Springwatch Christmas Special Part 2

We had a great day filming with Springwatch and were blessed with wonderful weather.  You can see the results at 7pm on BBC2 on Boxing Day, and if you miss that it will be repeated at 3.15 pm BBC2 on New Year’s Eve.

The feature is about mistletoe and the damage it does to apple trees despite its importance as a wildlife habitat.

There was no shortage of mistletoe in the traditional orchard at West Bradley, unfortunately, as is the case in so many of our Somerset orchards.  Neil was eager to get at some of it with his pole saw and Kate was happy to get her hands sticky with the berries.

The crew, from Bristol, were charming, and included Scott Tibbles, son of the great wildlife cameraman Maurice Tibbles, and a great wildlife cameraman in his own right.

It will be a short piece in a review of the year, but we will all be glued to our screens!

The Kingfisher Award scheme

The Kingfisher Award Scheme (KAS) has been involving Primary Schools in their local environment since it was first launched in Devon at the instigation of the late poet laureate Ted Hughes and friends in 1992.  The Somerset project is run by Michael Brown and his wife Utta.


The objective is to provide children with an opportunity to go onto farms to explore the natural world and and discover the relationship between food, farming and wildlife.


Children come with their entire class for one session in early June. This year the sessions will be held at the National Trust's Barrington Court property from Tuesday 4 June to Friday 11 June. The children explore a variety of topics on the subject of orchards and wildlife and then return to their schools to create a project over the following weeks.


Neil Macdonald from Orchard Groundforce will be a tutor on the sessions this year, helping children to build high rise skyscrapers for insects such as beetles and bees, like the one above.


In July a grand final and picnic takes place and the projects are judged, with a prize being awarded to the winning class.

Michael Brown is one of the founders of the Brown & Forrest smokery near Langport, and is seen here with Neil Macdonald inspecting a graft on a tree in the orchard at West Bradley.