"We're the Goodies, Yes the Goodies, oh the Goodies are coming for you - ha ha ha ha!"
Bill's Wildlife, Shows and Springwatch
Bill Oddie has always had a love of wildlife and nature. His passion for birds developed as a child, fueled by frequent trips to such birdwatching meccas as Bartley Resevoir, described in Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book as "a bleak concrete-shored stretch of water near Birmingham, occasionally visited by birds." Bill diligently recorded those "occasional" birds for Wildfowl and Wetland Trust surveys, and wrote a paper on the birds of Bartley Resevoir for the West Midland Bird Club.
His education at Cambridge turned into a career in comedy, but Bill kept his binoculars close at hand. In his book Gripping Yarns, Bill recalls his time spent touring America with the That Was The Week That Was roadshow: "Naturally, from my point of view, the purpose of the tour was not to bring British satire to the Yanks, but to swell my American bird list... As it turned out, the itinery was disconcertingly illogical, involving crisscrossing America in anything but a straight line. Thus, my bird sightings were equally disorientating. I recall gasping at Snowy Owls, in real snow somewhere in Canada, one morning, and marvelling at hummingbirds in Florida the next afternoon."
By the 1990s, Bill was combining his passion for wildlife with his career in entertainment. One of his first major natural history projects was Oddie in Paradise (1993), a documentary about Birds of Paradise in Papua new Guinea. The filming expedition was also a honeymoon trip for Bill and his wife Laura Beaumont. When Bill was captured by This Is Your Life in 2002, Laura recalled the romantic occasion: "The thing about the rainforest is that it does rain, all the time - which is fine if you've got a roof, and some walls, and that kind of thing. But we were on the edge of this slippery mountain, on a tiny piece of plastic with about 25 other people, and lots of huge creepy crawlies. So big, you'd think it was your pillow, and then it would crawl off."
Giant insects didn't deter Bill from this new career, and some of his other natural history shows include Birding With Bill Oddie (1998), Bill Oddie Goes Wild (2001), How to Watch Wildlife (2005/2006) Wild in Your Garden (2003) and Britian goes Wild (2004). On these last two programs, Bill worked with presenters Kate Humble and Simon King, in a format which would later be adapted to become Springwatch.
Springwatch began in 2005, and in 2006 was expended to include an Autumnwatch program as well.
Springwatch as televised is largely set on a working organic farm in Devon, previously used as a location for 2004's Britian Goes Wild. Next boxes and animal dens are wired up with more than 50 tiny cameras which allow footage from within the nest to be recorded, televised live or streamed online. The webcam action has become a very popular part of the project, and it is common for posts to appear on the BBC's Springwatch messageboard along the lines of "Quick! Go to camera three! The barn owl chicks are feeding!" The animal action from the farm is further augmented with footage contributed by viewers and pre-recorded film sequences.
The now-usual Springwatch roster is for Bill and co-host Kate Humble to present the show live from the farm, while Simon King reports from more remote locations like the Farne or Shetland Islands. A version of Springwatch has also been created for the Cbeebies childrens' channel, and in the 2007 series a 'late night' version, Springwatch Nightshift, aired between midnight and 2am to take advantage of noctural animals such as badgers and bats.
More than just a television show, Springwatch is also a massive phenological research project. Phenology is the study of changing seasons and climate, and the amateur phenologist gathers a great deal of information from the date a certain kind of plant flowers, or when a species of migratory bird is first sighted in a particular location. The Springwatch (and Autumnwatch) survey encourages the public to report their sightings of key natural events which herald the changing seasons. The results become part of the UK Phenology Network, the largest study of its kind in the world.
In the lead-up to Springwatch 2007, Bill told the Daily Mail he hoped Springwatch would make people more aware of changes in the natural world.
"The main point of the survey, as far as I am a concerned, is to get people out and to notice what is around them; to become aware of wildlife in general, to be aware that there are changes going on; and, when they see an opportunity, do something about it."
Compiled by Jodie VDW