Autumn on the Island

Challenge eight: Leave the Island

2008-11-06T17:40:00.011Z

As I write this there are tears welling in my weather-beaten eyes. It's time to leave Brownsea and I can hardly bear it! Autumnwatch is over, winter has nearly come and my two weeks of wild living are now at their end. The M4 commute and office life in sunny Swindon calls and as yet I have found no way of preventing its return. There may yet be a freak storm that will confine me here with the animals, plants and Brownsea staff that I've come to know and love but I can't help feeling that this is probably unlikely.

Though the days have been full of fun and there has been very little stress in my life, the time has passed unbelievably fast, that sunset arrival 2 weeks ago seems both like last night and a lifetime ago.

And there's so much MORE I wanted to share with you. More challenges to complete, more people to meet and wildlife to see. For example, the things below that I could have eaten for the wild food challenge but didn't -

My colleagues who have been nothing but warm and helpful, if at times a little rude to me. Among many - Steve, Mike and Justin. And the comedy squirrel that feeds from the kitchen window at the Villa -

But I suppose the marching of time is unstoppable and, like the avocets, I'm not really meant to be a permanent resident of Brownsea, for my home is elsewhere. It's been an immense and rare privilege to be here for two weeks, getting to know the Island, learning masses about the wild world, working with the BBC and writing daily. I hope you've enjoyed it because I certainly have.

So for now goodbye! Thank you for joining me on the adventure.

Martha.x

Don't forget to -

Subscribe to our monthly wildlife and countryside podcast. There will also be a wild-food podcast up shortly so you can hear the sounds of wild-food wednesday.

Get involved with the Waxcap Watch

Keep connected to the Autumnwatch website

Enter our amazing Autumnwatch competition! Quick though, it closes on monday 10th Nov.

Challenge seven: Live off the Island

2008-11-06T11:29:00.017Z

Apologies for the delay in this one guys - as you see, I've been rather busy!

After a week of scouting out all that Brownsea has to offer, and discussing with the staff here how I can do this without killing myself, I stepped up to the mark for Andrew's challenge to live only on foraged food for the day. He added the disheartening p.s. "Food foraged from the BBC canteen doesn't count!" Well Andrew, thanks to the oddly skilled warden Justin and boatman Mike I not only fed myself from the Island, but did it in style with three delicious meals - taking fresh, local and seasonal to the extreme! As Justin said "any idiot can be uncomfortable"

What follows is a little diary of my delicious day and a few of the things it taught me.

7am - get up and start the hunt for breakfast. To be honest, this one was easy due to the large number of very free-free range chickens that roam the island so it was really just a matter of finding where they lay. Fresh Brownsea eggs, not a bad start!

8.30am - Begin the forage proper, on the hunt for acorns, chestnuts, fungi, fruits and greens for lunch. After several hours wandering the island, head in the vegetation I did begin to appreciate what life for our hunter-gatherer ancestors must have been like. A lot of walking, not much reward! At this time of year the main autumn food glut has passed and with an island full of extremely efficient squirrels the truth is that it was hard work to find food.

As my stomach began to rumble and I rooted through pile after pile of neatly shelled nuts at the base of the chestnut trees, I wondered how it was that I'd suddenly dropped several places in the food chain. I found myself reduced to being entirely at the mercy of the red rodents, hoping they had left me some scraps to glean lunch from...And then I found it, the mother of all chestnut trees where there was food enough for us all. I loved that tree because it meant I didn't have to eat insects for lunch.

1.30 - Met Justin at his cottage for the grand cook-up. Five hours, broken up by our daily production meeting with the BBC team, had earned me about a dozen chestnuts, two acorns, a handful of fungi, some rosehips, 18 blackberries and a bunch of nettles. Riches! Oh, and some beautiful Brownsea rabbit... Now at this point I should come clean about the source of the rabbit. Mike and I did faithfully put traps out the night before, baited with carrot and chocolate (a rabbity favourite apparently), but alas, not a nibble. So bearing in mind that the residents routinely eat rabbit here and not particularly wanting to go out with a gun, I kindly accepted the offer of a rabbit from property manager Angela's freezer, caught on the Island a few months ago.

2.45 - Sit down to the most delicious lunch of rabbit, nettle and fungi stew with chestnut and wild fruit bannock - see recipes at the bottom. I'm not exaggerating when I say this was one of the most tasty and appreciated meals I've ever eaten. Fresh, foraged fare. Have a go if you can get the ingredients!

4.00 - After a little sit down to recover and let lunch warm me through, I headed to the jetty for a spot of fishing. Boatman Mike met me there for a quick fishing tutorial and a whole lot of doubtful looks. I don't know why, I only caught my gloves in the hook a few times and I think quickly picked up the old flick and throw casting action. "you'll know if you catch one because you won't have a clue what to do" he smiled broadly at me as he left me to my rod and line in the gathering darkness. I've been fishing before, but only in a fish farm where the fish practically jump into the net shouting 'eat me eat me', so after an hour of fruitless casting and reeling I was starting to think fish was off the menu for supper.

And then something extraordinary happened. The line suddenly took on a life of it's own and, as predicted, I had no idea what to do. So I did a fair bit of hopping around the jetty - no doubt to the great amusement of the BBC dive boat who were preparing for Simon's live dive. Assisted by Anna Guthrie, who had come to offer moral support, I eventually worked out how to reel the beast in and landed my very first pollack. Unfortunately, being completely dark, and rather occupied by a large slimy fish, there are no photo's of this momentous moment so you'll just have to believe me.

5.30 - Me, Anna and fish head back to the Villa where I bit my lip and got stuck into gutting, filleting and de-scaling my supper. After a break to watch the penultimate Autumnwatch I sat down to a gorgeous, subtle and outrageously fresh fish supper with a large contented smile on my face.

Three hot meals and a lot of wandering and waiting later, I not only lived off the Island, but ate good food from my immediate surroundings, delivered straight to my plate in the ultimate in sustainable gourmet foraging.

And more than that, I learnt a great deal about the Island, what's growing here, life as a squirrel and the ins and outs of line fishing in all it's slimy splendour. There's been a lot of talk in recent years about how we've become completely removed from our food and I have to say, taking up this challenge did make me acutely aware of three things -

1. In normal life, I eat A LOT! We live in such a world of plenty...

2. Most of the time, I have no idea where my food has come from and the huge amount of work that's probably gone in to getting it to my plate.

3. If it came to it I could totally go bush on Brownsea.

So there you have it Andrew, you may have made me a wild-food convert!

Wild Food Wednesday recipe's -

Rabbit and fungi stew

Ingredients:

2 small joints of rabbit, pan fried to sear

6 amethyst deceiver mushrooms, beheaded

1 large field mushroom

2 large handfuls of nettle, washed and chopped

3 small garlic cloves (you'll just have to allow me this one)

Sear the rabbit with the garlic, add the mushrooms and nettle to cook through then pour in some hot water and boil for about half and hour to get all the juicy goodness from the bones. Add a stock cube and a dash of sherry if you're not roughing it like me.

Wild fruit and nut bannock

Ingredients:

Sweet chestnuts/acorns/hazelnuts/beech mast, peeled and blanched

Rosehips, halved and de-seeded

Blackberries

Crumble the nuts a bit and roast them before pounding into a sort of flour with pestle and mortar. Add a little water to make a sticky dough. Squash in the fruit, shape and fry like a giant fruity burger.

Challenge six: water vole watching

2008-11-04T18:31:00.006Z

Check this out, two challenges in one day! Well as there are only two full days of my Autumnwatch adventure left I thought it was time to pick up the pace a little. So today I took up Australian Charlotte's challenge, all the way from Caines to see how many different water voles can you see in one hour on the reedbed boardwalk crossing in front of the villa and is there anyway you can identify them individually to discount any double counting? Photographic evidence please!!

So armed with my woefully under-powered digital compact camera and a large mug of tea I made the short trip from my home at the Villa down to the boardwalk where the water voles live. I once wrote an essay about water voles, most of which I seem to have completely forgotten...I do however have a strong and enduring memory that, on occasion, water voles climb trees after hawthorn berries and, not being entirely built for the arboreal life, sometimes get stuck. So I added the branches and tree tops to my visual scanning as I sat quietly for an hour around dusk.

Now I'm sorry to say that photographic evidence of my success is completely lacking, due in part to the aforementioned pitiful equipment but mostly to the shy and secretive nature of the water vole which made photographing the ones I did see near impossible. But during the hour I counted a total of five actual sightings - scurrying through the reeds, swimming frantically across the open water and nibbling away happily, and about three extra audio-only voles with their unmistakable 'plop'! The picture on the right here is of water vole poo, which I'm afraid is the closest I can get to evidence for you Charlotte. I tried! And below is a much lovelier picture by Kevin Cook of the DWT so you can see what a water vole actually looks like. They're lovely animals and having never seen them before in the flesh I really enjoyed this challenge, thank you Charlotte!

Challenge five: become a creature of the night

2008-11-04T10:44:00.009Z

Ok so this is a slight cheat, but bearing in mind Angela's bat spotting challenge and my kindly bestowed pair of night-vision goggles I thought it was about time to get a bit nocturnal. So as the BBC crew were leaving the island for the night I headed out into the blackness to see what I could see, hear and smell.

There's nothing quite like a good bit of darkness to heighten the senses and after a few minutes stumbling around wildly in bushes and rabbit holes, I soon became accustomed to the lack of light and entered the world of the nocturnal.

I started my search for sounds down in the Macdonald hide which sticks out onto the lagoon. It's where compost Pete has been filming the spoonbills from. Thanks to my 'sonic listening device' I'm pleased to report a total of 8 different bird noises on the lagoon, though my night vision specs failed me in seeing what they were and to be frank, I'm completely rubbish at birds, even in broad daylight. There was a brilliant avian cacophony when the ridiculously large Brittany Ferries boat thundered its way past the sea wall, scaring the birds off the water and driving me into the forest.

Found a quiet spot where I've often encountered deer walking back late from the office (me, not them) and nestled in for a long wait...After the rutting action shown on last night's Autumnwatch the sika are clearly a bit feisty so I was prepared for a fight. Nearly had one when, after a great deal of rustling, a large stag jumped straight out of the undergrowth and directly into my path, narrowly missing my head! I did my best to remain calm and collected, but blew my cover by making a loud, and no doubt deer-terrifying, squeak which quickly moved my new friend along.

Well as you can imagine, after nearly being battered by a sika stag I was in need of something a little more sedate, so headed back to the Villa, headquarters of the Dorset Wildlife Trust on Brownsea, through the woodland to the sound of a tawny owl calling its classic twit-twoo overhead. Warden Chris and co had set up a moth trap and after Bill's success on the high seas last week, I sat and watched some of our fluttering friends find their way into that before checking it this morning. Not a bad yield with these three lovelies amongst the quarry. They'll live in our fridge for a few hours while the DWT volunteers pot and identify them before making it back into the wild world unharmed.

So there it is, my night-time quest for the sights and sounds of black-out Brownsea. If you've never been on a night-walk I'd highly recommend it. You just never know what you're going to see and it'll give you a whole new perspective on the wild world that never really sleeps.

For some sounds of your own, check out my week one round-up podcast available now! And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss next week's when warden Justin and I go wild-food crazy, plus our regular monthly wildlife and countryside podcast.

Challenge four: find the fungi

2008-11-03T16:03:00.013Z

After a brief sojurn in rural Devon, I'm back on Brownsea for one more week of Autumnwatch fun. I can't believe how ridiculously fast last week was, a sentiment shared by Series Editor Stephen Moss. I personally put it down to being completely occupied by meeting you insatiable desire for setting me time-consuming challenges. Have loved doing them though so if you're waiting for the right time then now's it! Only 3 more days of challenge time left... Can life go on after this?!

Today I took to the vegetation in order to meet Sophie's fungi challenge of spotting seven different colours of waxcap on Brownsea. Now you might think fungi doesn't sound like much fun, but even the non-mycologists among us must admit that waxcaps are pretty pretty fungi. The National Trust launched its Waxcap Watch last year, trying to get an idea of how widespread these colourful fungi are and it showed up that, thanks to the efforts of the Dorset Fungus Group, Brownsea Island is the 3rd best place in the country for waxcaps, so I must admit feeling a certain amount of confidence about meeting Sophie's challenge.

Waxcaps grow best on tightly cropped, unfertilised grassland, so they're a great indicator of ancient and undisturbed habitats that haven't had loads of chemicals chucked at them. Much of this habitat has been lost to intensive agriculture and development, so National Trust lawns and parks are proving a vital safehaven for these rainbow coloured mycelia.

So, armed with my waxcap guide I sallied forth, hot on the trail of fungi fun. Not being the most clement of days it was a fairly cold and wet affair but, un-shakeable in my determination to discover, a comprehensive survey of the Island taking in Church Field (the back drop to Bill and Kate's bench pieces), the Daffodil Fields and the churchyard confirmed my initial confidence with a result of...8 different waxcaps! I think. Not being a trained mycologist myself I may of course have got it totally wrong, but as you see below, the colours are certainly different, even if they turn out to be all the same species.

Any waxcap boffins out there want to set me straight and identify these beauties? Please do!

If that's tickled your fancy for fungi, why not get involved yourself with our Waxcap Watch survey? It's good wholesome fun all round.

Challenge Martha sweeping planet Earth

2008-10-31T10:45:00.014Z

Morning all.

I've just had the most fantastic email that I wanted to share with you. It turns out that Challenge Martha is fast becoming an international hit with followers as widely spread as Canada and Australia. Brilliant! This email and picture came in from Gloria on Vancouver Island this morning -

"Hi Martha ~ I've been following your blog, and I thought I'd send you something for Halloween so you can meet this particular challenge after all! Hope the weather cheers up a bit for you! It's wet and rainy over here on Vancouver Island as well! Kind regards, Gloria"

Gloria I can only say thank you from the bottom of my heart. The fact that someone I have never met on a continent over 3,000 miles away would take the time to dress me up in a giant red squirrel costume for the world to see is genuinely heart warming. If only they were broadcasting tonight I could make Chris and Charlie (and no doubt my colleagues here) very happy indeed.

Does life get any better than this my friends?!

Well it might next week, with the challenges pouring in. Here are a selection that I may or may not be able to take up next week to inspire you if you've not yet set me a challenge.

"Do some batspotting? or with climate change have they hibernated or gone on holiday? Think the goggles will help with this challenge...keep up the good work. Angela"

"How many different Water Voles can you see in one hour on the reedbed boardwalk crossing in front of the villa and is there anyway you can identify them individually to discount any double counting? Photographic evidence please!! Australian Charlotte"

"It sounds like you are having far too much fun. So I'm going to think up some nasty and horrible challenges for you! In the meantime, can you spot seven different colours of waxcap on Brownsea? Sophie"

"Stay out on Brownsea island, building your own home and surving for a whole 72 hours living off the land. Mike"

Mike I know your game...That's got 'Brownsea Boatman' stamped all over it. Are you trying to kill me?!

Challenge three: get ye to the sofa!

2008-10-30T17:56:00.011Z

The weather took a turn for the worse today as we traded radiant blue skies for high winds and black clouds; a good day for being a bit more inside I think. Chris and Charlie provided me with a reason to shelter like a wary muntjac with this challenge - get onto Autumnwatch dressed as a big red squirrel. Or failing that just be interviewed by Bill Oddie. Well guys you don't ask for much do you?! And as they claim to be the blog's biggest fans I can only wonder why they appear bent on causing me complete and total humiliation...

Ok, the squirrel costume was never going to happen, and if there's one thing I've learnt this week it's how BUSY Bill and Kate actually are. They arrive on the island between 8 and 10, head straight to the production village to talk through the day's work and then out with the wildlife cameramen to record the little packages that get slotted in to the live show. After that are more meetings, writing scripts (such as there are!) and learning them, doing radio, TV and paper interviews, arranging the following day's filming and rehearsals, not to mention a fairly constant interaction with the Brownsea public - photos with children, autograph signing for grannies and chats with local naturalists, all topped off by the live show. They, and the rest of the BBC crew leave the island on the 9.30 boat so it's a pretty full-on and relentless day.

So, I'm sorry Chris and Charlie but I think Bill and I are destined to continue to live separate lives. However, so as not to fail you and myself completely, I did manage to sneak in to the studio and on to the famous sofa for the pic below. I call it "waiting for Bill". Hope that's enough to keep you happy.

On a separate note, we're officially half way through Autumnwatch 2008! I'm not sure how that happened and frankly I don't think I'm very happy about it. Tomorrow will be my last challenge of the week, before we dive back in on monday. So don't hold back, email me your challenges now! I think...

Challenge two: Find out what the public really think of the Autumnwatch presenters

2008-10-30T09:48:00.014Z

After the high-tension show watching on tues night, and of course the excitement of squirrel speed spotting, I chose to take up Louise’s rather more sedate challenge yesterday of finding out exactly what the Brownsea public think of Bill, Kate and Simon in terms they would understand. Louise set me this challenge - survey 30 visitors and see how many of them can name the Autumnwatch presenters. Then ask them to pick an animal they think each presenter would be.

Just before I get on to that, a little challenge one update. Today in 35 minutes walking the island I counted not 6, but 24 red squirrels! Whilst yesterday I opted for quality, there are clearly a great quantity of squirrels out there to be seen as well.

So, back to our visitors.

Thanks to the Autumnwatch effect, and no doubt half-term fun, the island has been absolutely buzzing this week. Luckily for me this means there were no shortage of people to accost, especially towards the end of the day as they queued for the boats, battling against the icy weather in valiantly British style - “sleet? what sleet?”.

The good news is that out of my 30 participants, only 2 had no idea who the Autumnwatch presenters were - obviously Bill, Kate and Simon hold a special place in the heart of the Brownsea visitor. Gordon however has yet to earn his right to our affections, with only one person remembering his part in the show and deciding he was called “Roger? Alan? Oh I don’t know, something like that.”

Moving on to animal personalities, the answers were far less clear. Diversity reigned supreme, but the overall outcome was, unsurprisingly that Bill and Kate were both red squirrels (good to see the squirrel love sweeping the country) and Simon was a fine handsome stag of a man - “Now Simon, he’s my favourite he is, so handsome, such a lovely voice.” Though Bill as badger and Kate as a beautiful gazelle came in a close second followed by the suggestion that “Bill, he would be a porcupine I think, and Kate, well obviously she’d be a curly haired giraffe wouldn’t she.” Would she?! I can’t say it’s entirely as obvious to me, but perhaps I’m missing something here...

Thank you to all our lovely visitors for being so game! Challenge two, completed.

Bring on three!

Andrew - after careful thought and consultation with the wild-food guru’s here on the island, I’m going to take up your challenge of living on foraged food for the day. Head warden Justin and Boatman Mike are going to help me forage Brownsea and I'll record the whole thing for our podcast next week, so do subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss it. Due to a decidedly rank day today, the foray will commence next week.

I’ll leave you with a little comment of Justin’s earlier today, which sets the stage nicely for a day of foraging fun and games next week.

Me: “As long as it won’t make us ill Justin I’m game”
Justin: “Well, it might Martha, but why not live a little eh!”

uh huh.

Challenge one: How many red squirrels can you see in 1 hr?!

2008-10-28T21:18:00.018Z

What a day!

Having started writing a post at 10am this morning I can't believe I'm only just getting round to it now, nearly 12 hours later. That's the problem with being surrounded by both amazing wildlife and fascinating people, time passes in an instant.

I've just hotfooted it from the not-so-snug-snug (see before and after shots above with Tim Scoones Executive Producer and Stephen Moss Production Editor watching nervously) where the producers, VIP's and other skeleton staff watch live transmission from. Headsets donned, the director and production co-ordinator's voices fill your ears with every possible instruction for the running of the show. Tonight was a finely tuned exercise in timing. The first quarter of the show rattled through fairly fast meaning it was running 1 minute under schedule. So, word went out to Bill and Kate to relax it out a bit and at the half way mark timing was perfect. However, being a little too relaxed, as the end came into view it was running 2 minutes over. Luckily, this is exactly the kind of thing the BBC know how to handle. In this case the last 3 minutes of the show are known as the 'buffer' and can be altered as needed. It's great because it allows some flexibility for Bill, Kate, Simon and Gordon to be reactive to the wildlife around them as well as beautifully scripted.

You might also be interested to know a few things about how Bill and Kate work that I picked up from hanging around the rehearsals. Bill never practices his opening bits properly but instead opts for a steady flow of hilarious banter to keep it all fresh for the live show, whereas Kate and Simon run through almost word for word. And during transmission, Bill only gets direct instructions for him in his ear-piece ("Bill, say more" or "Bill, don't go there" for example), whereas Kate gets every instruction for everyone so she's filtering out a near constant stream of information as she's talking.

Very impressive!

Anyway, enough of the production chat, down to the serious business of my first challenge! Mike got things off to a swing with this challenge - "I challenge you to see as many red squirrels as possible in 1 hour and get photographic evidence of each one". Well Mike, I hope I'm not going to sound a bit cocky when I say I think I triumphed on this one.

After careful thought and consideration about where I could maximise squirrel viewing, I opted for joining the BBC wildlife cameramen as they filmed the second stage of the squirrel assault course. So, as you see below, in an hour spent silently sitting, we were not short on squirrels! I think I counted 7 at once, though to be honest my eyes are not yet attuned to the subtle squirrel characteristics that differentiate them as individuals so it may have been more, or less. Either way, I not only saw 7 highly endangered and very lovely animals for you Mike, but I saw them learning to fly across the jump on the second stage of the assault course.

Very cool!

Am sorting through the challenges for tomorrow so please do keep emailing me with your suggestions. And Andrew, don't worry, I'm working on the foraging challenge and will happily take it up once I can track down someone who knows a whole lot more about fungi than me!

Yawn. Time for bed, if I can sleep with all this excitement ping-ponging through my head...

Introducing...Challenge Martha

2008-10-27T15:04:00.006Z

Not content with shipwrecking me for a fortnight, my ever-caring colleagues have decided that I need something to occupy myself during my time here. You might argue that watching the world around you make its profound shift into another season is enough occupation, but it seems not. So! At the risk of encouraging a whole lot of trouble and humiliation for myself, I'd like to introduce to you Challenge Martha.

It's all fairly simple really, you set me a challenge - by emailing brownseablogger@gmail.com, or posting a comment on here - and I'll pick one each day to do, with photographic evidence as proof.

You should know that I am the proud owner of a wetsuit and a particularly fine pair of night-vision goggles should that help you come up with something... Boatman Steve challenged me to swim round the Island on a previous visit, though at over 4 miles, and being nearly November, I might have to build up to that one.

In fact the night-vision goggles, complete with 'sonic listening device' whatever that means, came in handy last night when I stepped out of the Villa and into thick darkness. I could hear the sika deer whistling from my room and wanted to try and record the noise for our podcast so I headed up to the East Lake Hide, which during daylight overlooks one of the two freshwater lakes on the Island. I sat in the darkness and waited, and waited and...then came an almighty 'kerwick' of a tawny owl flying directly overhead. Well with the sonic listening device plugged directly into my left ear and nothing but blanket silence for the previous 30 minutes, the whole thing was vaguely traumatic and the challenge of recording the deer remains.

So there's one from me, record the sika deer calling. Look forward to hearing your suggestions very soon! Perhaps you want me to find something out about Bill and Kate, step into the shoes of an NT warden for the day, find out exactly how much running a runner does, or ask our visitors what they really think?! Do get emailing or commenting now!

Introducing...Brownsea Island

2008-10-27T11:37:00.006Z

After a long and tedious journey navigating Britain's finest offerings in public transport, I finally arrived on Brownsea Island at sunset last night. Met Mark, one of the BBC wildlife cameramen on the jetty at Sandbanks whilst I waited for the National Trust boat to emerge out of the darkness and carry me to my new home.

I like to think we shared a moment together, Mark and I, as we watched the sun dipping into the clouds over the chilly harbour, turning the world red for about 2 minutes before darkness fell, but in reality I was probably having this little moment alone as Mark went about his work. Never mind, it was a great start to my Brownsea adventure either way and after a very warm welcome from the Dorset Wildlife Trust, who I'm staying with, a good nights sleep and a stunning morning run with the deer (I have to admit they were doing a rather finer job of running than I) I'm ready. Bring it on!

Just off to our first production meeting with Stephen Moss and Reema Lorford to hear what's planned for filming during the day and the first broadcast tonight.

An extra audio delight

2008-10-23T16:43:00.008+01:00

Time marches on! And thank goodness it does because, like a squirrel faced with autumn food abundance, I am fast becoming a ball of inefficient over-excitement. As I sit at my desk here in Swindon I can't help but let my mind wander to the island and the BBC Autumnwatch crew currently setting up there. Still, one more office day, a bit of manic packing and then i'm off.

Our October wildlife and countryside podcast is now live with a little preview of how Kate and Bill feel about their new home and the inside story from the island staff, who I'll be getting to know a whole lot better over the coming weeks.

16 October - Let the count down begin!

2008-10-16T11:00:00.029+01:00

It's so close that I can almost smell it - the dewy grass, the sea air and wet woodland of Autumnwatch 2008 on Brownsea Island.

Moving in to their island home over the next week are Bill, Kate and around 70 BBC crew, madly trying to turn our special place in Poole harbour into a first rate BBC filming and production studio. With the minor issue of an ocean to cross, this mass take-over is certainly a logistical challenge - more on this to come.

So in just over one week I'll be packing up and heading down for two weeks on the small but perfectly-formed island. I'll be getting under the skin of the BBC (in the nicest possible way) and working out exactly what it is that makes Brownsea so very captivating. As well as this daily blog, I'll be collecting audio delights as the adventure unfolds for two weekly podcasts.

So join me as I roam wild on the autumn isle, traversing the cliffs with the sea-birds, tip-toeing beneath the shedding trees and following wherever my new squirrel and deer friends lead, as we embark together on one of the most exciting things ever to hit beautiful Brownsea.

For a wee taster of the fun to come, check out our wildlife and countryside podcast from back in April, when I met Island warden John Lamming down there. And watch this space for more pre-broadcast treats.

12 days and counting!