1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:04,240 BIRDS CALL 2 00:00:06,840 --> 00:00:10,720 Of all Britain's birds, surely the most charismatic, 3 00:00:10,720 --> 00:00:14,400 beautiful and fascinating are our waterbirds. 4 00:00:14,400 --> 00:00:16,840 From the jewel-like kingfisher 5 00:00:16,840 --> 00:00:20,080 to the cryptically camouflaged bittern, 6 00:00:20,080 --> 00:00:22,920 and from the tiny teal to majestic wild swans, 7 00:00:22,920 --> 00:00:24,480 geese, and cranes, 8 00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:28,640 waterbirds have always had a special place in our hearts... 9 00:00:29,800 --> 00:00:34,960 ..and our stomachs. Plump and juicy ducks, geese and swans, 10 00:00:34,960 --> 00:00:37,240 thin and stringy herons and cranes 11 00:00:37,240 --> 00:00:42,080 have all featured on the British menu since we learned to shoot, 12 00:00:42,080 --> 00:00:45,560 catch and cook them many centuries ago. 13 00:00:46,880 --> 00:00:50,840 But our love of waterbirds is not purely gastronomic. 14 00:00:50,840 --> 00:00:54,200 We've always had a passion for the wild and lonely places 15 00:00:54,200 --> 00:00:56,800 where they choose to live. 16 00:00:56,800 --> 00:00:59,400 Anyone who has really any interest in birds at all 17 00:00:59,400 --> 00:01:02,320 becomes enthusiastic about waterbirds, 18 00:01:02,320 --> 00:01:06,320 partly because they come in very big numbers and they're very colourful, 19 00:01:06,320 --> 00:01:09,840 but also because they tend to come to such wild, wilderness places, 20 00:01:09,840 --> 00:01:12,160 the sort of places that we all love. 21 00:01:12,160 --> 00:01:16,240 It was when we started to covet these vast wetlands 22 00:01:16,240 --> 00:01:18,920 and drain the lifeblood out of them 23 00:01:18,920 --> 00:01:21,760 that these birds began their long decline. 24 00:01:23,960 --> 00:01:28,040 One by one, the crane and the avocet, 25 00:01:28,040 --> 00:01:31,880 the osprey and the white-tailed eagle, 26 00:01:31,880 --> 00:01:34,720 the bittern and the great crested grebe 27 00:01:34,720 --> 00:01:37,600 all slid towards extinction. 28 00:01:37,600 --> 00:01:40,960 But at the 11th hour, the tide turned. 29 00:01:40,960 --> 00:01:43,400 Compassion finally triumphed over greed, 30 00:01:43,400 --> 00:01:47,240 and instead of exploiting these birds, we chose to 31 00:01:47,240 --> 00:01:50,200 protect them and their watery homes. 32 00:01:50,200 --> 00:01:53,680 How we came to do so is the story of Britain's waterbirds. 33 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:07,240 The story begins more than 1,000 years ago, 34 00:02:07,240 --> 00:02:11,920 with a holy man who just wanted to keep warm at night, 35 00:02:11,920 --> 00:02:15,360 and his relationship with a very special kind of duck. 36 00:02:16,920 --> 00:02:21,600 The eider is our largest, heaviest and fastest-flying duck, 37 00:02:21,600 --> 00:02:25,840 with one of the most bizarre sounds of any British bird. 38 00:02:27,320 --> 00:02:29,480 An eider duck, 39 00:02:29,480 --> 00:02:32,400 which is a very masculine, butch bird, I always think, 40 00:02:32,400 --> 00:02:34,040 because they have a big chest, 41 00:02:34,040 --> 00:02:37,960 you know - they come out with this absurd noise, 42 00:02:37,960 --> 00:02:42,600 which sounds like a cross between a shocked lady, a posh lady, I always think, 43 00:02:42,600 --> 00:02:47,480 who's heard something a bit naughty, and Frankie Howerd. 44 00:02:47,480 --> 00:02:50,880 They sort of sit on the water and go "Ooh! Ooh!" 45 00:02:50,880 --> 00:02:55,840 DUCKS CALL 46 00:02:55,840 --> 00:03:01,400 It wasn't the sound which made the eider world-famous, but its plumage. 47 00:03:01,400 --> 00:03:03,760 To line her nest, 48 00:03:03,760 --> 00:03:07,520 the female plucks soft feathers from her own breast. 49 00:03:07,520 --> 00:03:09,720 These are, ounce for ounce, 50 00:03:09,720 --> 00:03:13,240 the warmest natural material known to man, and gave their name to 51 00:03:13,240 --> 00:03:17,320 a household object once found in every home in Britain - 52 00:03:17,320 --> 00:03:19,280 the eiderdown. 53 00:03:20,880 --> 00:03:23,880 People don't put that together sometimes - an eiderdown, 54 00:03:23,880 --> 00:03:27,000 thing you put on your bed, yeah, it's eider duck. 55 00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:30,280 One of the first people to appreciate the benefits 56 00:03:30,280 --> 00:03:35,560 of getting close to eider ducks was a seventh-century monk, St Cuthbert. 57 00:03:37,040 --> 00:03:38,920 Cuthbert and his fellow monks 58 00:03:38,920 --> 00:03:41,440 had chosen a life of devotion and austerity 59 00:03:41,440 --> 00:03:47,160 in one of the more remote and chilliest places in Britain - 60 00:03:47,160 --> 00:03:50,400 Holy Island, off the Northumberland coast. 61 00:03:50,400 --> 00:03:55,560 They shared their home with a large population of nesting eider ducks. 62 00:03:56,840 --> 00:03:57,960 I think Cuthbert 63 00:03:57,960 --> 00:04:02,760 gained notoriety for his relationship with the eider duck. 64 00:04:02,760 --> 00:04:06,000 And people who went to visit him were amazed that these ducks 65 00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:10,240 followed him around, and it kind of gave him a saintly appearance. 66 00:04:10,240 --> 00:04:13,760 What they didn't realise was that all ducks have this propensity 67 00:04:13,760 --> 00:04:18,080 to imprint onto the first thing they see when they hatch out of the egg. 68 00:04:18,080 --> 00:04:20,360 So he must have had some eider duck eggs, 69 00:04:20,360 --> 00:04:23,200 and the chick emerged from the shell, saw him, 70 00:04:23,200 --> 00:04:24,960 and thought, "You must be my mum," 71 00:04:24,960 --> 00:04:27,160 because that would be the natural situation. 72 00:04:27,160 --> 00:04:32,080 Cuthbert was so fond of his eider ducks that he passed strict laws 73 00:04:32,080 --> 00:04:36,840 forbidding anyone from killing them or stealing their eggs or down. 74 00:04:38,080 --> 00:04:40,920 This was the very first time any British bird 75 00:04:40,920 --> 00:04:43,280 had been given official protection. 76 00:04:43,280 --> 00:04:47,480 But did this saintly man have another, more selfish motive 77 00:04:47,480 --> 00:04:50,600 for offering sanctuary to the eiders? 78 00:04:50,600 --> 00:04:53,160 I mean, it's possible that it was 79 00:04:53,160 --> 00:04:56,000 for his own warmth, basically, 80 00:04:56,000 --> 00:05:00,840 that "I don't want anybody else taking these eider ducks, 81 00:05:00,840 --> 00:05:04,960 "because I'm going to... I want a very, very, very big eiderdown." 82 00:05:04,960 --> 00:05:08,680 I think St Cuthbert was looking after an economic asset, 83 00:05:08,680 --> 00:05:13,120 but was also, in that classic Christian tradition, 84 00:05:13,120 --> 00:05:15,360 seen as somehow transcending 85 00:05:15,360 --> 00:05:21,160 our own ideas of animals being fearful of Man the Hunter. 86 00:05:21,160 --> 00:05:23,320 Today, the saintly Cuthbert is commemorated 87 00:05:23,320 --> 00:05:24,960 in the local name for the eider, 88 00:05:24,960 --> 00:05:28,040 affectionately known as "Cuddy's duck". 89 00:05:28,040 --> 00:05:31,080 And he deserves to be remembered - 90 00:05:31,080 --> 00:05:34,640 by protecting the eider ducks, he was way ahead of his time. 91 00:05:34,640 --> 00:05:40,760 Britain's waterbirds would not be truly safe for another 1,200 years. 92 00:05:53,160 --> 00:05:55,440 In the centuries following Cuthbert's death, 93 00:05:55,440 --> 00:05:58,600 Britain's waterbirds continued to thrive. 94 00:05:58,600 --> 00:06:02,680 And they had plenty of space in which to do so - 95 00:06:02,680 --> 00:06:06,160 vast areas of the country, from the Somerset Levels in the west 96 00:06:06,160 --> 00:06:09,960 to the Norfolk Broads in the east, were permanently flooded, 97 00:06:09,960 --> 00:06:14,120 providing mile after mile of ideal habitat. 98 00:06:14,120 --> 00:06:18,160 But the greatest wetland of all was that huge, marshy area 99 00:06:18,160 --> 00:06:22,280 covering much of East Anglia known as the Fens. 100 00:06:22,280 --> 00:06:24,240 Wild fenland in the past 101 00:06:24,240 --> 00:06:27,840 would have been a remarkably diverse and busy place. 102 00:06:27,840 --> 00:06:31,960 It would have been a wonderful place for the modern naturalist to enjoy. 103 00:06:31,960 --> 00:06:37,200 It would have been full of pools with ducks and other waterfowl, 104 00:06:37,200 --> 00:06:40,440 there would have been reed beds full of warblers, 105 00:06:40,440 --> 00:06:44,160 there would have been herons and egrets staking out the edges of pools. 106 00:06:44,160 --> 00:06:47,560 The water itself would have been full of fish and eels, 107 00:06:47,560 --> 00:06:53,440 and it would have been just a very dynamic, vibrant, functioning ecosystem. 108 00:06:55,720 --> 00:06:58,720 It was a vast wilderness, and must have been 109 00:06:58,720 --> 00:07:02,120 one of the most important wetlands in the whole of Europe. 110 00:07:04,040 --> 00:07:07,000 For the human inhabitants of this watery wilderness, 111 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:12,440 these vast gatherings of waterbirds were like manna falling from heaven. 112 00:07:14,400 --> 00:07:18,120 They would go out onto the water with these walls of netting, 113 00:07:18,120 --> 00:07:23,800 and in a single drive, they would catch up to 5,000 mallard. 114 00:07:23,800 --> 00:07:28,480 I mean, 5,000 mallard caught in a single drive, 115 00:07:28,480 --> 00:07:33,160 tells you that the overall population was multiples of that, 116 00:07:33,160 --> 00:07:35,280 was absolutely gargantuan. 117 00:07:35,280 --> 00:07:40,600 And this bountiful natural harvest was seen as theirs by divine right - 118 00:07:40,600 --> 00:07:44,680 literally a gift from God. 119 00:07:44,680 --> 00:07:46,920 It was the general assumption, wasn't it, 120 00:07:46,920 --> 00:07:50,920 until very, very recently indeed, that the whole of creation, 121 00:07:50,920 --> 00:07:53,840 apart from us, was put there for our benefit - 122 00:07:53,840 --> 00:07:58,320 that the plants and animals are separate from people, 123 00:07:58,320 --> 00:08:03,080 that the relationship is one of subjugation, really. 124 00:08:03,080 --> 00:08:06,040 If they were hungry, they saw them as something to eat. 125 00:08:11,000 --> 00:08:13,920 The height of this conspicuous consumption 126 00:08:13,920 --> 00:08:16,480 came during the 14th and 15th centuries, 127 00:08:16,480 --> 00:08:21,960 with the mediaeval equivalent of a celebrity wedding - the royal feast. 128 00:08:23,720 --> 00:08:28,360 These medieval feasts were very much about 129 00:08:28,360 --> 00:08:32,680 how wealthy the person giving the feast was. 130 00:08:32,680 --> 00:08:38,720 How many birds I can have on my table tells you how powerful I am. 131 00:08:38,720 --> 00:08:42,200 And the number and diversity of birds that were eaten 132 00:08:42,200 --> 00:08:45,720 at these feasts is absolutely incredible. 133 00:08:45,720 --> 00:08:48,400 The feast which for me is most extraordinary 134 00:08:48,400 --> 00:08:52,440 is a 1465 feast by Lord Neville, 135 00:08:52,440 --> 00:08:55,400 when he was enthroned as Archbishop of York. 136 00:08:55,400 --> 00:08:58,520 And they gathered together I think it was something like, 137 00:08:58,520 --> 00:09:03,480 something between 14,000 and 16,000 wild birds. 138 00:09:03,480 --> 00:09:07,640 And that included 200 herons, 200 bitterns. 139 00:09:07,640 --> 00:09:12,720 I mean, 200 bitterns is the entire British population in one meal. 140 00:09:12,720 --> 00:09:15,120 There were said to be 200 cranes, 141 00:09:15,120 --> 00:09:17,480 there would have been huge numbers of swans. 142 00:09:17,480 --> 00:09:21,280 And all these birds would have been an expression of your ability 143 00:09:21,280 --> 00:09:23,600 to access wild protein 144 00:09:23,600 --> 00:09:27,600 in the most exalted kind of feast that you could imagine. 145 00:09:27,600 --> 00:09:31,000 Yet surprisingly, the killing and eating of these birds 146 00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:36,040 on this gargantuan scale had very little effect on their numbers. 147 00:09:36,040 --> 00:09:38,680 So long as there were still large areas of fenland 148 00:09:38,680 --> 00:09:40,400 where they could live and breed, 149 00:09:40,400 --> 00:09:43,600 Britain's waterbirds continued to thrive. 150 00:09:46,920 --> 00:09:49,560 But as the modern age dawned, 151 00:09:49,560 --> 00:09:52,640 their world was about to be turned upside down. 152 00:09:52,640 --> 00:09:56,840 In one of the greatest environmental catastrophes in our history, 153 00:09:56,840 --> 00:10:02,320 this marshy landscape was drained of its very lifeblood - water. 154 00:10:02,320 --> 00:10:05,200 There were three big attempts to drain the Fens - 155 00:10:05,200 --> 00:10:08,400 the Romans tried, the monasteries tried, 156 00:10:08,400 --> 00:10:11,920 there were drainage attempts in the 13th century. 157 00:10:11,920 --> 00:10:13,520 But it was the 17th century 158 00:10:13,520 --> 00:10:17,720 that saw what you might describe as the industrial drainage of the Fens. 159 00:10:19,320 --> 00:10:22,960 We can certainly admire the dedication and ingenuity of the men 160 00:10:22,960 --> 00:10:27,320 who carried out the Herculean task of turning water into land. 161 00:10:27,320 --> 00:10:31,600 But from the point of view of the wildlife that lived there, 162 00:10:31,600 --> 00:10:36,920 especially the waterbirds, the loss of the fens was a total disaster. 163 00:10:45,920 --> 00:10:49,360 Wild fenland has in the modern era 164 00:10:49,360 --> 00:10:53,880 been replaced by a much more impoverished landscape, 165 00:10:53,880 --> 00:10:56,720 a landscape dominated by agriculture and by farming, 166 00:10:56,720 --> 00:10:59,320 a landscape dominated by profit. 167 00:10:59,320 --> 00:11:03,320 And what we have now is much bleaker, 168 00:11:03,320 --> 00:11:06,120 it's much less rich, it's much less complex. 169 00:11:06,120 --> 00:11:09,520 And most importantly, there are far fewer species of bird 170 00:11:09,520 --> 00:11:11,520 in that landscape. 171 00:11:13,720 --> 00:11:18,840 The loss of the Fens is a catastrophic decline, 172 00:11:18,840 --> 00:11:22,320 which was slow and incremental 173 00:11:22,320 --> 00:11:26,120 as the intensification of agriculture proceeded, until today, 174 00:11:26,120 --> 00:11:28,480 when 99% of all the Fens has gone. 175 00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:34,360 It was an environmental treasure 176 00:11:34,520 --> 00:11:40,120 of international importance, and we've lost it. 177 00:11:40,120 --> 00:11:42,720 By the middle of the 19th century, 178 00:11:42,720 --> 00:11:45,960 200 years after the draining of the Fens began, 179 00:11:45,960 --> 00:11:49,240 Britain's waterbirds had reached an all-time low. 180 00:11:49,240 --> 00:11:53,160 The population of once-widespread wetland species 181 00:11:53,160 --> 00:11:55,800 such as the bittern had plummeted. 182 00:11:55,800 --> 00:12:00,000 And the most iconic British waterbird of all, the crane, 183 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:02,040 had vanished altogether. 184 00:12:02,040 --> 00:12:08,560 The draining of the Fens started us off on a rather familiar track, 185 00:12:08,560 --> 00:12:13,120 whereby some of the displaced birds first became local, 186 00:12:13,120 --> 00:12:15,360 then they became scarce, 187 00:12:15,360 --> 00:12:18,360 then they became rare, then endangered, 188 00:12:18,360 --> 00:12:20,440 and finally extinct. 189 00:12:20,440 --> 00:12:24,600 Because these birds are specialists, they live in these waterlands, 190 00:12:24,600 --> 00:12:28,240 they can't just relocate to woodland or agricultural land. 191 00:12:28,240 --> 00:12:31,400 They depend on the Fens and the reed beds 192 00:12:31,400 --> 00:12:34,280 both for nesting sites and for food. 193 00:12:35,480 --> 00:12:40,320 For one bird, things were about to get even worse. 194 00:12:40,320 --> 00:12:45,000 The great crested grebe would be driven to the brink of extinction 195 00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:50,000 before playing a vital part in the renaissance of Britain's waterbirds. 196 00:12:52,400 --> 00:12:57,200 It is so beautiful. There is something just astonishing 197 00:12:57,200 --> 00:13:00,000 about watching a pair of grebes getting together 198 00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:02,960 at the beginning of the breeding season, and saying, 199 00:13:02,960 --> 00:13:05,520 "Are you the one for me? Go on, prove it." 200 00:13:07,040 --> 00:13:09,960 And they'll come up, rise up out of the water, 201 00:13:09,960 --> 00:13:13,360 going, "Look how magnificent I am, aren't I just beautiful?" 202 00:13:13,360 --> 00:13:15,040 "Yeah, you're not bad." 203 00:13:15,040 --> 00:13:17,920 And then just to sort of carry on the courtship - 204 00:13:17,920 --> 00:13:21,040 "it's OK, I'm going to do a little bit of dance with some weed 205 00:13:21,040 --> 00:13:24,680 "hung beautifully over my bill, you won't be able to resist me." 206 00:13:24,680 --> 00:13:28,480 But it doesn't look like slimy old pond weed when they're doing it - 207 00:13:28,480 --> 00:13:31,760 it could be a tango with a rose between their teeth, 208 00:13:31,760 --> 00:13:32,800 it's almost that. 209 00:13:37,160 --> 00:13:39,600 But by the middle of the 19th century, 210 00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:42,600 the great crested grebe was in big trouble. 211 00:13:42,600 --> 00:13:46,000 With fewer than 100 breeding pairs in the whole of Britain, 212 00:13:46,000 --> 00:13:50,280 it was on the verge of following the crane into oblivion. 213 00:13:50,280 --> 00:13:53,920 Its downfall was due to high society ladies - 214 00:13:53,920 --> 00:13:56,800 the fashion victims of their day. 215 00:13:57,960 --> 00:14:02,640 In the streets of London, Paris and New York, the plumage of birds 216 00:14:02,640 --> 00:14:06,080 was becoming the latest must-have fashion accessory. 217 00:14:06,080 --> 00:14:08,600 Society women strove to outdo each other 218 00:14:08,600 --> 00:14:10,960 with the extravagance of their headgear - 219 00:14:10,960 --> 00:14:14,480 first with birds' feathers, then their skins, 220 00:14:14,480 --> 00:14:16,840 and eventually the whole bird itself. 221 00:14:16,840 --> 00:14:21,600 Some women looked like exhibits from the Natural History Museum. 222 00:14:21,600 --> 00:14:24,960 Vast numbers - tens of thousands of birds - 223 00:14:24,960 --> 00:14:28,240 were killed every year for their plumage. 224 00:14:28,240 --> 00:14:31,240 People thought, you know, "I must have feathers in my hat, 225 00:14:31,240 --> 00:14:34,800 "I must have a feather boa, I must have ruffs, I must have," 226 00:14:34,800 --> 00:14:39,440 you know, "things on my cape that basically should be on a bird." 227 00:14:39,440 --> 00:14:45,480 For the great crested grebe, the way it had evolved to suit its aquatic lifestyle 228 00:14:45,480 --> 00:14:49,320 turned out to be its Achilles heel. 229 00:14:49,320 --> 00:14:55,880 Grebes spend their entire lives on water - courting, feeding and even building a floating nest. 230 00:14:55,880 --> 00:15:00,440 To keep themselves warm, they have developed unusually dense feathering. 231 00:15:00,440 --> 00:15:05,400 What was known as grebe fur, the kind of really downy, dense feathers 232 00:15:05,400 --> 00:15:08,960 that were so important to the bird, to keep them waterproof, 233 00:15:08,960 --> 00:15:13,320 could be made into material for hats, or again used as a sort of edging, 234 00:15:13,320 --> 00:15:16,240 or, you know, a flourish on some sort of frippery. 235 00:15:16,240 --> 00:15:22,800 As the demand for feathers and plumes grew, so more and more birds were slaughtered 236 00:15:22,800 --> 00:15:24,840 to supply this grisly trade. 237 00:15:24,840 --> 00:15:30,000 But not everyone was happy with the exploitation of birds in the name of fashion, 238 00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:36,560 and one group of women, in the Manchester suburb of Didsbury, decided to take a stand. 239 00:15:36,560 --> 00:15:40,800 The RSPB initially was a society of fairly posh women, 240 00:15:40,800 --> 00:15:45,040 the kind of women who otherwise would be wearing the hats. 241 00:15:45,040 --> 00:15:50,600 It was a small group of women who went, "Hang on a second, there's something not right about this." 242 00:15:50,600 --> 00:15:52,880 We don't like what's going on. 243 00:15:52,880 --> 00:15:56,520 It is a hat worth it? No, it's not. 244 00:15:58,400 --> 00:16:04,160 They were imbued with a humanitarianism that captured and brought along a lot of people, 245 00:16:04,160 --> 00:16:06,920 and they pointed out the suffering of animals, 246 00:16:06,920 --> 00:16:09,760 and said that something had to be done about it. 247 00:16:11,280 --> 00:16:18,560 These "ornithological suffragettes" went about their campaign in an unusual but highly effective way. 248 00:16:18,560 --> 00:16:22,640 The strategies that these Victorian ladies used 249 00:16:22,640 --> 00:16:28,240 to campaign against the plumage trade were actually incredibly visionary. 250 00:16:28,240 --> 00:16:32,760 They held promotional afternoons, they went to church, 251 00:16:32,760 --> 00:16:37,760 and they noted down the names of ladies who were sitting in pews 252 00:16:37,760 --> 00:16:40,680 with these feathers in their hats, and then on a Monday, 253 00:16:40,680 --> 00:16:43,400 these ladies would receive a hectoring letter, 254 00:16:43,400 --> 00:16:48,760 pointing out the suffering of the bird that had died to simply adorn the lady's hat. 255 00:16:48,760 --> 00:16:52,080 Imagine receiving a letter that said, you know, 256 00:16:52,080 --> 00:16:55,240 "Do you realise there are 15 species of bird in your hat, 257 00:16:55,240 --> 00:16:58,160 "and you have, in effect, killed them?" 258 00:17:00,440 --> 00:17:03,720 By 1889, they had enough supporters 259 00:17:03,720 --> 00:17:09,800 to form their own Society for the Protection of Birds, charging tuppence a time for membership. 260 00:17:09,800 --> 00:17:14,240 15 years later, they received the royal seal of approval 261 00:17:14,240 --> 00:17:16,560 and became the RSPB. 262 00:17:19,280 --> 00:17:22,040 But in their concern for the birds' welfare, 263 00:17:22,040 --> 00:17:27,840 might these women also have been thinking about their own domestic repression? 264 00:17:27,840 --> 00:17:31,440 A lot of the things they were saying were about the effects on female birds. 265 00:17:31,440 --> 00:17:33,600 So, for example, the horrible photographs 266 00:17:33,600 --> 00:17:40,720 of Australian egret colonies being slaughtered during the nesting season, 267 00:17:40,720 --> 00:17:44,880 the great piles of adults on the ground were always described as female birds 268 00:17:44,880 --> 00:17:46,280 that had been killed at the nest, 269 00:17:46,280 --> 00:17:50,800 when in fact it probably would have been almost equal male and female. 270 00:17:50,800 --> 00:17:54,320 There is a reading of this great desire to protect birds 271 00:17:54,320 --> 00:17:58,000 from the horrible shooting and depredations of men 272 00:17:58,000 --> 00:18:01,440 that might point to a displacement of women's own anxieties 273 00:18:01,440 --> 00:18:04,840 about their inability to control cruelty in the domestic sphere. 274 00:18:06,520 --> 00:18:12,200 I think it was part of an emancipation of women as adornment. 275 00:18:12,200 --> 00:18:17,560 Women saw the elaborate hat on their head as in some way 276 00:18:17,560 --> 00:18:20,840 a metaphor for their own social uselessness, 277 00:18:20,840 --> 00:18:22,800 and they didn't want to be useless - 278 00:18:22,800 --> 00:18:25,040 they were incredibly gifted, capable, 279 00:18:25,040 --> 00:18:28,360 all the things that women are being empowered to achieve today. 280 00:18:28,360 --> 00:18:32,160 They protested and fought against the exploitation of birds 281 00:18:32,160 --> 00:18:35,600 before anyone fought against the fact that women didn't have the vote. 282 00:18:35,600 --> 00:18:37,320 This is astonishing! 283 00:18:37,320 --> 00:18:43,240 Thanks to the efforts of the pioneering founders of the RSPB, 284 00:18:43,240 --> 00:18:47,520 the great crested grebe had been saved - just in the nick of time. 285 00:18:47,520 --> 00:18:53,920 This was a crucial turning point in our relationship with all Britain's birds. 286 00:18:53,920 --> 00:19:00,920 I think all those of us in the modern era who cherish wild birds 287 00:19:00,920 --> 00:19:07,600 owe these Victorian radicals who came together to form the RSPB 288 00:19:07,600 --> 00:19:10,960 an absolutely enormous debt of gratitude. 289 00:19:10,960 --> 00:19:17,800 During the following century, Britain's waterbirds would still face threats, but from now on, 290 00:19:17,800 --> 00:19:23,080 our attitudes would shift from exploiting them to offering them protection. 291 00:19:23,080 --> 00:19:27,600 Before we could do so, however, we needed to learn more about them. 292 00:19:29,640 --> 00:19:31,560 As the 20th century dawned, 293 00:19:31,560 --> 00:19:37,880 Britain began to throw off many of the outdated customs of the Victorian era. 294 00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:40,880 But one area proved stubbornly resistant to change - 295 00:19:40,880 --> 00:19:42,840 the way we studied birds. 296 00:19:44,960 --> 00:19:50,520 Professional ornithology at that time was museum ornithology - 297 00:19:50,520 --> 00:19:53,320 it was understanding the relationships of birds, 298 00:19:53,320 --> 00:19:57,040 understanding their anatomy, and how that fed into classification. 299 00:19:57,040 --> 00:20:01,440 So the idea that anybody would go out and study wild birds 300 00:20:01,440 --> 00:20:03,640 was anathema to these museum people. 301 00:20:03,640 --> 00:20:09,080 Scientists thought that science was what you did in a laboratory, 302 00:20:09,080 --> 00:20:11,520 where you could control all the circumstances, 303 00:20:11,520 --> 00:20:14,440 and you could make worthwhile observations 304 00:20:14,440 --> 00:20:16,880 because you could control elements, 305 00:20:16,880 --> 00:20:22,040 and so you could then vary particular ones and see which was significant and so on. 306 00:20:22,040 --> 00:20:25,400 And science was not going out watching dickie birds - 307 00:20:25,400 --> 00:20:27,240 I mean, in the scientists' view. 308 00:20:27,240 --> 00:20:31,880 One young scientist, Julian Huxley, was deeply frustrated 309 00:20:31,880 --> 00:20:36,120 with the status quo and decided to do something about it. 310 00:20:36,120 --> 00:20:39,600 So in the spring of 1912, he took a fortnight's holiday 311 00:20:39,600 --> 00:20:45,720 in the peaceful surroundings of Tring Reservoirs in Hertfordshire. 312 00:20:45,720 --> 00:20:48,960 His plan was to take a close look at one particular waterbird - 313 00:20:48,960 --> 00:20:54,480 the great crested grebe, which, thanks to the good ladies of the RSPB, 314 00:20:54,480 --> 00:20:56,520 had made something of a comeback. 315 00:21:02,160 --> 00:21:06,520 "A notebook, some patience, and a spare fortnight in the spring. 316 00:21:06,520 --> 00:21:09,200 "With these I not only managed to discover 317 00:21:09,200 --> 00:21:11,920 "many unknown facts about the crested grebe, 318 00:21:11,920 --> 00:21:15,000 "but also had the pleasantest of holidays. 319 00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:17,000 "Go thou and do likewise." 320 00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:22,520 I remember as an undergraduate been told that Julian Huxley 321 00:21:22,520 --> 00:21:24,880 had done this amazing, ground-breaking study 322 00:21:24,880 --> 00:21:28,120 on the courtship behaviour of great crested grebes, 323 00:21:28,120 --> 00:21:31,280 simply in his Easter holiday with his brother. 324 00:21:31,280 --> 00:21:35,560 And the idea that you could do something worthwhile in two weeks 325 00:21:35,560 --> 00:21:39,760 just by being organised and focused was a tremendous inspiration. 326 00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:51,560 But just like the women behind the RSPB, 327 00:21:51,560 --> 00:21:55,200 there may have been a hidden side to Huxley's motives. 328 00:21:55,200 --> 00:21:57,800 Despite his rigorous scientific training, 329 00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:04,800 he couldn't help getting deeply involved in the more intimate details of the grebes' behaviour. 330 00:22:04,800 --> 00:22:11,040 "The hen swam to the nest, leapt on to it, and sank down in the passive attitude once more. 331 00:22:11,040 --> 00:22:15,560 "Upon this, the cock came up to the nest, jumped on to the hen's back, 332 00:22:15,560 --> 00:22:18,000 "and they apparently paired successfully - 333 00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:22,120 "both birds meanwhile uttering a special shrill, screaming cry." 334 00:22:24,360 --> 00:22:30,760 I think it conformed to his mental image of the way birds ought to be, 335 00:22:30,760 --> 00:22:32,280 which was monogamous. 336 00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:35,960 This was very clearly a set of displays between a male and a female 337 00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:41,040 working together, in what he called a harmonious relationship. 338 00:22:41,040 --> 00:22:47,560 I find it very bizarre that Huxley's private life was anything but monogamous, anything but harmonious, 339 00:22:47,560 --> 00:22:51,280 yet he kind of imposed those values on the birds that he studied. 340 00:22:51,280 --> 00:22:56,120 Julian Huxley went to Eton, where, like most... 341 00:22:56,120 --> 00:22:59,240 well, not most, 342 00:22:59,240 --> 00:23:03,280 but a few Eton schoolboys, he would have great crushes on other schoolboys, 343 00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:07,000 and he used to follow them around at a distance, worshipping them, 344 00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:09,840 and then he left Eton and came up to Cambridge, 345 00:23:09,840 --> 00:23:15,000 and at that time was engaged in a kind of engagement with a woman. 346 00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:19,640 And he was finding it all a little bit weird and strange. 347 00:23:19,640 --> 00:23:21,720 He was very attracted to this woman, 348 00:23:21,720 --> 00:23:25,840 but found the actual mechanics of getting to grips with her quite off-putting 349 00:23:25,840 --> 00:23:30,280 and a little unfortunate, and he...he blamed all this on his Edwardian upbringing. 350 00:23:30,280 --> 00:23:38,280 So, he went off and hid in reed beds at Tring and watched great crested grebes having sex, 351 00:23:38,280 --> 00:23:42,080 which he described as being as exciting to the birds as it is to the watcher. 352 00:23:42,080 --> 00:23:49,440 Huxley's peculiar obsession with the sex life of grebes had far-reaching consequences. 353 00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:54,760 Without intending to, he had created a whole new branch of science - 354 00:23:54,760 --> 00:23:58,520 ethology, or the study of animal behaviour. 355 00:23:58,520 --> 00:24:02,760 What was novel about Julian Huxley's study of great crested grebes 356 00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:05,760 wasn't anything to do with technology. 357 00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:10,320 All he had was a pair of binoculars and a notebook. 358 00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:14,320 But what he had that other bird-watchers didn't have 359 00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:18,840 was training in zoology and understanding of evolutionary processes. 360 00:24:18,840 --> 00:24:21,600 "A pair of birds, cock and hen, 361 00:24:21,600 --> 00:24:24,680 "suddenly approached each other, 362 00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:27,240 "raising their necks and ruffs as they did so. 363 00:24:27,240 --> 00:24:30,640 "Then, they both began shaking their heads at each other 364 00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:33,240 "in a peculiar and formal-looking manner." 365 00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:36,160 He analyses the behaviour of these waterbirds. 366 00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:38,880 He doesn't just say, "Isn't that extraordinary? 367 00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:40,840 "Look at those wonderful movements." 368 00:24:40,840 --> 00:24:45,160 What he does is, he asks about the origin and evolution of those movements, 369 00:24:45,160 --> 00:24:49,080 and the significance of each of the actions made by the birds. 370 00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:53,440 Huxley's eureka moment came when he began to analyse 371 00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:57,800 exactly what these peculiar movements really meant. 372 00:24:57,800 --> 00:25:00,000 It was clearly preening 373 00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:01,640 and cleaning and shaking, 374 00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:04,600 but they didn't look like ordinary shaking movements - 375 00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:09,840 they'd become stylised, they'd become modified and they had become display patterns. 376 00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:16,720 When, at a moment of high stress, you do something which... 377 00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:21,240 to discharge that stress, which is a normal piece of activity, 378 00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:26,040 in the same way as I might pull my ear if I'm getting rather nervous about something. 379 00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:28,960 That was one of the early things that Julian established. 380 00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:32,960 Julian Huxley would go on to become one of the century's 381 00:25:32,960 --> 00:25:36,640 leading scientists, statesmen and broadcasters, 382 00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:39,680 as well as launching Pets' Corner at London Zoo. 383 00:25:39,680 --> 00:25:43,400 We intend to allow people to get a more intimate contact with animals 384 00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:46,240 than they can do in the ordinary cages... 385 00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:48,000 But his greatest legacy 386 00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:51,640 was that he had found a way of allowing ordinary people 387 00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:54,560 to take part in genuine scientific study. 388 00:25:56,400 --> 00:26:02,160 And ultimately, by understanding our birds, we would be better able to protect them. 389 00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:07,200 He was one of those who turned bird-watching into a science, 390 00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:13,200 and who recognised that in bird-watchers - 391 00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:16,320 passionate, dedicated, amateur bird-watchers - 392 00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:18,520 you had a huge scientific resource, 393 00:26:18,520 --> 00:26:23,120 that if you could mobilise it and organise it, 394 00:26:23,120 --> 00:26:26,680 here was a huge source of data. 395 00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:34,160 By the early 1930s, thanks to Huxley's pioneering work, 396 00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:38,360 amateur bird-watchers had begun to make a real contribution to science. 397 00:26:38,360 --> 00:26:42,880 Throughout the spring and summer, they would be out and about 398 00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:46,480 carrying out detailed surveys of Britain's breeding birds. 399 00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:52,160 One of the earliest of these was a nationwide count of nesting great crested grebes. 400 00:26:52,160 --> 00:26:54,800 And for the third time in this story, 401 00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:58,920 this humble waterbird would make a major contribution to our own history, 402 00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:02,760 this time in the field of social science. 403 00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:05,840 One of the people involved was a chap called Tom Harrisson, 404 00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:09,840 who had an extraordinary career - he makes Lawrence of Arabia look a bit tame. 405 00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:13,520 And he had enough enemies, because he specialised in making enemies. 406 00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:16,400 I mean, that was what he really enjoyed doing - 407 00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:20,920 making a good couple of enemies today, and the day was well spent, I would think! 408 00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:26,000 But initially, he started off censusing grebes with a friend of his, 409 00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:32,080 and what's great about their grebe census is that they recruited thousands of people, 410 00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:34,440 and they did so with a sort of media blitz. 411 00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:40,280 They put articles in all the newspapers, they wrote to vicars and landowners, and they trespassed. 412 00:27:40,280 --> 00:27:43,760 They ended up having about 1,300 responses. 413 00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:50,240 As he travelled around the country counting grebes, Harrisson had a flash of inspiration. 414 00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:53,400 He would take the methods he used to study birds 415 00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:58,160 and apply them to investigating the behaviour of another species - his own. 416 00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:01,600 He called this new approach mass observation. 417 00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:04,200 A mass observation 418 00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:08,440 was an attempt to map mass behaviour. 419 00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:12,200 I mean, the great word for the people in the 1930s - mass, mass culture, 420 00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:13,800 mass observation. 421 00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:17,520 So, to observe ordinary people and to understand what makes them tick 422 00:28:17,520 --> 00:28:21,000 at leisure, at work, at home, in a whole series of categories. 423 00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:24,400 So it was a kind of live sociological survey, 424 00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:28,560 not just looking at statistics, but actually going out and observing people. 425 00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:31,960 One was greatly struck working in these contexts 426 00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:35,480 in a place like Bolton with the complete discrepancy 427 00:28:35,480 --> 00:28:38,920 between what all the sort of people I was working with thought 428 00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:42,160 and talked about and what was being reported in the newspapers, 429 00:28:42,160 --> 00:28:47,000 and even, if I may say so, in the BBC of those days. 430 00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:49,880 There were in fact, in those years, two different languages, 431 00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:53,680 almost, being spoken in England - two different languages of thought. 432 00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:56,120 At a time when you've got a very stratified society, 433 00:28:56,120 --> 00:28:58,920 where classes are concerned, and a lot of snobbery, 434 00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:00,560 it was quite a breakthrough 435 00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:03,920 to say ordinary people's lives are worth studying in this way. 436 00:29:03,920 --> 00:29:09,600 It seems now absolutely obvious that you should study human beings 437 00:29:09,600 --> 00:29:17,160 in that kind of cold, detached, objective way. 438 00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:22,880 But you try and find someone who did it before. 439 00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:27,240 Harrisson's pioneering approach to studying human behaviour 440 00:29:27,240 --> 00:29:32,280 owed a lot to the way he had honed his skills of observation through watching birds. 441 00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:37,000 The notion that what human beings did, 442 00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:39,880 in the way they danced - where they put their hands, 443 00:29:39,880 --> 00:29:42,480 whether it was up between the shoulder blades 444 00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:45,520 or whether it was lower down on the waist - 445 00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:48,720 people's patterns of speech, all these things 446 00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:53,080 were exactly the same curiosity of degree, of detail, 447 00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:56,640 which he had when he was a boy, and he did birds. 448 00:29:56,640 --> 00:29:58,880 It's social research as bird-watching. 449 00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:02,240 You don't talk to them, you don't participate, 450 00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:04,280 you stand aside and watch it through binoculars. 451 00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:07,720 So, to some extent, it's interesting that he was a bird watcher, 452 00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:11,560 because Mass Observation was a bit like that, I think. 453 00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:17,680 Mass Observation revolutionised the way we look at ourselves for ever. 454 00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:20,080 Its methods are still being used today, 455 00:30:20,080 --> 00:30:24,840 in university departments of sociology, in market research, 456 00:30:24,840 --> 00:30:27,880 and in fly-on-the-wall television documentaries. 457 00:30:33,040 --> 00:30:36,240 In the years between the two world wars, 458 00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:40,680 when Harrison and his fellow birdwatchers were counting grebes, 459 00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:42,840 Britain's waterbirds continued their comeback 460 00:30:42,840 --> 00:30:46,920 from the low point in their fortunes a century before. 461 00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:51,760 Every autumn, vast flocks of ducks, geese and swans, 462 00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:54,280 collectively known as wildfowl, 463 00:30:54,280 --> 00:30:58,080 arrived in their millions, as they had done for centuries. 464 00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:03,960 They came here from all over the northern hemisphere for one simple reason - 465 00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:05,200 food. 466 00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:10,320 We might not always appreciate it, but Britain has a relatively mild winter climate, 467 00:31:10,320 --> 00:31:15,000 with ice-free waters allowing birds to feed all season long. 468 00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:19,600 But although they were no longer persecuted as they once had been, 469 00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:22,480 they faced a new threat - 470 00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:27,280 in this increasingly crowded island, would there be enough room for them to survive? 471 00:31:29,360 --> 00:31:31,680 Fortunately they had a champion, 472 00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:37,040 in the shape of a truly extraordinary man - Sir Peter Scott. 473 00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:39,920 Peter Scott was... 474 00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:43,520 a remarkable man. If the 20th century was to have 475 00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:47,240 a patron saint of conservation, 476 00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:49,640 then it would be Sir Peter Scott. 477 00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:52,480 Peter was urbane, 478 00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:55,280 highly civilised, 479 00:31:55,280 --> 00:32:00,720 a delight to be with, always generous. 480 00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:03,720 Beneath, he had a will of iron, 481 00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:05,280 a will of steel. 482 00:32:05,280 --> 00:32:09,440 Scott's iron will owed much to his heritage 483 00:32:09,440 --> 00:32:11,600 as the only son of Britain's great hero, 484 00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:14,400 Captain Scott of the Antarctic. 485 00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:16,480 And it was thanks to his father 486 00:32:16,480 --> 00:32:20,320 that he became interested in birds in the first place. 487 00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:24,480 My father really wanted me to be interested in natural history. 488 00:32:24,480 --> 00:32:29,480 And he wrote a message to my mother in the tent where he died in the Antarctic 489 00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:32,600 which got found the next spring, when they were there. 490 00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:35,960 And it was a letter in which he said, 491 00:32:35,960 --> 00:32:39,240 make the boy interested in natural history - 492 00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:43,440 it is better than games, they teach it at some schools. 493 00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:49,200 Peter carried his early life the burden of being Captain Scott's son. 494 00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:55,320 And also, that knowledge, I think, that his father didn't get there 495 00:32:55,320 --> 00:33:00,960 made him absolutely extraordinary competitive underneath. 496 00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:09,560 This competitive spirit was reflected in every aspect of Scott's life. 497 00:33:09,560 --> 00:33:12,840 Right from the very beginning, 498 00:33:12,840 --> 00:33:16,720 he was regarded in a sort of heroic mould. 499 00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:20,840 He was a figure-skating champion in the 1930s. 500 00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:24,280 He was a dinghy sailing champion. So he was a top-class sailor. 501 00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:27,040 On top of all that, he did paintings 502 00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:30,720 which were very successful and very popular. 503 00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:37,080 Despite this dazzling array of talents, Scott followed his father's dying wish 504 00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:41,280 and devoted his life to conserving and protecting wild birds. 505 00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:46,120 Yet before he could begin, he had a journey of his own to make, 506 00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:52,320 for his early encounters with birds came not with a paintbrush or a pair of binoculars, 507 00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:56,600 but down the barrel of a gun, shooting and killing the very birds 508 00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:58,760 he later came to protect. 509 00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:06,040 But I think that there is an instinct within us which goes back to our forefathers, 510 00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:12,520 when we had to kill to eat. And I think it's still there. 511 00:34:12,520 --> 00:34:16,600 And I'm bound to say that I passed through a period, and I don't... 512 00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:19,920 I mean, I hate remembering it, but I don't want to cover it up, 513 00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:24,720 because it's true, it was a time when I really took great delight 514 00:34:24,720 --> 00:34:28,440 in successfully killing. 515 00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:34,560 And this, I hate to think it was so, but it was so. 516 00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:39,320 Peter Scott did start as a wildfowler, he was an incredibly keen wildfowler, 517 00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:42,000 and he shot an awful lot of geese. 518 00:34:42,000 --> 00:34:45,240 This was a very common upper-class pursuit at the time, 519 00:34:45,240 --> 00:34:48,120 and there were a lot of stories of people 520 00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:50,400 who decided for one reason or another 521 00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:52,880 that they had to stop doing this. 522 00:34:52,880 --> 00:34:56,920 And Peter Scott's came when he shot a goose one day 523 00:34:56,920 --> 00:35:00,720 and it landed injured far out of shore, and he couldn't reach it. 524 00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:10,480 And he saw the bird live, flutter down, crippled. 525 00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:15,920 And he saw it struggling in the shallows, 526 00:35:15,920 --> 00:35:18,880 and he couldn't get to it. 527 00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:21,440 The mud was too deep and too thick and so on. 528 00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:26,520 So he had to watch this poor beast, poor bird, 529 00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:28,640 dying a very agonising death. 530 00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:32,720 Scott, I think powerfully in his life story, 531 00:35:32,720 --> 00:35:36,160 shows that journey from hunter into conservationist. 532 00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:40,720 And it's a journey that actually more people than we would ever imagine have actually made. 533 00:35:40,720 --> 00:35:44,080 To atone for his past life as a wildfowler, 534 00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:47,400 Scott decided to study ducks, geese and swans 535 00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:49,200 in order to protect them. 536 00:35:49,200 --> 00:35:50,880 In 1948, 537 00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:54,600 he founded his famous collection at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire, 538 00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:58,040 where the public could for the first time get close to these birds. 539 00:35:58,040 --> 00:36:03,400 It may not seem so today, but this was a truly revolutionary approach. 540 00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:08,120 I think Peter pushed the boundary of how close 541 00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:11,720 human beings and the wild world could be, 542 00:36:11,720 --> 00:36:15,840 and how they could exist in harmony, absolutely cheek-by-jowl. 543 00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:20,560 Now, of course, you can't do that, it's not easy to do that with lions, 544 00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:22,680 but you can do it with wildfowl. 545 00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:26,640 He built a whole zoo based purely on wildfowl. 546 00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:30,440 And people said at the time, that won't last, 547 00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:33,720 you can't expect people just to go and see wild fowl. But they did. 548 00:36:33,720 --> 00:36:39,800 But Peter Scott did far more than simply establish a collection of waterbirds. 549 00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:42,680 His lifelong passion had taught him a crucial lesson, 550 00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:46,360 one which would change the way we regarded the natural world for ever. 551 00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:50,160 He was one of the very first people to truly appreciate 552 00:36:50,160 --> 00:36:53,080 the intimate connection between these birds 553 00:36:53,080 --> 00:36:55,440 and the places where they live. 554 00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:59,880 Peter learnt very early on that the environment, 555 00:36:59,880 --> 00:37:03,920 and the animal, were actually indissolubly linked. 556 00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:07,960 He realised that actually taking a bird 557 00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:10,120 and putting it out of its environment 558 00:37:10,120 --> 00:37:12,720 was actually, it wasn't that bird any more, 559 00:37:12,720 --> 00:37:16,960 and it could only exist, in the real sense of the word, 560 00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:18,680 in its proper circumstances. 561 00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:22,080 What that taught people was that actually, 562 00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:24,480 there was no use protecting just the species - 563 00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:27,960 you needed to protect the habitat in which the species lived, 564 00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:32,560 because the habitat and the species were incredibly interlinked. 565 00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:35,440 Scott put his theory into practice 566 00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:40,240 by establishing a network of wetland sites all over the UK. 567 00:37:40,240 --> 00:37:44,880 The last of these, the London Wetland Centre at Barn Elms, 568 00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:48,440 was only created after his death in 1989. 569 00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:55,680 Crucially, it brought waterbirds into the lives of a whole new audience - urban Londoners. 570 00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:58,760 He painted, his last picture - and this is quite poignant - 571 00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:01,600 was his vision of what Barn Elms could be, 572 00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:05,520 with the city skyline, with the skyscrapers at the back, 573 00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:07,720 and at the front, wild fowl. 574 00:38:07,720 --> 00:38:12,080 And that's come about, and it's come about because of Peter. 575 00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:22,200 And the most poetic thing which I treasure is that there are birds in Siberia, 576 00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:25,240 if birds could talk, who will say, 577 00:38:25,240 --> 00:38:29,160 "Oh, well, it's getting on, you know, getting out of water, 578 00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:31,120 "I think the place to go is Barn Elms." 579 00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:35,320 And birds all over the north, in the autumn, 580 00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:39,320 and the south, in the spring, head for Barn Elms, 581 00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:44,640 voluntarily go to the middle of the biggest conurbation of human beings in Western Europe, 582 00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:48,280 and say, that's the place to be. I think that's wonderful. 583 00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:59,000 To the general public, Peter Scott's greatest fame 584 00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:02,200 came via the new medium of television, 585 00:39:02,200 --> 00:39:04,880 with the BBC series Look. 586 00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:09,560 One episode, broadcast in the late 1950s, 587 00:39:09,560 --> 00:39:14,520 told the story of how a rare waterbird had come back from the dead. 588 00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:16,360 The avocet - Avoceto recurvirostra - 589 00:39:16,360 --> 00:39:22,120 black-and-white wader with a turned-up bill. 590 00:39:23,240 --> 00:39:26,720 This is a bird which used to breed in Britain, 591 00:39:26,720 --> 00:39:30,240 and then disappeared as a breeding species for about 100 years, 592 00:39:30,240 --> 00:39:33,520 and then, quite unexpectedly, returned, 593 00:39:33,520 --> 00:39:38,040 and has dramatically increased in numbers during the last 10 years. 594 00:39:39,280 --> 00:39:46,760 The avocet is one of the most beautiful yet bizarre-looking of all our waterbirds. 595 00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:52,920 They're British birds, but have a touch of the exotic about them, 596 00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:56,000 which gives them a little something extra, I think. 597 00:39:56,000 --> 00:39:59,680 They're very public birds, in that you can easily observe their behaviour. 598 00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:02,360 You can see them on the nest, you can see their courtship. 599 00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:07,800 But its elegant demeanour conceals some pretty anti-social habits. 600 00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:11,240 Avocets are another of those birds which appear to be the epitome 601 00:40:11,240 --> 00:40:15,560 of grace and elegance, and have a really nasty side to them. 602 00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:18,040 They are so belligerent. 603 00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:21,200 They will drive away anything else. 604 00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:25,200 Today, almost 1,000 pairs of avocets breed in Britain, 605 00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:28,840 with even more wintering on our south-coast estuaries. 606 00:40:28,840 --> 00:40:35,360 The avocet's success is, without question, the jewel in the RSPB's crown. 607 00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:39,880 But they might not be here at all had it not been for Adolf Hitler 608 00:40:39,880 --> 00:40:42,640 and his plans to invade Britain. 609 00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:49,080 Avocets made a dramatic return to this country. 610 00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:51,400 It was in the late 1940s, 611 00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:53,240 in the aftermath of the war, 612 00:40:53,240 --> 00:40:59,200 when they returned to the habitat of flooded marshlands on the Suffolk coast, 613 00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:03,560 which ironically had been created as a consequence of the war. 614 00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:06,840 To counter the threat of a Nazi invasion, 615 00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:10,520 land had been flooded at a little place called Minsmere. 616 00:41:10,520 --> 00:41:15,200 Soon afterwards, a wayward bomb from a firing range 617 00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:18,120 blew a hole in the sea wall at nearby Havergate Island. 618 00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:24,520 Water from the tidal river flooded in, creating the ideal habitat for avocets. 619 00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:29,320 In the spring of 1947, they returned to Suffolk 620 00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:34,000 and began to breed - much to the delight of a war-weary nation. 621 00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:39,320 # We'll meet again 622 00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:41,880 # Don't know where 623 00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:44,640 # Don't know when... # 624 00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:47,760 Interestingly, the avocet was not seen as a refugee. 625 00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:51,720 It was seen as a returning Briton. 626 00:41:51,720 --> 00:41:54,440 And if you think of it in terms of the waves 627 00:41:54,440 --> 00:41:57,840 of returning servicemen from overseas, British serviceman, 628 00:41:57,840 --> 00:42:00,360 it was kind of seen in those sorts of terms. 629 00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:05,640 People would have responded to this return with a great sense of excitement, 630 00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:12,080 and also, I think, with a sense of restitution of the natural order, 631 00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:17,000 and at a deeper level, perhaps, the repelling of an invader. 632 00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:21,120 The RSPB bought the land, 633 00:42:21,120 --> 00:42:25,200 and turned Minsmere into their showpiece reserve. 634 00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:28,720 Today, more than 100,000 visitors come here each year 635 00:42:28,720 --> 00:42:31,960 to enjoy over 100 species of breeding bird, 636 00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:35,240 including, of course, the avocet. 637 00:42:35,240 --> 00:42:39,040 So when it came to choosing a logo for the RSPB, 638 00:42:39,040 --> 00:42:42,360 what could be more appropriate than this beautiful bird, 639 00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:46,920 which by then had become an icon of the bird protection movement? 640 00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:50,240 And I'm very proud to be a vice-president of the society. 641 00:42:50,240 --> 00:42:52,800 In fact, I'm wearing the society's tie here, 642 00:42:52,800 --> 00:42:55,560 which, appropriately enough, 643 00:42:55,560 --> 00:42:59,320 has a large number of avocets all over it. 644 00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:03,440 And I think The RSPB's choice of the avocet as a symbol was very clever. 645 00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:09,000 It was strange, it was glamorous, it was a bird that most people hadn't seen, but it was a bird 646 00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:12,520 most people wanted to see. And it was a bird you could really only see 647 00:43:12,520 --> 00:43:14,840 if you joined the RSPB and went to the reserves. 648 00:43:14,840 --> 00:43:19,760 And as a logo, the avocet had one other great advantage - 649 00:43:19,760 --> 00:43:24,040 in the days before colour printing, it was black and white! 650 00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:31,920 500 miles to the north, 651 00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:35,040 in the forests of Speyside in the Highlands of Scotland, 652 00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:39,440 another waterbird was also about to make a dramatic comeback. 653 00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:45,040 By the early 20th century, the osprey had been driven to the very edge of extinction 654 00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:46,920 as a British breeding bird. 655 00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:51,000 And it all came down to its diet of choice - fish. 656 00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:58,200 The osprey was a problem for fish farmers in the Middle Ages, 657 00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:03,280 when Britain was a Catholic country, like the near Continent, 658 00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:06,640 and eating a fish on Fridays was extremely important. 659 00:44:06,640 --> 00:44:09,960 And every big house or abbey or castle, whatever, 660 00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:14,560 throughout the whole of England and Wales, would have had a fish pond. 661 00:44:14,560 --> 00:44:16,240 And if you provide a fish pond, 662 00:44:16,240 --> 00:44:19,160 whether you did it in the Middle Ages or you do it now, 663 00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:21,200 all the ospreys go straight to it. 664 00:44:21,200 --> 00:44:25,680 And so those people had killed out ospreys. 665 00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:32,280 Later, ospreys went the way of all birds with hooked beaks and sharp claws. 666 00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:35,280 There were also shot as sporting trophies, 667 00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:40,640 and they also suffered through the Victorian and later Edwardian fascination 668 00:44:40,640 --> 00:44:44,080 for collecting eggs, particularly the eggs of rare bird species. 669 00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:49,000 Then, in 1954, a pair of ospreys 670 00:44:49,000 --> 00:44:52,160 returned to nest at a secret site in the Highlands. 671 00:44:52,160 --> 00:44:55,480 These birds were incredibly vulnerable, 672 00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:59,320 and the RSPB's George Waterston took drastic steps 673 00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:03,200 to guard against the continued threat of nest-robbers. 674 00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:08,200 They set up what has become known as Operation Osprey, 675 00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:13,800 but was in effect, if you like, the militarisation of a natural landscape. 676 00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:18,280 Waterston had been a prisoner of war, 677 00:45:18,280 --> 00:45:21,680 and when he was charged to look after the osprey nest in Speyside, 678 00:45:21,680 --> 00:45:25,600 he spent a lot of time creating a prisoner of war camp around it. 679 00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:28,840 He had barbed wire, he had watchers 680 00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:32,000 who would peer down the sights of .22 rifles at the nest, 681 00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:34,240 just in case anyone came to steal the eggs. 682 00:45:34,240 --> 00:45:38,560 He recapitulated his wartime experiences in Scotland, protecting these birds. 683 00:45:38,560 --> 00:45:41,080 He had a point - the nest kept getting robbed. 684 00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:44,520 Waterston revealed his fears for the ospreys 685 00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:47,560 in an interview with Peter Scott. 686 00:45:47,560 --> 00:45:51,040 I suppose there are still the odd egg collectors who go after them? 687 00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:54,080 Yes, oh, it was a perfectly scandalous thing, Peter. 688 00:45:54,080 --> 00:45:57,240 At about 2.30 in the morning, under cover of darkness, 689 00:45:57,240 --> 00:46:00,200 a raider climbed the tree, 690 00:46:00,200 --> 00:46:04,680 and although our chaps rushed out immediately to intercept him, 691 00:46:04,680 --> 00:46:07,160 he was able to get up into the tree, 692 00:46:07,160 --> 00:46:11,160 take out the osprey eggs, and in order to escape our clutches, 693 00:46:11,160 --> 00:46:13,000 he jumped from the top of the tree 694 00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:16,040 and made off into the bushes under cover of darkness. 695 00:46:16,040 --> 00:46:21,640 And what annoyed us - of course, we were furious about the whole thing - 696 00:46:21,640 --> 00:46:27,080 but I think it was dreadful to think that these birds were halfway through the incubation period. 697 00:46:27,080 --> 00:46:32,280 It's incredible to think in this day and age that people can do that sort of dreadful act. 698 00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:37,320 It was then that Waterston made a brave and far-reaching decision. 699 00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:40,200 Instead of keeping the nest site secret, 700 00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:43,040 he would not only tell the public where it was, 701 00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:45,160 but invite them to come and visit. 702 00:46:46,880 --> 00:46:51,200 There was absolute horror in the mainstream conservation movement at the time. 703 00:46:51,200 --> 00:46:56,440 The nests of any rare breeding bird had to be kept secret. 704 00:46:56,440 --> 00:46:59,520 Waterston was essentially saying exactly the opposite. 705 00:46:59,520 --> 00:47:01,040 People thought he was mad. 706 00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:03,680 People thought it was just crazy. 707 00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:06,480 As it turned out, the sceptics were wrong, 708 00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:09,280 and Waterston absolutely right. 709 00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:14,320 In that first summer of 1959, no fewer than 14,000 visitors 710 00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:18,000 made the long trek north to see the birds. 711 00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:23,240 It was then that the method behind Waterston's apparent madness became clear. 712 00:47:24,240 --> 00:47:27,680 In a curious way, the public in some sense 713 00:47:27,680 --> 00:47:31,560 did the job of the nest guardians, 714 00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:34,880 because they were present day in, day out, 715 00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:36,920 throughout the breeding season. 716 00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:40,040 So therefore it was a clever bit of PR. 717 00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:42,680 On the one hand, the bird became a celebrity, 718 00:47:42,680 --> 00:47:46,760 and became a means of galvanising interest in birds. 719 00:47:46,760 --> 00:47:49,720 But it also made it much more difficult 720 00:47:49,720 --> 00:47:52,960 for those who might want to steal the eggs of the osprey, 721 00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:55,040 because the public was always on hand. 722 00:47:55,040 --> 00:47:59,280 It's the house you don't burgle because you know there are going to be people in. 723 00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:02,360 That was the thinking - we'll tell the public it's there. 724 00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:07,160 But not everyone was a fan of this new approach. 725 00:48:07,160 --> 00:48:09,240 I went to see the Loch Garten ospreys 726 00:48:09,240 --> 00:48:14,400 with a sense of great excitement in the early 1960s. 727 00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:16,320 I'd never seen an osprey. 728 00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:20,040 But my experience was probably untypical 729 00:48:20,040 --> 00:48:22,200 in that I was terribly disappointed. 730 00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:26,680 When I got near to the site, I walked down the boardwalk, 731 00:48:26,680 --> 00:48:30,160 I entered a hide that was jammed with people, 732 00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:33,600 I was pushed in front of a mighty telescope, 733 00:48:33,600 --> 00:48:38,760 which was trained on a distant tree, that was swathed with barbed wire, 734 00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:41,200 and all I saw was the top of a head. 735 00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:44,640 It was rather like going into an armed camp, 736 00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:49,520 or heavily-fortified zoo, and it was a complete anti-climax. 737 00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:54,400 Even so, in the 50 years since Operation Osprey began, 738 00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:58,600 more than 2 million visitors have made the trip to Loch Garten, 739 00:48:58,600 --> 00:49:03,240 making these ospreys the most famous dynasty of birds anywhere in the world. 740 00:49:03,240 --> 00:49:09,280 Very quickly, osprey became a trademark, really, an icon. 741 00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:15,120 And villages would call themselves Osprey village, and Osprey hotels, 742 00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:18,720 and osprey this and osprey that and osprey holidays... 743 00:49:18,720 --> 00:49:23,440 In fact, the number of different companies that use ospreys as a logo 744 00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:27,800 and a kind of trade mark is immense. 745 00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:30,320 People still go to Loch Garten today, 746 00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:34,640 despite the fact that there are many, many other pairs of ospreys! 747 00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:39,280 I think it's for a very good reason, they get a bit of a show there. 748 00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:41,920 They know they're going to have a video feed, 749 00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:46,720 there will be people who'll tell them all about it, they can join the RSPB, 750 00:49:46,720 --> 00:49:50,280 they can buy a fluffy osprey - which are very good, I recommend them, 751 00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:52,280 you press them and they call - 752 00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:57,240 you know, it's show business. And it works very, very well. 753 00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:02,680 And once the RSPB realised just how successful 754 00:50:02,680 --> 00:50:05,160 bringing birds and people together could be, 755 00:50:05,160 --> 00:50:07,800 they rolled it out all over the country, 756 00:50:07,800 --> 00:50:11,600 creating a whole new way of watching birds. 757 00:50:11,600 --> 00:50:15,480 George opening up Loch Garten so that people could come 758 00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:19,600 really was the person who invented eco-tourism. 759 00:50:19,600 --> 00:50:23,120 The model that was born at Loch Garten in 1959, 760 00:50:23,120 --> 00:50:29,680 and developed over subsequent decades, has been rolled out across Britain very successfully. 761 00:50:29,680 --> 00:50:33,640 And just as we might identify Loch Garten with osprey tourism, 762 00:50:33,640 --> 00:50:37,840 so we now look to the Isle of Mull for white-tailed eagle tourism. 763 00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:41,480 For children all over Britain, 764 00:50:41,480 --> 00:50:47,400 the Isle of Mull means just one thing - the TV series Balamory. 765 00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:51,280 But it's also home to another major tourist attraction - 766 00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:54,200 Britain's biggest bird of prey. 767 00:50:56,680 --> 00:50:59,320 With a wingspan wider than a man's arms, 768 00:50:59,320 --> 00:51:01,920 and standing as tall as a large dog, 769 00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:06,760 the white-tailed sea eagle is the big daddy of British waterbirds. 770 00:51:06,760 --> 00:51:10,160 The white-tailed eagle is the biggest of our eagles. 771 00:51:10,160 --> 00:51:12,400 It's rather vulture-like in some ways. 772 00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:16,240 It's got extremely big, broad wings, 773 00:51:16,240 --> 00:51:18,840 10ft across, a huge bird. 774 00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:21,400 When it's adult, it's got a white head, 775 00:51:21,400 --> 00:51:26,120 brilliant yellow bill, and a pure white tail. 776 00:51:26,120 --> 00:51:27,720 I can tell you 777 00:51:27,720 --> 00:51:32,600 that the first time you see one, you will never forget it. 778 00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:34,400 Probably like your first kiss. 779 00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:36,360 They have a haughtiness. 780 00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:37,920 There's something kind of... 781 00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:41,600 well, kind of terrifying about the look of them, really. 782 00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:46,200 It's a bird which was breeding throughout the whole of Britain, 783 00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:50,520 but it was exterminated very early on, and finally 784 00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:55,360 stopped breeding in the early parts of the 1900s in Britain. 785 00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:58,560 Unlike the osprey, the white-tailed eagle 786 00:51:58,560 --> 00:52:01,440 didn't manage to return to Britain on its own. 787 00:52:01,440 --> 00:52:04,320 So it was given a helping hand by us, 788 00:52:04,320 --> 00:52:08,160 with birds from Scandinavia released on the west coast of Scotland 789 00:52:08,160 --> 00:52:10,560 from the 1970s onwards. 790 00:52:10,560 --> 00:52:14,160 Today, the eagles attract thousands of visitors to Mull, 791 00:52:14,160 --> 00:52:17,960 bringing more than £1 million a year into the local economy. 792 00:52:17,960 --> 00:52:21,720 But not everyone is entirely comfortable with these birds 793 00:52:21,720 --> 00:52:24,040 being turned into a tourist attraction. 794 00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:29,600 It is still a way of using nature. 795 00:52:29,600 --> 00:52:33,840 There's no escape from the fact that we are using ospreys to generate money, 796 00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:37,640 we are using white-tailed eagles to generate money. 797 00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:42,040 The fact that animals, and in this case birds, have a particular financial value 798 00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:45,080 is something that sits ill with many people. 799 00:52:45,080 --> 00:52:50,360 And recent proposals to release the eagles into parts of eastern England 800 00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:54,720 have also provoked passionate views on both sides of the debate. 801 00:52:54,720 --> 00:52:57,040 The disappointing thing was, 802 00:52:57,040 --> 00:53:01,320 I think many people thought that as soon as we had 803 00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:06,680 20 pairs breeding in the Hebrides, in Skye and Mull, 804 00:53:06,680 --> 00:53:08,760 the job was done. 805 00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:12,160 Whereas others of us felt, the job is not done 806 00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:17,160 until we have them breeding back all the way from the Channel coast to Shetland. 807 00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:21,720 I think, if we had big birds of prey - white-tailed eagles - 808 00:53:21,720 --> 00:53:24,520 back in England, rather than just in Scotland, 809 00:53:24,520 --> 00:53:29,840 it would be something that we could then feel really proud of. 810 00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:33,800 That we have looked after our countryside well enough 811 00:53:33,800 --> 00:53:37,920 to support a beast like that. 812 00:53:37,920 --> 00:53:41,400 The sea eagle did indeed once exist in other parts of England, 813 00:53:41,400 --> 00:53:47,280 many centuries ago, so there is a case for reintroducing it to those areas. 814 00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:52,800 The cynical view is that this is done in the name of biodiversity, 815 00:53:52,800 --> 00:53:56,920 but little attention is played to birds like, say, 816 00:53:56,920 --> 00:54:03,240 the spotted flycatcher, the corn bunting, tree sparrow, willow tit, 817 00:54:03,240 --> 00:54:07,760 all of which are equally endangered, but aren't such good box office. 818 00:54:07,760 --> 00:54:12,520 So, one begins to wonder, are the societies promoting the interests of the sea eagle, 819 00:54:12,520 --> 00:54:16,480 or is the sea eagle promoting the interests of the societies? 820 00:54:16,480 --> 00:54:20,680 No doubt the debate over our role in these birds' comeback will continue. 821 00:54:20,680 --> 00:54:23,040 But one thing can't be denied. 822 00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:27,160 Just how far the bird protection movement has come 823 00:54:27,160 --> 00:54:30,080 since the days when women spied on each other in church 824 00:54:30,080 --> 00:54:33,680 to stop grebes being turned into fashion accessories. 825 00:54:34,880 --> 00:54:38,920 Today, Britain's waterbirds are thriving. 826 00:54:38,920 --> 00:54:41,360 From avocets to ospreys, 827 00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:44,760 white-tailed eagles to bitterns, and great crested grebes, 828 00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:48,080 their populations are on the rise. 829 00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:53,640 Now, deep in the West Country, 830 00:54:53,640 --> 00:54:56,880 another lost waterbird is being brought back from the dead. 831 00:54:56,880 --> 00:54:59,000 It's one of the rarest 832 00:54:59,000 --> 00:55:03,400 and most iconic British birds of all - the crane. 833 00:55:03,400 --> 00:55:06,680 They're incredibly tall - they are our tallest bird. 834 00:55:06,680 --> 00:55:10,160 They have a greater wingspan than even our eagles. 835 00:55:10,160 --> 00:55:13,520 If you were trying to personify them, I think 836 00:55:13,520 --> 00:55:16,520 Jarvis Cocker would be a good analogy - 837 00:55:16,520 --> 00:55:21,000 kind of tall, rangy, a little bit quirky, elegant, 838 00:55:21,000 --> 00:55:22,480 with an astonishing voice. 839 00:55:24,320 --> 00:55:28,920 Yet for most of the past 300 years, since the draining of the Fens, 840 00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:31,720 cranes have been missing from the British scene. 841 00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:36,560 Now, they are set to return. 842 00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:40,400 In an ambitious reintroduction scheme, these young cranes 843 00:55:40,400 --> 00:55:44,400 are being released onto the Somerset Levels. 844 00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:47,520 If they survive, they will soon be flying free 845 00:55:47,520 --> 00:55:52,000 over the home of King Arthur, the ancient land of Avalon. 846 00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:55,960 If we've got space for a bird 847 00:55:55,960 --> 00:55:58,680 that stands as tall as many of our children, 848 00:55:58,680 --> 00:56:03,480 if we've got room for a bird with a wingspan of over three metres, 849 00:56:03,480 --> 00:56:06,240 in this intensely crowded island, 850 00:56:06,240 --> 00:56:09,560 it's a symbol of hope for all of us, I think. 851 00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:14,360 But welcome though the sight of cranes flying over the Somerset Levels will be, 852 00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:17,640 they won't be the first to return to Britain. 853 00:56:17,640 --> 00:56:21,880 For in a remote corner of Norfolk, 250 miles to the east, 854 00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:26,680 the cranes have made their own comeback - without our help. 855 00:56:26,680 --> 00:56:33,800 In 1980, a tiny nucleus of birds returned 856 00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:37,360 to exactly the same location 857 00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:42,440 that the last known wild breeding cranes came from. 858 00:56:42,440 --> 00:56:44,400 A place in Norfolk called Hickling. 859 00:56:44,400 --> 00:56:48,000 And from the 1980s, this tiny population has built up. 860 00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:51,840 I think the wonderful thing about this 861 00:56:51,840 --> 00:56:54,280 is those cranes did it on their own. 862 00:56:54,280 --> 00:57:01,720 They surprised us by achieving a restoration in this country without ourselves. 863 00:57:01,720 --> 00:57:07,160 And I think it's proof that we aren't in charge, necessarily. 864 00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:13,120 I'm excited to see cranes 865 00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:15,840 in the places I see them in East Anglia. 866 00:57:15,840 --> 00:57:20,640 And I'm excited particularly because I know about the history of their return. 867 00:57:20,640 --> 00:57:23,040 The fact that they found their own way back 868 00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:24,880 seems to me a very important point. 869 00:57:30,120 --> 00:57:35,760 The danger of conservation is that it reinforces that older idea 870 00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:40,520 that we are always the ones that arbitrate what happens in our landscape. 871 00:57:40,520 --> 00:57:43,720 And what the cranes are a symbol of is that 872 00:57:43,720 --> 00:57:45,760 sometimes nature can do it without us. 873 00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:50,040 We aren't really always that in control. 874 00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:01,040 Next time in Birds Britannia, 875 00:58:01,040 --> 00:58:04,680 we explore our rise and fall as a seafaring nation, 876 00:58:04,680 --> 00:58:07,880 through our long and turbulent relationship 877 00:58:07,880 --> 00:58:13,480 with the most spectacular of all Britain's birds - our seabirds. 878 00:58:13,480 --> 00:58:17,760 It's a story of exploitation and conflict, 879 00:58:17,760 --> 00:58:20,400 ranging from the ancient use of seabirds as food 880 00:58:20,400 --> 00:58:25,080 to their very recent arrival in our modern, urban lives. 881 00:58:55,880 --> 00:58:58,240 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 882 00:58:58,240 --> 00:59:00,080 E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk