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Hot-housing sparrows

Jessica Gould is the head horticulturalist at the National Botanic Garden of Wales. She gives Sanjida O'Connell a tour of some of the foreign plants from South Africa, the Americas and the Mediterranean, and shows some of her favourites. But Jessica isn't the only one who loves these plants - house sparrows have also set up home here. They come in through the windows and nest in the walls. They are so happy here that they've taken to feeding on foreign flowers that they will never have encountered before, such as bottlebrushes from western Australia. They take nectar from the flowers and Jessica hopes that they'll develop the beaks that enable them to pollinate the flowers - this place could be the cutting edge of evolution!

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2 minutes

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