Tony Francis introduces the programme from the Belvoir Castle estate in Leicestershire. His first report looks at ‘twitchers’ who are keen bird watchers who travel to see rare birds. We see a man being woken by a telephone call alerting him to a bird and audio from ‘Birdline’. The twitchers talk about their hobby as we see them assembling and driving along a motorway. Their first destination is a housing estate at Broughton Astley in Leicestershire where they see a waxwing. Next they move on to Swithland Reservoir where they search in vain for a rare gull although we do see two mating swans.
The next report from Alan Jones shows angler Bob Church fishing for pike at Overstone Park Lake in Northamptonshire. Church talks about the predatory fish and we see him reeling in a pike.
Next in a follow up to a report broadcast on Country Ways in August 1987 we meet 78 year old Jeremy Taylor who lives in a shack on the Cotswold Estate, on land once owned by his family. We see library pictures of him last summer and we see him managing his winter wood supply by chopping up a fallen tree and using the winch on his Land Rover to haul it up a slope. He talks to Hazel Westwood about the hard work he has to put in during the winter but is still in favour of his lifestyle.
The final report from Alan Jones sees naturalist Colin Green with a group of children looking for small mammals in Leicestershire. Green has laid traps and we see the children looking at the animals captured and then released.
Production Team: Colin Green; Peter Mason; Elaine Roberts; Jayne Watson; Hazel Westwood
Producer: Alan Jones
Production number 2397/88.