BBC Radio 4
Natural History Programmes
Sabrina and the Fish of No Return
​
Writer, naturalist and broadcaster, Paul Evans watches a salmon struggle against the flowing waters to climb up a weir and return to the pool where she was born to lay her eggs. The struggle takes place on the River Severn, which was known to the Romans as Sabrina. Sabrina is also the name of the Severn Cruise boat in Shrewsbury, a woman from Greek mythology who was drowned in a river and a 1950s British glamour model and film star. In this essay, Paul weaves together the stories of these different Sabrinas as he watches the salmon driven by instinct to travel "against the flow, up the one way street" ....Like a film premiere with the star staggering up the red carpet, the crowd shouts encouragement, holds its collective breath, takes photographs, sighs as she stumbles back yet again...and again".
Written and presented by Paul Evans
Actor Adie Allen and Susan Jameson
Additional sound recordings by Chris Watson
Producer Sarah Blunt.
A Natural History Of Me!
'If you thought the human body was only made of human cells, then think again. What scientists now know is that for every one human cell in a healthy body there are about ten times as many microbial cells, mainly bacteria. There's likely to be several thousand different microbes associated with the human body. This collection of bacterial populations is known as the human microbiome.
In this programme, Paul Evans discovers just what these vast numbers of bacteria and other microscopic organisms are doing inside us, how important they are to our very existence and how they affect our perception of self'.
BBC Natural Hisoty Unit Radio
Raft Spiders
'Nestling alongside Wales and the English Midlands, Shropshire is a much unexplored county, but one with many surprises. Paul Evans is on home ground for this week's Living World as he heads off to the north of the county to meet John Hughes from Shropshire Wildlife Trust, in search of one of Shropshire's most unusual and beautiful surprises. Meeting John at Wem Moss National Nature Reserve Paul discovers that in the midst of farmland, the landscape between here and the Dee Estuary is peppered with interlocking Meres and Mosses, wetland relicts of the last glacial period in Britain'.
BBC Natural History Unit Radio
Oil Beetles
'Devon is a beautiful area of the British Isles, an area of the West Country best known for its farmhouse cream teas, rather than a county able to produce its own oil. But it is oil that brings Paul Evans to south Devon where, for this weeks' Living World he meets naturalist John Walters. This oil though is part of a fascinating defence mechanism and life cycle of the subject of this weeks' programme, that of the oil beetle'.
BBC Natural History Unit Radio
Dymock Daffodils
'Writer and naturalist Paul Evans visits the famous daffodils of Dymock. This corner of north Gloucestershire is home to some of the very best wild daffodil spectacles in the British Isles, plants whose pale primrose flowers with egg-yolk trumpets spill over motorway verges, infiltrate hedgerows and crowd into copses for a few precious weeks in late March and early April. The area is also famous for hosting a remarkable collection of poets just before the First World War, lured there by the idea of a rural idyll' .
BBC Natural History Unit Radio
Help the hedgehogs
Nature, Series 6,
With Britain's hedgehog population in crisis, and numbers dwindling at an alarming rate, what can we do to preserve the Mr and Mrs Tiggywinkles of our backyards? Megan Morris Jones has these tips for helping to encourage the little snufflers into safe places and what to do if you find one in distress. Part of Paul Evans' investigation for
BBC Natural History Unit
Unearthing Buried Rivers
Nature
Paul Evans reports on the rebirth of the urban waterway. For centuries, we have covered up our city streams and built over the top. But now the buried rivers are being brought back to life as the realisation dawns that natural water flowing through our cities can reduce flooding and pollution as well as creating a better environment for people and animals to live.
BBC Natural History Unit