is dependent
on the river,
completely dependent on the river,
because that’s where the food is.
And so is the nest, really.
You always find it
out over water like this.
The reason for that is because
the droppings fall in the river
and get washed away.
The dipper is our only small bird
that swims underwater
to look for food.
It collects insect larvae
from the riverbed.
The chicks are fed by both parents.
The male will use the same
nesting site every year
and his territory extends about
two kilometers along the river.
No-one really knows why
they bob up and down.
MUSIC
The Towy Valley between
Carmarthen and Llandeilo.
The river continually changes its
course along the flood plain.
As a result, it flows in a
serpentine way down the valley.
Where you get a wide meander like
this in some large Welsh rivers,
you often get a shingle bank
forming on the far side.
That’s where the rivers thrown up
pebbles and bits of stone.
To us, it looks quite boring.
It looks uniform and flat.
But it’s the perfect nesting site
for a handful of specialized birds.
For one of them, the stronghold
in Wales is here on the River Towy.
This is a little ringed plover.
It's a fast little bird.
A bit of a Road Runner.
It's a migrant from Africa
and arrives here during March
to nest along the River Towy.
This one is sitting on eggs.
You can hardly detect the nest.
Both the male and the female take
turns with the incubation
and during change over,
you can just about see the eggs.
They’re really well camouflaged.
Little ringed plovers are only
recent migrants to Wales.
Before the 1960s, they didn’t nest
here at all.
In fact, before the 1930s,
they didn’t nest in Britain
and spread here from Europe
to nest in man-made habitats,
mainly gravel pits.
But in Wales, as on the Continent,
they use shingle banks.
Another recent nester in Wales
can be found on the Newport Levels.
It's an avocet.
A bird that has the distinction
of being the emblem of the RSPB.
It's an elegant bird
with a long, up-curved beak.
They, too,
are ground-nesting birds.
They bred here for the first time
during 2003,
and this is the only breeding
population in Wales.
The male and female
share nesting duties
and here they are swapping over.
They’re very aggressive birds and
will chase off any intruder
venturing close to the nest site.
We have around 1,500 miles
of coastline in Wales.
More birds nest in this habitat
than in other parts of the country.
Were lucky in Wales because we’ve
got this incredible coastline.
A rocky coast like this is a
fantastic place for birds.
Here you’ve got gulls dotted
everywhere, some out on the sea.
But you’ve also got shags, they’re
nesting on this cliff facing me.
Shags are like small cormorants.
Usually you see them and
you think it’s a blackbird,
but close-up like this with the
sun on them, they are stunning.
As you’d expect, for a bird
that feeds on fish
they’re great swimmers.
It's early April and these shags
are nesting on cliffs near Trefor
on the north coast of the
Lleyn Peninsula.
These shags are unique in Wales.
The nest a month earlier
than other shags.
Nobody really knows why.
Shags tend to stay close to their
breeding site throughout the year
and the feeding here may be
particularly good in early spring.
Cliff-nesting has
its obvious hazards.
It's important to build on a safe
ledge and away from the waves.
It's what the experienced birds do.
Some of the nests have been here
and re-used for decades.
They use all sorts of material.
Most of these birds
are sitting on eggs.
But some are still courting.
This is a young,
inexperienced pair.
The males raises his prominent
crest and offers nesting material.
But the female isn’t
particularly impressed.
Though they may try to breed,
finding nesting space is difficult.
The spot they have chosen
will not be suitable,
and they’ll probably fail
to raise young.
The north Pembrokeshire coast,
not far from Cardigan.
This is Ceibwr Bay.
The cliffs here are
relatively sheltered
and during late spring and summer,
house martins nest.
I remember as a kid, we used
to have house martins nesting
under the eves of the house.
I used to watch them
for hours on end,
and wonder, "Where did house martins
nest before we built houses?"
It took me years before I realized
that it was on cliffs,
like this one here in Pembrokeshire.
They’d build their mud nests
right underneath an overhang,
just like they do
under the eves of our houses.
And now, in the whole of Wales,
there are maybe
half a dozen locations
where they still use
natural sites like this.
House martins build mud nests.
They source the mud
from nearby pools and ditches.
These have found a good supply
by the side of a road.
They then add grass to the mud,
forming a neat bowl,
attached to the cliff-face.
Having completed the nest,
they line it with feathers.
It’ll take up to
two weeks to build.
And the parents will raise up to
three broods during the summer.
PIANO MUSIC
Some birds nest underground.
These are puffins on Skomer island.
They will use old rabbit burrows,
or dig their own,
using their feet and bill.
This one is bringing fish
back to his chick,
who is deep inside the burrow.
Nesting underground has a very
clear advantage.
The chick is hidden,
and safe from predatory gulls,
who would quickly kill and eat it,
should it venture outside.
Another bird that nests
underground is the kingfisher.
This is nesting along a tributary
of the river Severn, near Newtown.
It's caught a fish,
but the catch is not for him.
It's for his chicks.
The nest is a burrow
in the riverbank,
which he and his partner
have dug out.
The chicks can eat over
a dozen fish every day,
so the adults make frequent
visits to the nest.
Another bird that nests in
riverbanks is the sand martin.
Sand martins are related
to house martins and swallows,
but, unlike their relatives,
who nest in and around buildings,
sand martins nest along rivers,
or inland,
in any sand or gravel bank.
This colony is on
the Towy in West Wales,
not far from Dryslwyn castle.
These big sand martin colonies
are impressive places.
There are maybe 150 holes
along the bank, here,
and the adult birds are out,
feeding on insects above the water
and above the meadows over there.
They’re back and fore,
constantly feeding the youngsters.
The nests are about a meter,
two meters up off the ground,
and they go into the bank
about a meter.
So they’re perfectly safe from any
passing mink or a passing fox,
and really, the biggest threat
to the birds is the river itself.
Although they dig their nests as
high as possible in the riverbank,
rivers can suddenly flood
during the summer.
If that happens, the nests are
flooded and the chicks die.
Fortunately, this is not
a regular event.
But when it happens, a generation
of sand martins can perish.
MUSIC
The variety of nesting birds
in Wales is quite remarkable.
Were blessed with a wide
range of habitats,
and these habitats attract
a great variety of birds.
They also nest on our buildings.
These ravens have chosen
an old ruin in North Wales.
This is the old slate mill at
Cwmystradllyn, near Porthmadog.
It's the ideal place for a pair
of ravens to build their nest.
The view they’ve got from there
must be absolutely fantastic.
And for those young chicks,
as soon as the eggs hatch,
the struggle for survival
starts immediately.
Raising young is hard work.
It's also full of hazards.
Young chicks are very vulnerable,
and they’re open to predation.
Having survived the nest, there are
plenty of other trials in store.
And even strong adults can die
in harsh Welsh weather.
Survival will be the subject
of our next Secret Life of Birds.