Like this - Ive been following Walsall since 1978/9 ish :-)
The RSPB: RSPB links up with football club to save the swift
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Like this - Ive been following Walsall since 1978/9 ish :-)
The RSPB: RSPB links up with football club to save the swift
That's a really refreshing story, thanks Ross and thanks Walsall FC. :)
Theres definitely fewer swifts around our cottages even the last couple of years. They used to be heard every evening screaming round the rooftops but they are a rare sound now.
The number of swallows is right down as well - a few years ago we would see dozens on the telegraph wires - theres only been 2 or 3 at a time this year. :(
The attachment shows the WFC badge complete with swift motif :)
It is sad that it takes so little to provide nesting sites for birds, but so few people do it. When I had my roof done they they were quite surprised when I said that I didn't want it completely sealed off to allow the birds to nest (filthy and disease-ridden per the builder). It would be nice is 'nesting-bricks' were made a requirement of new builds, so they wouldn't even have access to the inside of the house but would still have nesting sites.
I try to do my bit :D
About 10 years ago I was poking around in the basement of the secondary school I work in. I chanced upon a pile of roughly made not quite finished nest boxes (no holes!). Apparently the kids had made them in woodwork lessons, but the school didnt want to put them up in the woods around the school as they tended to get pulled down in a few days.
Anyway I ran off with them because "we were going to burn them" drilled entrance holes and put them up in the scrubby woodland around the cottages we live in. No particular plan - they were nailed to trees as high up as I could reach with my step ladders propped up against the tree trunks. The first blue tits started investigating one box just 10 minutes after I moved my ladders out of the woods.
Most of them are still up, one or two have blown down in gales but they are put back up again if they are undamaged. Woodpeckers took one box next to the car park over :)
Theres also a sparrow terrace (bought a few years ago) on the outbuilding which is occupied every year and an open fronted box hidden in the honeysuckle above the bathroom window - during the winter we saw several wrens pop out of that one!
None of the boxes get any looking after, (apart from rehanging them if they fall down) - and the "leave it to nature" approach seems to work for us as several boxes are used every year.
Nice one - You must have had a real shortage of des-res'es up there if the Blue Tit was right in :). Since there isn't much in the way of upkeep in nature, I can't see the problem with leaving them to themselves - I always thought people were too fussy with them.
I was thinking about sticking some Starling boxes on the wall, but I don't generally have too many places suitable for boxes - it's all very boxed-in suburbia.