Birds, cake and swarming bats

THEY'RE sent animal poo in the post, film in the pouring rain and have regular pre-7am wake-up calls to wade around marshes on the lookout for birds, but ask Autumnwatch's presenters if they mind all this and the answer is a unanimous and defiant 'no'.

Chris Packham, Martin Hughes-Games and Michaela Strachan, who has recently been battling breast cancer and is absent today, couldn't give a stuff about snuggling down for an extra 15 minutes in bed, when they could be outdoors seeing a swirl of starlings in the sky.

"It's about seeing spectacles which are peculiar to this time of year, " explains Packham, 53. "We're going to be getting up early to see the starlings lifting off in the morning. Apparently they swirl up into the air in a tremendous vortex of feathers, and I don't know about you, but I love a vortex of feathers."

Otters, long-eared bats, urban badgers and barn owls are all there to be spotted at theLeighton Moss RSPB reserve, in Lancashire, and there will be special reports on the effects our reliance on anti-depressant pills is having on starlings, the red deer rut in Minsmere, Suffolk, and the hobby, a bird of prey which Packham describes as having "these red trousers, definitely Comme Des Garcons, and beautiful sculpted moustaches".

Besides these dapper birds, what else can we expect from this series?

BATTY BEHAVIOUR

Hughes-Games, 58, has been pulling some late nights to glimpse a nocturnal creature. "I've been looking at bats swarming," he says. "They all come together, thousands of them in fact, in the middle of these moors. There's something really special about it. We sat out on a bleak cold night until 2am enjoying this incredible spectacular."

KEEPING THINGS SWEET

"We've managed to contribute significantly to the local economy of Leighton Moss, through their sales of cake in the cafe," says Packham, who is a particular fan of the citrus drizzle sponges. "Leighton Moss cake has become nationally and justifiably a legendary commodity, and the lady who baked the cakes last year was up until two or three in the morning baking extras."

UNKNOWN PLEASURES

One of Packham's favourite parts of the series is answering viewers' questions on the spin-off show Unsprung, but you won't find him swotting up beforehand.

"I'm not afraid of not knowing the answers, because that's part of learning and part of life's progress," says the presenter, who's known for slipping song and film titles into sentences live on air. "It's also relaxing having just done the main programme, where you have to relatively have your wits about you and be concentrating on song titles – ahem – I mean on content."

ROGUE MAIL

As well as animal poo, skulls and bones, the presenters are also sent other "treats" in the post, from viewers of Unsprung. "We had a (dead) jackdaw that someone sent us," recalls Hughes-Games. "It wasn't quite mummified, it still had a few fly larvae on it when it arrived in the office."

A BIT OF FLUFF

One of Hughes-Games' fears is messing up his lines. "I'm always worried that I'll fluff and Chris will go, 'Oh, he can't do it, he's useless'," he says. "I'm not worried about the three million people watching us, I'm more worried about fluffing it up for Chris. A couple of times, he's had to jump in and save me because I've slightly fluffed, and the next week it eats away at me, gnaws at my vitals, thinking, 'Chris had to save me.' Awful."

TEAM WORK

While Hughes-Games worries about stumbling over his lines, Packham remains cool as a cucumber, ducking into his caravan to listen to a band called Against Me! "really loudly", while his colleagues are "rigorously professional, listening to what's happening throughout the day".

"If you mess up, you mess up," he says with a shrug. "Mess-up and drop-outs and technical failures are extremely rare, and if they do happen, so what?"

Autumnwatch, BBC2, 8pm