November 2009

This is my caterpillar blog - I'm just trying this out as recently I've been re-introduced back to an old passion of mine and that is rearing caterpillars! I needed a few pictures for my up and coming book and so I thought in the abscence of any 'wild' stock so late in the season I would order in something exotic. The result being a tiny plastic tube of silk moth eggs turning up in the post on Saturday 3rd of October. As warned by the seller the eggs were due to hatch on the morning of arrival and of course they did!! As a consequence of the panic that ensued as I tried to source some food plant locally I missed pictures of the brand new babies emerging from the eggs (never mind I've got some Death's Head Hawk moth eggs turning up very, very soon!)

The species is commonly called the Tusseh or Tussoh Silkmoth - although this covers many similar species. So I'm afriad I have to be specific and refer to them by their rather lovely binomial latin name of Antheraea mylitta - after the persian goddess of carnal love and beauty (very appropriate)

9th January 2010 You may remember (see below) that on the 23rd of December a female emerged and mated straight away; well today 2 and a half weeks later the eggs from this union are hatching! They are as I write popping out of the eggs, tiny jack in the boxes that are then proceeding to partially eat their boxes. I was supposed to post some of these eggs to interested parties - well that didn't happen partly because there has been no post what with the snow fall and the big freeze we are experiencing and also I didn't want to take the risk of the eggs getting too cold in transit. If you are waiting for some eggs so not worry - I've got plenty more and I will send them as soon as this weather warms up a bit. But just to wet you appetite a little here are a couple of pictures of todays event.

In the above picture you can see quite clearly a couple of the newly hatched caterpillars first meals - many species do this in fact some will not continue and thrive if they are denied this meal. So it's best to let them get on with it and only transfer then to fresh food plant leaves when they wander off themselves. Because they are so small at this stage transfer should be done very gently with a fine camel hair artists paint brush.

31st December - The new year is nearly upon us and my moths are about to turn the full cycle with the successful pairing of the first two females to emerge and the subsequent arrival of two batches of healthy eggs. I'm not sure how long they take to hatch but I'm expecting a week to ten days at around 20 degrees.

The above picture is the first pairing of moths - the female is the one with the big fat abdomen full of eggs. The male is hanging by his genitalia (quite a talent!) and is identifiable by his large feathery antennae - with these and the large sensory surface area they provide he is able (just like all silk moths) to effectively detect the pheromone (sexy perfume) produced by a virgin female. He has to be good at this because like all silk moths the adults do not feed (they don't have any functional mouth parts and are totally reliant on the fat reserves laid down by the caterpillars - think back to how big and fat they were!)

The above cage is actually what I use for emergence (you can see the pupae in trays in the bottom) However this, my second pair of moths caught me out by mating and laying eggs in it. All of the equipment I use is either home made or from Anglian Lepidoptera Supplies.

http://www.angleps.com/index.php

I've been posting a few updates on Twitter and I am aware that several of my followers are interested in buying some of the surplus stock - but of course this interest is followed by the inevitable questions. Which I will now do my best to answer

How big are the moths? They are quite chunky and a big female will have a wingspan of around 20cm. As adults they are very short lived and burn out in around 10 days (less if they are male and have mated)

What size housing do I require to keep them? For the newly hatched caterpillars I keep them in a small plastic pot - clear with a tight fitting lid (they don't need air holes). I line the pot with a sheet of kitchen towel cut to size and feed freshly cut Eucalyptus leaves daily (they will also eat Holm oak) both are useful food plants at this time of the year. In the summer you can try them on other deciduous species such as Oak. When you change the food also clean away any frass (a posh word for caterpillar poo ) This looks like dust initially but when the caterpillars are fully grown they are almost pea sized pellets.

As they grow move them up to larger plastic pots and split the numbers too if you wish - but continue to change the food and muck out regularly. Eventually I keep them for the last few instars of their lives in a cylinder cage (see above) These can be purchased from a specialist entomological supplier or you can make one out of a round cake tin and a cylinder of acetate sheeting (available from most good craft shops). Keep them nice and warm 20-30 degrees and they should do very well. One note - do not disturb the caterpillars while they are moulting (or spinning a cocoon) if you have noticed they have spun a silk pad, stopped feeding or show that distinctive bulge behind the head leave them be - simply add more food plant to the cage and those that are still hungry will move onto that. In the mean time keep an eye on the moulting individual and when he's done - clean and refresh food as before!

I know this all sounds quite a lot but it is dead easy and I'll be on hand either via Twitter or the Forum to help out with any questions you may have.

23rd of December and finally I've got around to completing the circle!! My moths have started to emerge from their cocoons. To be fair they started last week, with two males out first - but a combination of being busy, pre-Christmas tasks and a new content editor for the website to get to grips with has meant a bit of a delay. Today though a very fat and fine lady popped out of her silk wrapper - a nice little Christmas present for me! I've just popped her in a cage with the guys and if I turn the heat up a little in the room maybe the new year will be brought in to the sound of the pitter patter of several hundred tiny prolegs? I'll keep you posted. Here's a pic of the lovely lady herself...

10th November - With a mixture of inevitability, happiness and sadness (to be loosing the big fat caterpillars to the next step in their journey) I can report today that the first of the caterpillars has shut itself away from the world and spun it's pale brown silk cocoon. I will endeavour to capture a few pictures of it later once the silk has hardened and the risk of damaging the caterpillar that will be busy inside - thinking about moulting its final skin and revealing the pupa beneath. Little of this we will see of course but use your imagination as the cells break apart form a living soup and then slowly over the next few weeks reform into the image of an adult moth. It's one of those transformations that is nothing less magical than liquidising a dog popping it into a black plastic sack and them having a swan burst forth in a few weeks!

I extracted the cocoon now - it was well woven into the stems of the foodplant and it can be a bit fiddly getting that plus the remaining caterpillars back into the cage without squashing anyone - but here it is the first cocoon a wonder in natural aesthetics and well woven masterpiece. It's about the same size as a small chicken egg. I've never reared this species before but I expect to see a moth emerging in the next 2-3 weeks.

7th November It's just under 4 weeks since these little babies (and they were only about 5-6mm long) arrived in the post now look at them! These are truly 'fat cats' now - they are in their final instar meaning they are on the home stretch and eating their way through the last few days of their soft squidgy existence as a caterpillar any day now they will start to go off their food and start the next stage - I hope its soon as my kind neighbour who's Eucalyptus tree I've been given permission to prune is looking a little denuded - I think when I asked if I could take some sprigs to feed my caterpillars I was being misleading (deliberatly?). I should have just turned up with a chainsaw and started lopping off branches, these beasts are insatiable right now and are eating staggering quantities of Eucalyptus leaves.

Here's a couple of pictures taken this morning to give you some idea of the size of them.

2nd November - some of the caterpillars have moulted for the penultimate time - 5th instar is BIG now the length of my index finger and big and fat to boot. The colours are getting more and more spectacular with strange purple rimmed metallic tubercles by each spiracle now and also a good crop of what look like foreward comed hairs. The appettite is to match their size and they are putting on the grams now - after a little respite (since they were all waitiing to moult and therefore not feeding) I'm expecting to be full on this week stuffing more and more leaves into the cage before they look to start spinning cocoons.

My only concern is that a couple of the caterpillars are not lookng brillinat - I'm putting it down to moult but one or two of them are looking a little off colour - I hope they dont have a virus or bacterial infection

When they are about to moult they spin themsleves a pad of silk and then wait for a couple of days for the processes within to take place - during this time they are stationary and they have a distinctive bulge behind the head capsule seen here.

27th of October and I've just realised I should have run this blog the other way up!! Oh well - maybe I'll fiddle with it later. However the caterpillars are now beastly and really putting a dent in my Eucalyptus supply. Of the 25 or so that hatched I've only lost 2 due to difficulties in moulting (one not being helped by me accidently squashing his head in the lid of his cage) They are mostly all 4th Instar now and getting on for as long as my little finger (that's nearly 8cm long).

It's the 15th today and the caterpillars seem to be expanding by the minute, fast looking for new supplies of food plant. This is what they are looking like now - still 3rd Instar - and looking great - the purple tubercles are lovely enough but the metallic pink ones are real eye catchers. Gazing at them in their box on my desk I cannot help but wonder why? They are now about 3 cm long.

13th and 14th of October they moulted again - the rate of growth is speeding up and now these third instar caterpillars are beginning to look gorgeous and it is these big, succulent almost quilted babies that make this hobby such fun. I can't help it I love big caterpillars!! They've just started to develop a kind of shiny metallic red colour on their tubercles (the warty lumps along the top of their body).

On the 9th and 10th of October they all stopped feeding and moulted for the first time - they are now second instar and they are already putting noticeable quantities of food away. They are each about a cm long now.

5th of October we had collectively decided to feed them on the evergreen foodsource of that horrid tree; Eucalyptus (I'm hoping I can get away with sourcing enough leaves from the one tree in my town without having to buy a potted one especially)

So here are (above and below) a few of the first instar caterpillars - chewing away on the 5th or 6th of October

April 2009

It's been a while and I'm very sorry that I have not been up-dating as much as I would like - I do have a Twitter account for those interested - I'm 'bugboybaker' when I get a chance I will try and link it to this site - so those interested could get little more frequent updates! In the mean time 2009 has started with a leap - straight off into filming the next series of 'Nick Baker's Weird Creatures' for animal planet - it is series 3 and is proving just as fun to make as the last too. With a bit of luck the production company and the good folk at Animal Planet are telling me it will air in the UK sometime in the Autumn. I'll promise to keep you updated on the news of this as and when.

But so far we have filmed in Mexico; both the wonderful Baja penninsula and in Mexico city itself (updates to the site with respect to these trips are imminent) we have also been to Australia and then to Costa Rica (leading a tour for Cox & Kings) So now you can see why there have been few updates - simply no time in front of a keypad.

I've been enjoying a little of the spring weather in the garden - I'm awaiting the emergence of my Masonry bees from my Shwegler box that I put up last year and I am also very pleased to announce my very large Shwe gler Bumble bee box has also got a resident colony of White-tailed Bumble bees in residence and I hope to get a few pictures to post once she is firmly established. I am however really dissapointed with my House Sparrows - don't they know they are declining? You would have thought that a bird in dire need of help would at least entertain the thought of using some of the nest boxes I've put up for them! They have turned their beaks up at all of them so far. The good news is that the snow and wind this winter has dislodges a slate on the corner of my roof and today I noted the comings and goings of a pair of birds - so they are not too snobby to not accept an opportunity to live under my roof - maybe their offspring will be a little more open minded and move in next to mum and dad - I hope so.

January 2009

Happy new year to all my visitors - I've got off to a good start this month, having just started filming a new series of 'Nick Baker's Weird Creatures' for Animal Planet - this is now the third and I feel it could well be the best of them yet. We started by filming Slow Loris in Borneo just before Christmas and then it was off to spend the best part of January filming two very strange animals in Mexico - the five-toed worm lizard and one of my own favourites and an animal I've kept for over 20 years as a pet; the Axolotl. I'm just getting over Jet lag and a touch of a cold and once I've got the priority tasks like feeding the animals and paying the tax bills done I will post a few teasers in the way of behind the scenes pictures of what we got up too.

I also intend to update many of the pages on this website as last year was a little slow and I still didn't seem to have time to do much - so bear with me on this and feel free to mess around on the forum (a link also to be found on this site)

July 2008

It's been quite a week, I'm having a hard time of it in the garden at the moment as it looks like the Chaffinch's and Green finches that are frequenting my seed feeders are contracting a nasty disease called Trichomoniasis which may well mean that I will have to stop feeding as it is killing it seems quite a large number of these two species. I will be writing up a short piece on this over the next few weeks, explaining a little about what it is, the frustrations of having an outbreak in your local bird population, what you can do about it and how you can help scientists understand this newly emerged disease, but as I said more of that another time.

Right now I'm going to share with you probably the most exiting thing that's happened to me for several years (ever since my very first and long awaited swim with an adult basking shark!) This is also a fishy tail but one that is very much the other end of the size scale. On Thursday after hurtling down the M3 from the Discovery networks Autumn Launch at dawn I arrived on the Dorset coast with some friends of mine from the Seahorse trust and some other concerned local divers to take part in a seahorse survey - since I had never seen either of the two British species this was an opportunity not to be missed.

(above) The fish twitchers from left to right: John Newman (looking sad even before he flooded his camera monitor!), yours truly, Neil Garrick-maidment (looking a little like Gimli the Dwarf), Nicky and Steve Trewhella (they are his photo's of the seahorses)

We managed to squeeze in two dives over the day, when I say squeezed in it was really quite leisurely as the dives were to a maximum depth of 2.8 Metres which meant we were getting cold before we emptied our tanks!!

Seahorses may not be fleet of fin but they are always very hard to spot, their camouflage is excellent and even though they move very sedately with rapidly sculling fins constantly adjusting their position their colouration and the fact they are covered with ridges and appendages makes them pretty hard to spot. They seem to like to live in areas where there is plenty of Eel grass (Zostera sp.) although this maybe a reflection on the fact that they are easier to see in this habitat and it may well have some relation on their breeding cycle and so they may frequent it to give birth and/or breed, I guess nobody really knows much about their detailed ecology in the wild but they have been found in other non-Eel grass habitats, even coming up in crab pots form time to time.

Swimming through the Eel grass is a akin to flying over a meadow of long grass on land, so imagine us,a strange bunch of ungainly neoprene clad butterflies moving in a line slowly over this forest of green ribbons, peering into and among its leaves for a glimpse of these rare fish.

It wasn't long (perhaps 10 minutes into the dive) when Steve found the first one, I eagerly approached the spot and despite all the exited pointing it took me a few moments to see the Seahorse as not only was it hard to spot but it was also much bigger than I imagined; I was looking for something maybe 4-5 cm long but the Spiny Seahorse, Hippocampus guttulatus, before my eye's was much bigger than that, probably 10-15 cm if it had been unfurled.

I couldn’t believe it and drank in the experience why the other took photos and noted it's position, sex and size. I took quite a lot of effort to tear myself away and continue with the survey line looking for other individuals. But by the end of the dive I was beside myself as we had seen a further 4 animals making a total of 5 including one of their number a smaller slightly less ornate Short-snouted Seahorse, Hippocampus hippocampus; the other British species.

One of the spiny seahorses was also a pregnant male which judging by his uncomfortable looking swollen belly would be giving birth very soon – evidence of breeding is always good news.

After a surface interval and copious quantities of tea and Sandwiches it was a plop back in and the second dive turned up several more Spiny seahorses, bringing the days total to 8 animals with another pregnant male.

What a day!! It is rare the UK throws up a brand new species and experience but last Thursday will always be the day I saw my first British seahorse.

(above) Me and a Spiny Seahorse

There is a serious side to this very pleasurable day of diving and that is since April both of our Seahorses and their habitats have been given total protection under the 1981 Wildlife and countryside act. The problem is that this is proving quite controversial as many of the locations where these animals are turning up are also areas green lit for development as well as areas of high leisure use – the top secret site we were diving at is a popular sheltered boat mooring and we noted loads of anchor damage to the fragile Eel grass beds – it is no coincidence as both species seek the same sheltered waters. The biggest problem is that most people are not even aware we have native Seahorses and even in places where they are known from they are incredibly difficult to find which makes long term studies of their ecology and requirements quite a slow process. Up until now work on these species has been carried out by a limited few individuals and what is needed it seems is for the powers that be to start implementing the legislation that was passed in the spring and maybe who knows there could be some funding released that will allow much need research into these magical fish and their habitats and in future we will be better placed to manage any issues that arise.

For more details of Seahorse conservation contact the seahorse trust (see Charities page of this website) or if you wish to express your self in this issue feel free to join my forum where you can get a load of your chest!

(left) A spiny Seahorse looking much bigger and more splendid than even my imagination could have conjured up!

June 2008

Earlier on in the year there came a knock at the door and a very nervous delivery bloke said he had a few nest boxes for me - the only problem being that they were quite heavy and he had come in a truck too big to fit down our rather narrow road! This delivery came following a conversation I had had with one of our leading wildlife garden suppliers Jacobi Jayne. They said they would send me a few of their products to try out in our new garden. I have always been fascinated by the various woodcrete boxes and was very keen to test out a few of their excellent products and since JJ are the distributors of their stuff in this country it was only natural that I gave them a call.

What turned up was a bit of a surprise. Schwegler are a German company and their nest boxes are lets say very German - by that I mean logical in a way that our German friends have a habit of being - well constructed and meticulously designed. The only problem is quality is usually a little heavy and this fact combined with the generosity of the team at Jacobi Jayne meant that a pallet was required to carry them to my door!

I had asked for a variety of boxes for everything from those suitable to Blue tits and Great tits through to some of their more specialized boxes designed for Nuthatches, Bats and Bees ...........

...........and this is what it all looked like once I had removed the packaging!!

I then set about drilling, hammering and hanging this lot to pretty much any structure in the garden or on the outside of the house that would take the weight and I have to say considering how late in the season it was I have had considerable success.

By far the best and most surprising of the boxes for me is the 'bee box' – it's that Yellow thing witha wooden panel full of lots of little holes. The reason I'm so happy is that when I got back from my holidays I found that all of the bigger holes were plugged up with mud, which meant the Red Mason Bee's Osmia rufa, had been busy! The reason I'm so very happy is that it has actually worked better than any other box I have ever used or made to attract solitary bees and secondly there is a little surprise in the design that gives a very special insight into a world that we do not normally get a chance to see.

The box has two sized holes and it seems it's the larger ones that are a firm favourite with the Red Mason Bees big enough to work in but not so big the bee has to waste a lot of time supplying building materials. When one tube is filled the bee then moves onto another and starts a fresh.By that I'm referring to the fact that the entrance holes in the wood lead into clear hard plastic tubes which mean you can see very nicely what usually goes on in secret inside cracks and cavities in walls or hollow plant stems

When you pull the front panel off you can see that each of the tubes that the bees have provisioned show alternating pattern of brown and yellow. The brown is the mud that has been painstakingly collected by the bee, mouthful at a time and mixed with her saliva. This is used as building material to stop up any gaps and as a partition wall between the cells. The bright yellow is the pollen mixed with a little nectar; this is the food larder for the developing grubs. Some of these 'baby bees' are bigger than others; that is because the larger ones destined to become females and the smaller ones males.

 

(Top) Last week I also noticed a very tired Red Mason Bee (we are coming to the end of their flight period) she seems to be simply hanging out in one of the smaller tubes along with a species of solitary wasp (bottom) which I think is Crossocerus dimidiatus ( Sorry it doesn’t have a common name).

For more information about these bees, the nest boxes and how it's function see the review of it in my 'Good Stuff' pages (under Misc)

www.nickbaker.tv/stuff-misc/

March 2008

Look what's turned up!! It's a Pink Fairy Armadillo! a real live one. This is a very rare event even in Argentina where this animal was found by my equally Armadillo obsessed friends.

This is the Animal I have to see before I die and I'm working on a proposal to submit that will allow me a second 'bite at the cherry' and actually get to see a live one this time (having failed to find anything but a dried husk of a body on my last visit). See 'Nick Baker's Weird Creatures' series 1.

This is the first picture of a real live one I have ever seen and when I saw the video - well, check it out and see for yourself. It's on my photo/video page - under Video blog. If you are only going to look at one thing on this site this is the click you have to make!!

I'm not up to a huge amount at the moment I guess in the business we say we are between jobs! Having said this I'm never idle. On top of the various projects below, I'm enjoying a little time with my family and reveling in my 18 month daughters new found joy at the house spider that lives behind the radiator in the hallway. I'm trying to get a little trail time in on my mountain bike and spend a little time on my various pets – I'm really concentrating on getting a few of my snakes to breed this year and also get the set up 'just right' for my new Discus fish.

I have recently also started work on our small garden and myself and my partner Ceri are currently landscaping and preparing the ground for a wildlife garden, which will hopefully be as much fun for us as it will be for the wildlife – I'm looking forward to taking an order of the very fine, robust, warm and well designed nest boxes from Schwegler, provided by those demi-gods of the back yard garden wildlife sanctuary Jacobi Jayne. I will be reviewing these and giving a progress report on how these have done in the future as soon as I have something to report.

My friend Neil and I are working up the designs for some brand new 'Wild life' study kits with our forward thinking friends at interplay again we'll keep you posted on when they should be out in the shops (or of course available right here on this website). Hopefully by Christmas (of course).

The Great Egg Case Hunt

Ok, so it's Easter and rather than chase painted chickens eggs down hillsides or throwing rubber ducks in your local river why not go on an Easter Egg hunt – but not one of the predictable variety.

In fact the eggs you need to hunt for have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any chicken or bird for that matter! I'm talking about those that are those laid by some members of the Shark, Skate and Ray family.

The Shark Trust are urging people to look out for and identify the unusual egg cases that get washed up on our shores. These strange, rubbery when fresh, crispy when dry egg cases are often referred to as Mermaids purses and each species has a very distinctive design which can tell us who laid it!

What’s really cool about this survey is that anyone can take part and from the information collected the Shark Trust can identify where about important breeding grounds are for various British species some of which are incredibly endangered like the very badly named – Common Skate!! This enables marine conservationists to identify sites that need protecting. For more information on the Shark Trusts Great Egg Case hunt, organised events and the identification of any egg cases you may find check out the website.

Blue Peters A-Z of Weird Animals

Those of you who are fans of the long running 'champion' of children's BBC programmes Blue Peter may well have caught me and a few odd friends as I am currently presenting a strand called the A-Z of Weird animals for them. I also got lucky (in the right place at the right time) and had a brief moment as a stand in Blue Peter presenter when the injured Zoe wasn't able to move 300 fish from Weymouth Sealife centre to the new soon to be officially opened aquarium at Chessington.

(Left) On his weeks Wednesday show I introduced Gethin to Priscilla, a stunning but badly named male Blue-winged Kookaburra kindly lent to us for filming by my friends at Chessington Zoo.

Priscilla was a star and barely batted a wing at all the noise and commotion that goes with a high energy live programme like Blue Peter. My only regret is that he was a little shy and as soon as we went live he stopped making his very cool and croaky contact call, which sounds a bit like someone with laryngitis saying "wow".

For more details of the Weird Animals featured so far on the show follow this link to the Blue Peter Website. It's worth a look, here you can not only watch the films again but learn more about the Animals featured as well as details on everything else Blue Peter.

Weird Creatures II

A second helping of the worlds strangest life forms 'Nick Baker's Weird Creatures' has recently been dished up on Friday evenings on channel FIVE here in the UK, if you are one of the populous who has a life and goes out on Fridays then being broadcast right now is a second opportunity to see the series as it airs on Animal Planet (Wednesdays at 9PM). www.animalplanet.co.uk

If you cannot get a FIVE signal and you don’t have cable or a dish nailed to your gable end, then tough. But have some 'strength' in the fact you are in good company – I cannot see it either!!

Now I don't know about you but if you are a fan of the Weird creatures and cannot get the hang of the listings on the Animal planet website and end up missing shows (what's wrong with you, it's repeated through the rest of the week giving you not just a second chance to catch the show but a third, forth, fifth and sixth or you could learn to use Sky plus or set an alarm) then there is a whole day dedicated to my Weird subjects on Easter Monday

To view a trailer of Animal planets Weird creatures click play below

February 2008

I'm working up some new series ideas for the goggle box and planning an exciting new writing project with my publishers, Harper Collins. As well as some new additions to my range of 'Explorer kits' for Interplay, hopefully ready for the market place in time for Christmas.

I am also putting in place a series of…..errrrrrr, I'm never entirely sure what to call them?! 'Lecture' is too strong a word, too formal and there is the danger of the audience expecting some kind of intelligent content. 'Talk' is, well too little a word, while 'slide show' tends to suggest you may be a trapped audience looking at my holiday snaps! I guess its best to think of all of the above and mix then up a bit. You never know I may even bring along an animal or two!

January 2008

I hope you took part in the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch last weekend - I did. Normally I'm in darkest Peru or some other far flung corner of the globe so my record in taking part in this event is far from perfect and my involvement is usually restricted to helping the RSPB promote the event as I'm never anywhere near my garden when the weekend comes around.

This year however was different, I was around and I've got a new home and a new garden and I'm rather proud of the healthy and interesting feathered community that has sprung up in the vicinity of my nut feeders.

Sadly however the hour that I had chosen to record the birds visiting didn't reflect the usual abundance of winged things on the cadge for free fodder. I'm not sure if anyone else experienced this or not. Even the usually reliable Chaffinch's let me down and where are the Marsh Tits when you want them! Only one of my Dunnocks made a cameo sneak through the undergrowth, overall the number and variety of birds that stuck their beaks in to my garden for the hour I spent watching through the window with my family was paltry.

Why did this happen? Was it that everyone else had put out food especially for the Garden Birdwatch and the birds simply spread their time between so many other feeding stations? Or is it some kind of personal vendetta; the birds simply took this moment to show me up? I guess I'll never know. But suffice to say as soon as I put down my pen and submitted my results on line, the Long-tailed Tits turned up, along with large numbers of Siskin and more Goldfinches than ever before.

I guess the point is, no matter how tempting it is to start again. It's important to abide by the rules of the survey and be true to what you see and not be tempted to go for the higher score.

The Garden Bird Watch is not about big numbers and beating personal records (although of course it's nice when it happens) it's about monitoring the state of common garden birds. This survey in its simplicity is a very important tool, that coordinates thousands of observation hours the country wide on the same weekend giving those clever scientific fellas at the RSPB a snapshot of roughly how many birds of what species are using our gardens.

I'm often asked by people how can I get involved in conservation - well taking part in this survey is just one way you can volunteer your time and remember negatives are as informative as positives and together in the past this survey has been responsible for pointing up some worrying trends among once common garden birds such as House Sparrow and Song Thrush as well as happier tales such as the increase in Great Spotted Woodpeckers. I look forward to seeing what the results of last weekends efforts will reveal.

For more details check out the RSPB's website www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/

February 2007

I just got my first TV award!!

As I am sitting here writing this, I have just learned that the first series of 'Nick Baker's Weird Creatures' has won an award for best presenter category at the Missoula Wildlife Film Festival.

This is terrific news and something that doesn't just reflect my ability to talk (I have been doing that in front of a camera for years now) but, without reading out a boring thank you speech, I would just like to say it is down to the ability of the camera crew to film the right bits and the director to cut them into the final film!

So well done to the entire team on that one!

Weird Creatures II (Channel 5 and Animal Planet)

I have finally started work on 'Weird Creatures II'’ with ICON Films in Bristol. After a lot of deliberation, we have whittled down the list of creatures that we will film this year.

I have just returned from a long trip to the USA, having filmed the first two star beasts - the alligator snapping turtle in the swamps of the deep south in Louisiana and then, in the Appalachians in North Carolina and the Ozarks in Missouri, a now rare and threatened giant salamander called the 'Hellbender' (also referred to by some as a Devil Dog or, my favourite, a Snot Otter!)

Pirate Ship..Live (Channel FIVE)

We tagged this one onto the last trip in the States (grabbing myself my first proper holiday with my family in between 'Weird Creatures' and the live broadcast).

It was live so, by definition, if you didn't see it, you missed it! But I believe what we filmed will become part of a special show for National Geographic – I will keep you posted on that.

My job in the show was to be an underwater voyeur on the 'live' excavation of the world's only authentic pirate shipwreck - that of the Whydah a ship captained by the famous British pirate, Black Sam Bellamy.

Obviously this is a little out of my usual ball park but, like all boys, I loved pirates and I love diving and since the camera team underwater were my buddies from Borneo 'Scubazoo' it was hard to refuse the offer.

The real expert on Pirates was, however, one of my co-hosts, Vic Reeves, who held the show together from on board the salvagers ship. What a great bloke - and it turns out a bit of a bird watcher and all round naturalist too.

Weird Creatures I (Channel FIVE and Animal Planet)

The series 'Nick Baker's Weird Creatures' premiered here in the UK on Channel FIVE back in January and February.

This was a series I have wanted to make for a very long time and it gave me a chance to redress the balance on the box – there is not a lion, tiger, wildebeest or monkey in it!

I've tried to stick to the animals that fascinate me - the odd, bizarre, rare and down right unusual. These are the creatures, incidentally, that make up most of the species that share the planet with us. I really wanted to show these animals in a different light, giving a voice to the less obvious and those lacking wet and watery eyes and whiskers.

I hope we succeeded.

In this 7 part series we traveled all around the globe to bring you:

Gharial: the Crocodile from Mars – A crocodile that is as strange and elegant as it is severely endangered. We traveled to India to meet those working with their conservation in the wild and at the same time unravel a biomechanical mystery or two - like why it has such long and narrow jaws and what is the 'Ghara' (that bump on the end of its nose) for?

Horned Lizard - the blood squirting lizard - A small and peculiar little desert living lizard from the American mid-west that has a very specialised and extreme way of defending itself against canine predators – it squirts blood at them through its eyes. We used the latest in camera technology to get a unique insight into this, one of the most extreme defense strategies in the natural world

Basking Shark – The big behemoth, this, the second largest fish in the world, is a truly weird creature that paddles around our very own shores here in the UK with hardly anybody actually noticing.

As well as being strange it has, until recently, been one of the ocean's biggest mysteries. For me, I wanted to learn about why something so big makes a living feeding on small planktonic life forms, and speak to scientists who finally worked out where these animals actually go in the winter time.

Lake Titicaca: Giant Frog – As a bit of a 'frogger' I wanted to see this one badly. Simply a personal quest for a very specialized frog that lives only in Lake Titicaca, 2 miles up in the Andes.

Because we had to fly all the dive kit for a film crew, plus back up and safety divers (diving at altitude is potentially dangerous and certainly a specialised task) and the rest of the circus that, by nature of the business accompanies a film crew, it turned out to be the hardest  effort I have ever put into seeing a frog species.

But I'm glad I did, and in holding one of these baggy saggy amphibians in my hand I had, en route, learned a lot about a very lovely lake and its troubled waters.

The Candiru or Vampire Fish – This one was a real 'boys own' adventure that concerned a legendary animal with a ghastly reputation.

It seemed to me every explorer's journal to the Amazon and its tributaries cites a very good reason not to pee in the river's turbid waters, for here lurks a fish that will swim up inside your penis and once there deploy an array of spikes and spines with the only cure being to amputate!!

I wanted to find out if this fish actually existed and of course whether it did what it was supposed to do; but I guess more than that I wanted to know why!

The Pink Fairy Armadillo – This is the animal that started it all; a creature that I have wondered about since I first saw the specimen nailed to the wall of the mammal gallery in London's Natural History Museum as a kid.

It is also a creature that captures the ethos of this series. A small, odd, unusual and possible rare creature that we know next to nothing about - one which no doubt lives a highly specialised life out of view of most people and, until now, all cameramen!

The Star-nosed Mole – This was probably one of my favorites of the series as it turned out to be a genuine surprise.

The Star-nosed mole looks a little like a regular mole except it has a long fleshy tail, is very active, semi-aquatic and has a very strange nose - a pink flower of fleshy fingers.

I thought that this may be a bit of a struggle to hold the attention of a programme for 45 minutes but as I got to know this strange creature I began to really appreciate why this is probably the most ferocious predator on earth – for its size!

© Nick Baker 2009