Channel 4 - Jimmy's Forest (2012)

High up in a spectacular tree house, Jimmy Doherty develops an intimate understanding of the inner workings of a British forest. Country boy and farmer Jimmy Doherty is as happy as a pig in… Well, in a very nice pigsty. Holed up in a spectacular tree house, he’s charting the seasonal changes of a Norfolk wood. Which means dissecting woodpeckers, eating roadkill, drinking sap from a tree and tracking deer. There are some brilliant nuggets of information and Jimmy’s enthusiasm for the great outdoors is very infectious.

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Part 1: Spring
Spring is in the air and Jimmy delights in exploring his wood and showing us how the forest is coming to life. He finds out how to get a drink straight from a tree, gets to grips with a woodpecker, squabbles with squirrels and makes himself roadkill badger ham. He even creates his own 'hands-on' experiments to help him reveal what blue tits and butter icing have in common…


Part 2: Summer
Its summer and Jimmy's determined to see the badgers in the large sett near his tree house: an ambition which proves to be quite a challenge. He constructs super-sized fly paper, joins a ferreter at work, entertains druids, and has a rather unappetising 'boil-in-the-bag' venison lunch with a Neolithic man. Bestriding two great oaks, Jimmy Doherty’s Norfolk tree house boasts two floors, a fully equipped laboratory, a crow’s nest and a zip-wire for speedy getaways. “It’s basically a man-shed in a tree,” says the pig farmer-turned-TV-presenter.


Part 3: Autumn
It's autumn. The forest is bursting with fruit and nuts and is looking spectacular. Two of Jimmy's friends come to visit the tree house and are sent off to forage for their supper. Jimmy gets up close to a kestrel and reveals its super sense ability to detect and pounce on field voles. He meets a man who claims he can speak to owls, sees a long-eared bat, makes ink from oak galls and discovers the amazing natural properties of deer antlers.


Part 4: Winter
It's winter in the forest and after a heavy snowfall the wood is looking magical. With fresh snow on the ground Jimmy can trace the footprints of the animals and birds in the wood. He discovers how insects survive the winter, exposes tree roots to see how far they spread, watches 80,000 rooks fly in to their roost, makes a Yukon fire pit bed and discovers there is an unwelcome predator in the forest…