Bill Oddie's How to Watch Wildlife is a British BBC 2 TV programme about natural history presented by Bill Oddie and produced by Stephen Moss. A first series of eight episodes were broadcast in early 2005, and a second series of eight episodes in early 2006.
Bill braves the Cairngorm Mountains in winter to track down the best of our Highland wildlife. With the peaks glistening under a fresh fall of snow, Bill searches for a flock of pure white ptarmigan. He witnesses the drama of a Golden Eagle hunting red deer on the mountainside and sees his first pine marten.
Bill explores the grasslands of East Anglia known as the Brecklands. It is high summer and Bill watches a stoat as it hunts rabbits, attempts a spot of hare whispering and jumps into a bog in the search for our largest spider – the great raft spider.
This week Bill visits Kielder Forest in Northumberland, the biggest forest in Britain. Demonstrating all his woodland field-craft he shows us how to creep up on roe deer, drinks tea with red squirrels, gets bitten by wood ants and finds our largest ladybird.
Early spring can be a great time to enjoy wildlife and you do not even have to leave the comfort of your own home and garden. In this episode Bill heads to the gardens of Devon to spy on fallow deer, search for bats in the loft and witness the amazing poppadom eating badger.
Bill Oddie makes his first ever visit to the Orkney Islands, just off the north coast of Scotland, in search of our best coastal wildlife. Bill gets a close up view of seal pups, revels in the flight of the British equivalent of an albatross and is overwhelmed by the sight and sound of 50,000 sea birds on the precipitous cliffs at Marwick Head.
Every wildlife watcher should have a local patch, and Bill Oddie would like to show you his. And so starts this episode with Bill staying close to home, extolling the virtues of his local patch - Hampstead Heath in London. Kestrels, squirrels and kingfishers are just some of the delights Bill enjoys when he spends a day's wildlife watching on the Heath, returning there for each of the four seasons.
Bill explores the delights of Dorset's River Frome in autumn and uncovers what could be the real inspiration for Ratty in Wind in the Willows, one of his favourite books. He also reveals the enigma of the mute swan and grapples with native crayfish before ending his journey with avocets and little egrets at the river's mouth in Poole.
In the last of the current series, Bill Oddie braves the British winter to search for wildlife in Devon.
