04 February 2020

Building Bird Boxes With Local School Children

idverde, in partnership with the RSPB, was delighted to be working in collaboration with the Friends of West Hunsbury Parks and pupils from Hunsbury Park Primary School to make bird boxes for Hunsbury Hill Country Park and bird feed balls as part of the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch.

The workshops were held in Mrs Hughes’ Forest School class and were supported by the idverde/RSPB partnership and the Friends of West Hunsbury Parks. Over the course of two days, children from the Giraffe and Elephant classes spent the afternoon building 30 bird boxes specifically designed for small birds, such as the blue tit, as well as making bird feeders made from fat and seeds.

Working in pairs the children thoroughly enjoyed the process of understanding how each piece of wood combined to make the bird boxes and then hammering them together to make the finished product. It was a very noisy process—whilst mixing the bird seed with fat was a very messy, but enjoyable process too!

The children kept the bird feeders to hang around the school so that they could observe the birds as part of the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch, but donated the most of the bird boxes to the Friends of West Hunsbury Parks so that they could be put up in the park.

The Friends fixed the boxes around Hunsbury Hill Country Park during National Nest Box Week and were closely supervised by the children who had made them as they just happened to be out on one of their regular park outings. It was a great opportunity for the children to see exactly where their bird boxes went up so that they can study them in the spring to see if they are being used during the breeding season.

The Friends of West Hunsbury Parks and idverde are grateful to Park Hill Primary School and the children for contributing to the biodiversity in Hunsbury Hill Country Park.

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