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New for this year, we'll be using to keep you connected to our presenters, our production team and wildlife news as and when things happen. Sign up and stay informed throughout the autumn.

The Autumnwatch blog will give you insight into the goings on behind the scenes, as well as giving you a place to join in surveys, debates and discussions. Chris Packham, among others, will be blogging regularly to bring you the very latest about autumn and autumn watching.

Again, sign up to an RSS feed from our blog (see the box to the right) and you won't miss a beat of the action over the eight weeks.

Our hugely popular messageboard will once again give you plenty of opportunity to join in and have your say. The p for sharing photos is already up and growing - last year we became the fastest growing Flickr group in the world - not bad, Autumnwatchers!

You can upload your own wildlife home movies and we'll showcase the most amazing animal behaviour, the strangest natural events and the funniest wildlife moments on the main TV show, on Autumnwatch Unsprung and on our website - now with categories for easier navigation.

For the first time in Autumnwatch, our famous webcams will bring you live streams of some of autumn's greatest wildlife dramas, including the spectacular red deer rut on Rum. Keep an eye out for special announcements as to when our webcams will be webcasting and what they - and you - will be watching live (another reason to get yourself signed up to alerts from our Twitter feeds and our blog).

Elsewhere on this website, there will be lots of information on our animals, as well as our main themes and our talking points for this year.

As usual, the site will be full of our favourite links to the best UK wildlife websites. Throughout the series, we'll be constantly updating our Get Involved and In Depth sections. Add your own comments, ideas, suggestions and observations to these articles. That way we can build up the very best knowledge and collective experience on these areas.

This year, there'll be even more in-depth information on your favourite autumn animals, including video clips from the ±«Óãtv Natural History Unit archives, thanks to our all-new ±«Óãtv Wildlife Finder. Stay abreast of any UK wildlife news stories via the ±«Óãtv Natural History Unit's . We'll be getting the latest news feeds on the Autumnwatch homepage.

As ever our good friends at ±«Óãtv Breathing Places are on hand. They have loads of suggestions of things you can do to get you closer to wildlife, or Do One Thing to help wildlife near you. There'll be latest information on Breathing Places Schools and advance warning of an attempt to break a world record for planting trees with their Tree O'Clock event in December.

Don't forget to use one of my favourite wildlife watching web widgets, the ±«Óãtv Breathing Places . Simply put in your postcode and find out what wild places and interesting happenings are occurring near you.

Remember also the nature pages of your local ±«Óãtv website, which will give you the latest from your local ±«Óãtv team - find these via our easy to use Autumnwatch Local map.

Now its time to get in the mood, watch our pre-transmission trailers and start interacting with the team and with each other. Don't wait for the TV show to begin... Autumnwatch 2009 starts here!

More soon.

Tim Scoones is the Executive Producer of Autumnwatch

Autumnwatch 2009
Fri 2nd October - Fri 20th November
9-10pm every Friday night on ±«Óãtv TWO
(followed by Autumnwatch Unsprung 10-10.30pm on ±«Óãtv TWO, plus
a repeat of the main show for family viewing on Saturday afternoons on ±«Óãtv TWO)... and across the ±«Óãtv on regional TV, local radio, on the web... and where you live