THE popular BBC wildlife series Springwatch will be coming live from the RSPB's Ynys-hir nature reserve near Machynlleth this year.
And the three week series will be the programme makers' most ambitious location for the live shows to date.
Springwatch presenters Kate Humble, Chris Packham and Martin Hughes-Games will celebrate the best that Welsh wildlife has to offer live from the site in Mid Wales against the beautiful backdrop of the Cambrian Mountains.
Never before has the Springwatch team attempted such an ambitious technical rig for the live show with fibre optic cables stretching nearly forty miles. Over 50-high tech secret mini cameras have been deployed to follow real-life wildlife dramas without disturbing the animals themselves.
Presenters will be broadcasting nearly a mile away from some of the nest cameras, some of which will be fitted with solar panels to be even greener.
Ynys-hir is one of the best places for wildlife in the UK offering a mix of different habitats to explore - Welsh oak woodland with wet grassland and saltmarshes. Read more about Ynys-hir RSPB.
For the first time on Springwatch, the team is planning to broadcast live pictures from the reserve's heronry of nesting grey herons and little egrets. The presenters will be looking out for great and lesser spotted woodpeckers and birds of prey like buzzard, goshawks and red kites as well as featuring some of our most spectacular summer visitors, like redstarts and pied flycatchers.
The Springwatch team will also be staking out the rivers, waterfalls and freshwater ponds in and around Ynys-hir, hoping to follow dippers, kingfishers, sedge, reed and grasshopper warblers.
Bankside cameras will be poised and ready for river inhabitants like otters and grebes. And as well as birds and mammals, camera teams will be tracking down the 19 species of dragonfly, 26 species of butterflies and over 400 species of moths, as well as reptiles like grass snakes, that call Ynys-hir home.
BBC Springwatch returns to our screens on May 30, 8pm BBC Two.