‘Polecats are cute!'

Chris Packham on the animals set to take centre stage in this year’s Winterwatch are cute!’

- TESS LAMACRAFT

WINTERWATCH NEW TUE-FRI / BBC2 / 8PM / EPS 1-4 of 8 / NATURE

Chris Packham will be on the lookout for beautiful polecats when he returns to rewilding farm Wild Ken Hill in West Norfolk for this year’s series of Winterwatch.

‘Polecats are nocturnal, quite shy, and I don’t use the C-word very often, but I have to say they are quite cute!’ enthuses Chris, 60. ‘They have these lovely white spectacles around their eyes, but you wouldn’t want to take one on if you were a rat or a mouse!’

Over the next two weeks, the BBC2 show will see Chris and Michaela Strachan reporting on creatures great and small from their base at the coastal project.

Meanwhile, conservationist and Chris’ stepdaughter Megan McCubbin will be stationed at Castle Espie Wetland Centre in Northern Ireland, and Iolo Williams will be exploring the Isle of Mull in Scotland.

Here, Chris, who is fresh from a muddy woodland walk with his two dogs when TV Times calls him for an exclusive interview, reveals what we can expect this time…

This is the first time Winterwatch has been broadcast live from three different home nations, isn’t it?

Yes, we’re all really excited about that. Castle Espie is a fantastic reserve and, because of its location, it gets different birds migrating from places like Greenland and Canada.

Scotland has so many what we call ‘specialised’ species, such as pine martens, wildcats and golden eagles.

And Norfolk is another wildlife hotspot with winter migrants, such as huge flocks of geese from Scandinavia and Russia.