What could be better before breakfast? Calling Yellow-browed Warbler puts on a bit of show

                                                 

On the look-out - Ade (left) and Sam

LATE in the second episode of 5 TV series, Sam & Ade Go Birding, an unidentified birder is watching an Avocet feeding outside a wetland hide at Cley in north Norfolk  when he comes up with an unexpected comment.

"I’d rather watch a common close bird close up than a rare bird 500 yards away," he says.

The show’s co-star, Sam West, a birder of more than 20 years, expresses agreement, but does he really agree -  and, if so,  how many other birders would concur?

This was one of the questions that bubbled up during this engaging episode which was entirely set in north Norfolk - first the Holkham estate, with its many different habitats, then Cley, of which Sam remarks, somewhat fancifully, "if it was a musical instrument, it would be a Stradivarius".

At one point, Ade, who is content to watch commonplace birds such as Robins, describes twitching as "a kind of madness",  and he takes his pal to task for forever checking his Birdguides phone app for news of the latest rarities.

"Are you posting on your little website?" he teases.

Sam seems to acknowledge that Ade may have a point and, at one point in the episode,  says birding "should not just be about the rare birds but about enjoying those we’ve got in front of us".

That said, it is the pre-breakfast discovery of a relatively rare Yellow-browed Warbler that seems to give him a particular adrenaline rush.

Perhaps the best moments of Episode 2 is where the duo share a sense of exultation as they watch flights of Brent Geese and, even more spectacularly, of  Pink-footed Geese of which, during winter, North Norfolk hosts an estimated 70,000 birds, a quarter of the world's population of this species.

For Sam, there was a sadness during filming  because it  took place just a week after the death of his mother, actress Prunella Scales, to whom   he makes several affectionate references.

Movingly, he warms to the callnote of a Dunnock because it shares the first half of its scientific name, Prunella Modularis, with that of his mother.

He says there was no question of postponing filming because she had always been a great supporter of the adage that "the show must go on".

Near the end the pair pay a visit to the Church of St Margaret in Cley where one of its windows has engraved into it a portrait of a mega-rare White-crowned Sparrow that once turned up in the churchyard and tarried for a few days.

The next and last of the three episodes is at 8pm tomorrow April 28 when the Somerset Levels will provide the habitat.