Presenters Meeting: The animals fight back...
Even before we have all sat down there is bad news. Nigel the birdman is carrying a piece of camera cable that has been chewed by an unknown assailant. This, in turn, has caused some of the cameras to go a bit doolally, specifically the ones trained on the kestrels, the , and the otters.
For the moment everything is back in place, but who is the guilty culprit? Nigel thinks it is the fighting back. Others think it is rats. But when Nigel reveals that Jo, one of the remote camera people, has done a piece to camera about the chewed cable, I begin to think that the allure of fifteen seconds of fame may have been too much for Jo to resist. Determined to get to the bottom of this, I resolve to take a closer look at Jo's teeth next time I see him...
With minor issues like camera cables dealt with, Chris takes the opportunity to show us a gift that he has just been sent in the post. It is a bright blue knitted poodle wine-cosey. As you can see, Chris is a very proud owner.
Unfortunately, when everyone starts discussing tonight's content, things start to get bleak. There is murder everywhere tonight, whether the production team and presenters like it or not. It is always said about Springwatch that nature writes the scripts, and today nature has decided to write an emotional rollercoaster. For the first time ever, everyone is serious.
But the mood begins to lighten a tad as there is good news from Simon. Well, good news if you're Kate that is, as Simon is still having trouble filming polecat... and viewers are flooding the Springwatch website with their own polecat footage. Kate is delighted and decides that Simon should be sent a cake that she has had made in the shape of The Sofa (just smaller).
Then more bad news. It turns out that the cake was made last Monday, has been sitting in the fridge since then... and someone has taken a bite out of it. Now I have two reasons to check Jo's teeth...
Minutes before the end of the meeting, there is, at last, some unreservedly good news. One of the cameramen has caught some cracking footage of a having a go at a cuckoo lurking near its nest. But why, wonders the series producer, would a warbler be clever enough to chase away a cuckoo but silly enough to feed a cuckoo's chicks if they hatched in its nest. Chris explains.
"It is all to do with the gape," he says. "A chick's gape - even when it belong to a young cuckoo - is a super-stimulus that a warbler is simply unable to resist... much like some men and silicon-enhanced breasts..."
Perhaps understandably, when Chris then starts talking about '', no one is quite sure whether he is referring to butterflies or not...
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