Original subtitles

A bird's life in Wales must seem the most pleasant existence

you could ever wish for.

What could possibly be better than being on a perch,

singing happily all day without a worry in the world?

And, of course, there's that ability to fly.

To go anywhere you feel like, totally free.

A life made in heaven.

Anything but.

Birds have to work from dawn until dusk.

They have to find food and water to live.

If they fail to do so, they die.

They have to battle the elements.

Survival, especially during Winter, is extremely difficult.

During Spring, they're busy raising new families.

Then they not only have to feed themselves,

but also their hungry chicks.

They have to protect the chicks from others who wish to do them harm.

They can be targets themselves.

And, of course, they have to put up with us.

They have to find a way of surviving in our artificial landscape.

In this series, I'm going to be finding out

what a bird's 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.

The uplands of Traeth Mawr in the Brecon Beacons.

Dawn's breaking on a cold April morning.

The Beacons' highest peak, Pen y Fan, is in the distance.

This first hour is alive with sounds.

The day starts early for birds.

As the sun rises and the mist lifts,

the birds are revealed in all their glory.

In this programme, I'm exploring the secret life of bird calls.

There can't be that many places left in Wales now

where you've got a fairly unspoilt area like this

with an incredible variety of habitats in it.

You've got the tall grassland here, you've got the gorse,

you've got the hills behind me, you've got marshland,

you've got bracken-covered hills over there as well.

And you've got so many birds here.

You can identify all of them from their calls and their songs.

This is a dunnock.

A willow warbler.

And a sedge warbler.

These are all male birds and they're singing to mark their territory.

And in their territory,

they've chosen the highest perch on the tallest bush to sing.

There's this scratchy kind of call here amongst the gorse.

That's a sedge warbler just in from Africa now.

There are skylarks in this grass. There are meadow pipits.

There's a pair of curlew over there.

There's a willow warbler going away now.

There's been a cuckoo calling from that hillside over there.

The best one, I think, of all is in this marshy, wet area here.

It's a bird called a snipe

and it's got a kind of a tick-tock-tick-tock kind of call.

But it also does a display, where it doesn't use its beak,

it actually uses its tail.

It pushes out these two outer tail feathers,

and when it dives down, it does this most incredible noise.

This is the snipe's tick-tack call.

The snipe is calling somewhere on the ground.

It's loud enough to attract a female into its territory.

And then he displays.

The movement of wind through his outer tail feathers

creates a unique noise.

This is Bute Park, Cardiff.

Here too, it's an early start for the birds.

This is a song thrush, one of our finest singers.

It'll always repeat a phrase at least twice.

It's important to sing early

to be the first one to attract the attention of a female.

Also, his sound will travel further in the park

in the relative silence of the dawn

than it will do later on in the day.

A lot of our birds actually start singing in the middle of Winter.

That's a good thing because there are no leaves and you can see them.

One of the earliest and the smallest is the wren.

There's one singing away in here now.

It's one of our smallest birds and yet it has an incredibly loud song.

I think it's all lungs because it doesn't burst into song,

it absolutely explodes.

This one is waggling its wings like this.

He's got a rival somewhere nearby

and he's trying to make himself look just that little bit bigger.

Cracking birds. I like wrens.

Tee-cher-tee-cher-tee-cher. Can you hear that?

That's a great tit. There's one up here,

and there's another one answering from over there.

It's a really common garden and woodland bird

and yet, you look at it close up and it's stunning.

Greens and yellows and blacks and whites.

The song is interesting.

They've found that the males with the longest and most intricate songs

are the most successful at attracting a mate.

So what they do is, they'll steal little bits of other birds' songs

and incorporate it into their own.

But they've always got that tee-cher-tee-cher element in it.

There are lots of them here.

Great spotted woodpeckers too are attracting each other,

but they have a different method.

They drum.

This is a female. Both males and females drum.

The male has a red patch on his neck.

And like all good drummers, they select the best drum.

The one that will make the most noise.

Although birdsongs can be complex and varied within species,

some birds make do with a very simple one.

This little bird is singing above Ceibwr Bay near Cardigan

on the North Pembrokeshire coast.

When we think of birdsong,

we tend to think of really tuneful songs like the melodious songs

of robins and blackbirds or maybe even the skylark.

But not all birds sing like that. This is a whitethroat.

It's a little warbler that's just come all the way back from Africa.

He keeps singing from the song post he's got here.

In this case, it's an old bit of bramble.

His song is what you could call, at best, a scratchy song.

But it obviously works

because he's got a female nesting just over the bank here.

There he goes. He's going off to feed her for a while

before he comes back and sings from exactly the same post.

This lucky whitethroat probably has one of the best patches of territory in Wales.

A Summer residence with outstanding views.

Some birds are not so lucky. Even very special birds.

This is a Dartford warbler. It's one of Wales' rarest birds.

And his residence overlooks Port Talbot.

The Dartford warbler looks quite different

to any other small bird that you'll see in Wales.

The view doesn't matter.

What's more important is that he's found a small patch of perfect habitat,

where he can sing and nest.

But he'll have to sing very loud above the traffic noise

and this is something all urban birds have to get used to.

This is Betws-y-Coed in North Wales.

It's early morning and the A5 is very busy.

In the park, birds are also getting on with their busy lives.

A song thrush singing away up there.

Singing its little heart out from the top of that tree.

It'll do that all through the Spring and into the Summer.

The problem is, it's decided to nest in a town,

so it's got to compete every morning with the traffic.

Research has shown that urban birds may make their songs louder

to compensate for this noise.

The songs can also be very different to the songs

of the same species living in the countryside.

Not all birds sing from a perch.

Some Welsh birds live in habitats

where there are no trees or suitable perches to sing from.

These are the Gronant sand dunes near Prestatyn in North Wales.

Here, skylarks breed during the Spring and Summer.

I don't think many songs can compete with the skylark song.

It's a busy time for them.

It's Spring and the males are setting up territories.

They are chasing each other around.

They'll sing and climb and climb and climb and sing and sing.

It's like a competition to see which one can do

the most complicated song and climb the highest.

It's important they do that because the territory that they establish

has got to sustain, not just them, but a mate and a family as well.

That's why you'll get lots of them. There are dozens of them.

They're singing all the way through Spring into Summer

and into the Autumn as well. It's a lovely sound.

Skylarks have incorporated their song into an aerial display.

The males attract the females by literally falling from the sky.

They will do it over and over

even when a female has been found, to keep her, and the territory.

MUSIC

Since I was a lad, I've been fascinated by birds nests.

A wall like this is ideal for a robin or a wren.

Because they tuck the nests away, one of the best ways to find them

is to listen for an alarm call.

An alarm call is different for every bird but they are similar.

They are loud, very harsh and often staccato

bit like a machine gun.

When you hear that, you know the nest isn't far.

The alarm call serves several purposes.

It warns me to stay back.

Also, it's to warn other birds that there is danger in the area.

It's to warn the mate, who will be incubating eggs or young,

to stay quiet, still and not to give away the nest's location.

We've all heard this one, an unhappy blackbird.

It's usually a cat or a person walking under his tree.

It's illegal to go anywhere near a peregrine's nest

as it's a protected species.

But the peregrine would soon let you know if you were too near.

This is an interesting situation in a woodland near Harlech.

A nuthatch pair has taken up residence in an old woodpecker hole.

The nuthatch at the nest is alerted by an alarm call from his mate.

A woodpecker is now an unwelcome guest when he ventures too close.

The nuthatch pair do their very best to scare him off.

Eventually, the woodpecker gets the message.

This chaffinch has a nest nearby.

It's making a high-pitched alarm call.

It's very high frequency and very difficult for us to make out.

But it's meant for its chicks.

A sign to be quiet and not to give away the nest's location.

All of these calls are an early warning system

and are essential in helping birds escape danger.

Some birds have calls that are so complicated

it's as if they have their own language.

This is Newborough Forest on the west coast of Anglesey.

It's one of the largest conifer plantations in Wales.

During Winter, around 800 ravens roost every night in the forest.

It's one of the biggest assemblages of ravens in Britain.

Ravens have the widest range of calls of any bird.

During the day, they scavenge the land for food,

and return here at dusk to the security and warmth of the forest.

As they arrive and occupy roosting positions in the trees,

the calls they make to each other are fascinating.

I've sneaked in below the trees, right at the edge of the roost now.

The main roost is to my left but there are vocal birds to my right.

Listen to these noises.

They say that ravens have more than 30 different calls

and I can well believe it.

It's a kind of language really.

A language we don't understand, but a language none the less.

Constantly communicating with each other.

Some of these noises are so weird.

There must be a reason why ravens are calling like this.

They are not simply calling for fun.

For the time being, it's a mystery. We don't understand their language.

There's good evidence they maybe sharing information

about food sources.

A raven cannot defend a carcass on its own.

But it can if it's part of a group.

It's thought the volume and nature of a call

maybe giving information about the location, distance

and size of a find.

By sharing this information, they can go back together the next day

to benefit from the food.

All over Wales, fabulous views of flying flocks are common,

especially along the coast.

And in these flocks, birds often call to each other.

These waders are near the Menai Strait.

It's a place where you'll hear a fabulous range of calls.

These Canada Geese are taking off from the Nevern Estuary.

Jackdaws are particular noisy.

These are returning to roost near Llanelli.

But the most impressive communication show in Wales,

both in terms of sound and vision, is that performed by starlings.

These have arrived at Aberystwyth to spend the night on the pier.

Oh! The sky here is just full of starlings.

Back and forth. Watching them coming into roost is really hypnotic.

This huge shape that is constantly changing all the time.

The advantage with Aberystwyth Pier is that it's so short.

That means that the display comes right over your head.

And also, you can hear them.

If you listen carefully, all these wings beating at once.

They call to each other constantly.

Because you are so close to the whole spectacle here,

you feel part of it.

Here they go again, look at that! A wave of starlings coming over.

Oh, wow!

By dusk, thousands arrive. Maybe 20,000 or more.

No-one knows for sure why starlings do this,

but they are certainly communicating with each other for some reason.

They are constantly calling.

The flying display itself may serve a social need.

They might be organising themselves into the strongest and fittest

to eventually get the best roosting position.

They might be moving around to protect themselves

from predatory birds.

It could simply be checking out the roost before they land.

Whatever the reason, it's an impressive sight.

They continue to call and chatter after landing.

By the time every bird has found a perch,

there's hardly a single position free.

Huddled together, they keep warm.

The birds at the centre of the roost will not only be warmer,

but safer too.

No fox, cat or peregrine can get at them here.

It's first light on Ruabon Mountain near Llangollen

in North East Wales.

Dawn, literally, is stirring.

Strange noises can be heard for miles across the barren moore.

The sounds are made by male black grouse.

They are displaying.

A contest is taking place.

The winner will be the top bird of this patch.

He will be the best and fittest grouse.

The one that will have the pick of the females.

To win the contest, making a big noise will not be enough.

The best grouse will also have to look good.

These birds have made themselves big and colourful.

Their body feathers have a beautiful sheen.

The tail has transformed to a bright white fan.

The red head pats or wattles are normally a quarter of this size.

They have been engorged by blood to make them more visible.

And all this massive visual and vocal effort is for one thing only,

to earn the right to mate with a female.

BIRDS WARBLING

And for this male, all the effort has paid off.

MUSIC

The need for males to attract females

has led to the huge variety of beautiful birds we have in Wales.

Lapwings with headdresses,

goldfinches with multi-coloured jackets,

wagtails with bright coloured waistcoats

and colourfully adorned pheasants.

Male birds often change their colour from Winter to Spring.

This is the Winter version of a black headed gull.

This is the Summer version.

Starlings change their beak colour and develop a very glossy coat.

Little grebes also grow colourful feathers for the Spring.

The all do this to court females.

That will be my next Secret Life of Birds.