AUTUMNWATCH returns to the Cotswolds this week.

The hit BBC wildlife show will spend the next week on the National Trust’s Sherborne Park Estate, 20 miles north of Swindon.

Presenters Chris Packham, Michaela Strachan, Martin Hughes-Games and Gillian Burke, will follow a menagerie of wildlife on the Cotswolds estate, including barn owls, badgers, trout and garden birds.

Chris Packham, who has been presenting Springwatch since 2009, said he was looking forward to “learning new things” on the upcoming series.

“I have a great passion for British natural history,” he said. “I’m 56 and have been looking at it all my life, but I know I’m going to learn something new and maybe see something new – and that’s my personal highlight.”

He advised wildlife lovers to consider saving up their table scraps and leaving them out in the garden for mammals like foxes, badgers and hedgehogs visiting in the night.

He said: “Winter is coming so it’s a time where animals are stocking up. If they’re not stocking up in the sense that they’re storing food, then they’re stocking up on their own body reserves.

"It’s a good time to start thinking about feeding the animals in your community.”

Fellow presenter Michaela Strachan was keen to return to the Cotswolds to catch up on characters glimpsed during Springwatch.

She said: “It'll be great to go back to Sherborne and see how the countryside has changed in autumn and to see if we can follow Madonna the badger who was so elusive during Springwatch.”

  • Autumnwatch is on BBC2, Monday, October 23, to Thursday, October 26, at 8pm.