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So I tracked down the man with the pole, found him standing by the catering truck, and noticed what I hadn't noticed before: that there was a small mirror on the end of it. My first thought was that someone wasn't happy with the catering and that the bomb disposal experts had been called in. But actually the catering isn't half bad so that was easily discounted.

My second thought was that it looked like to see behind your teeth as he drills away at you, giggling with glee. Had someone failed to warn me, I wondered, that there was a large grumpy animal wandering around Pensthorpe with a nasty case of toothache? (After all, police in Bristol were yesterday called on to look for an !) So should I sneak into one of the presenters' trailers and barricade the door (Chris Packham's perhaps as his would have the most clothes for me to hide behind)?

But no. It turns out that the man with the pole was neither a bomb disposal expert, nor a cattle prodder, nor one of Kate Humble's main providers of torture equipment, nor indeed the resident animal dentist. He was, in fact, Nigel Bean, the man in charge of finding nests and putting remote cameras into them.

"Essentially," he said, "it's a 99p vanity mirror on the end of an extendable fishing pole. But it's perfect for seeing into nests."

And so it is. Nigel took me to the nearest leylandii, raised his pole, and let me reflect on six tiny eggs in a robin's nest, eight foot up the tree. No ladder, no dealing with heights, and no grabbing at the tree and pulling the nest out as you fall to the ground.

And when you're bored you can practice your golf swing...

to find out more about Nigel the bird man.