Original subtitles

'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, I'll 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.

'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 favourite 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.

She'll sit in the tall heather down there, just waiting for him,

because he'll be the one who hunts.

He'll bring food for her and when he gets above her,

he whistles this low kind of whistle.

Up she then comes.

He'll 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 what's 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 colourful 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 tit's 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 centre 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 woodpecker's 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.

She'll 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.

'We're 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 kilometres 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 river's 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 specialised 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.'

We're 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 realised 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 metre, two meters up off the ground,

and they go into the bank about a metre.

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.

'We're 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.'