Countryfile

Northern Ireland (29x24)

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Ellie Harrison and Joe Crowley are in Northern Ireland, where Joe is up at the crack of dawn in woods just south of Belfast. He joins an RSPB team who are tagging swifts to find out where they are feeding, and he heads to the arts centre where the biggest swift colony in the city can be found to see how sensitive building benefits the birds. He also meets the locals doing their bit to help Belfast become 'swift city'. Joe then heads to the farm where you're as likely to find physalis, mustard flowers and Asian radish as you are spuds, carrots and caulis. Meanwhile, Ellie takes a canoe trip down the beautiful River Bann. It is a great place for wading birds, is steeped in history and is said to be the river St Patrick took before arriving at the island where he built a monastery. Ellie visits Church Island and sees the sites associated with St Patrick, and she also hears that it was also the poet Seamus Heaney's favourite place in the world. Adam Henson is on a farm on the Great Orme in north Wales, where herdwick sheep are being used to graze on ground where some of the UK's rarest plants can be found. Tom Heap looks at ghost gear - fishing equipment accidentally cut adrift from trawlers and anglers that rides the ocean currents relentlessly catching and killing marine life for years on end. But what can be done to stop these ghostly killers?