will work for nuts (5/6)

This entertaining wildlife series gives Britain’s animals the chance to flaunt their natural abilities as three experts set them a series of inventive challenges. In tonight’s show, the boys head into the woods for a contest to capture on film one of Britain’s shyest animals – the roe deer. Their varied approaches meet with mixed success.

This week’s main challenge sees Matt, James and Lloyd attempt to film some wild roe deer –Britain’s only woodland deer. These animals are incredibly shy and rely on sharp senses of smell and hearing to detect the approach of any predator. Add to this factor the limited visibility in the woods and the boys have a very tough task on their hands.

Lloyd sets out at dusk wearing the heavy camouflage of a British army sniper, as well as a thick covering of mud to mask his scent. Zoologist Matt tries to get his sighting from horseback, based on the logic that a deer will not see a human on a horse as a threat. “They don’t see a human,” he explains, “just another harmless vegetarian.” James, meanwhile, comes up with the idea of lying in wait for his prey up a tree, inspired by the dubious knowledge that ‘deer don’t look up’.

Elsewhere tonight, Matt and James test their skills as Scalextric drivers when they race their vehicles against a kestrel in full flight. With each car disguised as a giant mouse, the duo embark on a few rounds of Kestrel GTX!

Bird trainer Lloyd has trained his kestrel Ashley to hunt the ‘mouse’ across a specially designed course featuring zigzag curves designed to replicate the winding paths that mice and voles follow through the undergrowth. Matt and James’s challenge is to get their cars to the end of the track before Ashley swoops down and catches them.

The motorised mouse is far larger than the kestrel’s usual prey, but Ashley shows that even something half his bodyweight can be plucked off the ground with ease. “This is just too easy,” says Lloyd with obvious delight.

Also tonight, in the latest of a series of blind taste tests for the animals, a family of foxes make their culinary selection from a range of quiches, with some unexpected results. And there are more squirrel antics as grey squirrels show their aptitude for learning new tricks using a backgarden zip slide.