´óÏó´«Ã½

The popular ´óÏó´«Ã½ wildlife programme Springwatch has come to Norfolk for its 2008 series.

Bill Oddie, Kate Humble and the crew have relocated from the legendary Springwatch farm in Devon, to their new base at Pensthorpe Nature Reserve near Fakenham.

The reserve is home to more than 100 species of birds and other native wildlife.

"We're absolutely thrilled, amazingly excited and a little bit nervous. It's a real coup for Norfolk," said Deb Jordan, co-owner of the reserve.

Kate takes a break during rehearsals

"Pensthorpe's only a small nature reserve in north Norfolk and Springwatch is enormous. Bill Oddie, Kate Humble - it doesn't get better than that.

"We're really looking forward to showing the wild-side of Pensthorpe which is very much what we're all about," she added.

Planning and rigging

After five months of planning and two weeks of rigging, the 600 acre site has been transformed into a new base for the programme.

"Everything has to slot into place, but more than that it has to do it at the right time," said Ian Dewar, the Springwatch team's engineering manager.

"We first knew we were coming to Norfolk at the start of the year, since then I've been devising plans until the first day of the build which was on 12 May.

"It takes a lot of co-operation as we need to put cables all over the estate, we have to get the infrastructure in, it takes an awful lot of effort from a lot of people," he added.

Grand designs

Forget Changing Rooms, the quite literal television make-over at the Pensthorpe site is nothing short of a grand design.

The programme uses more than 50 cameras around the site, linked by more than 12 miles of fibre-optic cables.

The team will record more than 500 hours of footage during their three week stay in Norfolk and in addition to the main programme, generate four continuous web-streams, films and blogs to the Springwatch website.

From dining room to TV gallery

They will be broadcasting on ´óÏó´«Ã½1, ´óÏó´«Ã½2,Ìýthe ´óÏó´«Ã½ News channel, across the local radio network and on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4.

And to get the programme from Pensthorpe, Norfolk to Television Centre, London the images will be beamed via a satellite stationed off the Gulf Of Gunia, West Africa - a journey of 44,600 miles!

In addition to building a production village with portable offices, catering facilities, edit suites and dressing rooms - a stone-paved, chandelier hung, dining room is now one of the largest transmission galleries used on any outside-broadcast in the country.

Complex outside broadcast

"It's quite a complex outside broadcast, just because of the scale of it. At any given time we have anything up to 60 live cameras, most of which are hidden in nests or whatever," said director David Weir.

"Compared with any other programmes that I've done the scale of this is huge. I mean, there's miles and miles and miles of cables.

"The nicest thing really is that we don't work to a script at all, so we never know what's going to happen. As the natural history people will tell you, nature is writing the script," he added.

One in a run of old cottages on the estate, known as Five Cottages, has been transformed into the programme's main studio. Step outside and your surrounded by ducks, geese and cranes.

This is a place where you're absolutely surrounded by wildlife," said presenter Bill Oddie.

Bill gets ready for a radio interview

"Pensthorpe is an amazing place with it's combination of good things to see and do, as well as wonderful conservation projects going on behind the scenes. I'm thrilled that it is the new home of Springwatch," he added.

The Wensum Valley

Pensthorpe Nature Reserve sits in the Wensum Valley, an area that stretches from West Rudham to Norwich with the River Wensum at its heart.

The area is protected as a Special Area Of Conservation (SAC), one of Europe's highest nature conservation designations.

Species which have disappeared from many other river valleys in Great Britain are still found in this part of Norfolk, including native white-clawed crayfish, Desmoulin's Whorl Snail and the Brook Lampre.

The valley is also home to other rare species such as the otter, Bittern and Marsh Harrier.

Pensthorpe boasts a range of habitats including ancient woodland, water meadows, wildflower meadows, breckland and cliffs - which help to provide homes for sand martins, kingfishers and badgers.

"We're going to see a much greater diversity of habitats and animals than viewers will be used to from previous years," said Reema Lorford, series producer of Springwatch.

"So we've got lots of wading birds, lots of ground-nesting birds who have this awful jeopardy with birds of prey coming in and taking eggs, but we'll have all the usual favourites such as the blue tits and robins," she added.

Springwatch cameras catch all the action

Springwatch first

The Springwatch team have installed more than 50 remote cameras on the estate to watch a variety of birds including Coal Tits, Great Tits, swallows and Little-Ringed Plovers.

"The Coal Tit is less familiar than the common old garden Blue Tit. It's quite a nice surprise as they don't normally use nest boxes, I think it's the first time we've had a Coal Tit on Springwatch," said remote camera specialist Nigel Bean.

"We have to make sure the birds are happy. We put a camera in location and watch the birds for half-an-hour or so before we carry on and introduce more cameras and lights.

"We spend two weeks putting the cameras in before we go live and then continue to do so during the programme," he added.

Around 50,000 visitors enjoy the delights of Pensthorpe each year, with Springwatch now on site, around four million television viewers a night can do the same.

Springwatch begins on Monday, 26 May, 2008 at 8pm on ´óÏó´«Ã½2 and broadcasts for three weeks.

Pensthorpe Nature Reserve will be open to visitors as normal while Springwatch is at the location.