Ade Edmondson is back on screen with Samuel West when Sam & Ade Go Birding returns for season two on Thursday, 1 October at 7pm. The six-part series keeps the pair moving through Britain’s birding hotspots, with the new run built on the reach of the debut series.
Samuel West and Ade Edmondson travel through spectacular landscapes in search of Britain’s birdlife, with the Yorkshire Dales among the locations and West Wales featured in one episode. The timing is neat for Channel 5: the show lands just as West’s birding profile is being extended beyond his acting work in All Creatures Great and Small.
Yorkshire Dales and West Wales
The six-part structure gives the series room to move from one birding pocket to the next without turning each stop into a stand-alone segment. That matters because the format depends on variety: different landscapes, different species, and enough space for the pair’s on-camera humour to sit alongside the search for birds.
West and Edmondson are not presented here as passive presenters. They are the point of the series, and the show’s hook is that two familiar names are used to make birding travelable television rather than specialist filler. That is the business logic behind a returning factual series: a repeatable format, a clear route through Britain, and enough personality to hold six episodes.
In May and In June
In May, West said a Western reef heron turned up on Anglesey, and he called it a first for Britain. He added that he wanted it for his life list, which is the sort of rare-bird detail that gives the series its edge beyond scenery and banter. A birding show lives or dies on those moments, because viewers need the sense that something scarce can still be found.
In June, he said his youngest daughter was amazed when he told her there had been eight megas in Britain that month. West also said that June is sometimes very quiet, but this year those months were actually quite busy. The contrast is useful: it gives the new series movement, and it shows why a birding calendar can swing from lull to flurry fast.
Britain in June
West said the bigger seasonal movement comes in April and May, when swallows, swifts, martins and warblers return from Africa to breed in cooler places like Britain. He also said that, as the world grows hotter, more and more birds are moving up from southern Europe. For a six-part show, that gives the production a built-in timeline: migration, rarity, then the late-spring and early-summer surprises that keep birders looking up.
For viewers, the immediate takeaway is simple: the second season is not a generic repeat. It starts on Thursday, 1 October at 7pm, and it arrives with a stronger hook than a travelogue alone — a first-for-Britain bird, a June rarity count, and a pair whose chemistry is doing the work of making the birding feel alive.
