Forestry Focus

Tweety Birds

On her 21st birthday, Rosemary was presented with a rather pretty looking, but not very practical bird box, by her friend Jenny. I say not very practical as there were numerous gaps between the mini wooden logs that the thing was made from. And sure enough, nothing nested in it. I moved it several times in the hope that a change of scenery might help, but still nothing.

After five years of waiting for action, I decided to give the bird box a bit of a makeover, to the extent that I pegged thin rubber matting onto the roof and walls to at least make it water and draft proof. But I also went one step further – I put a bird feeder in the branches of the tree to which the bird box was attached. This had the desired effect of attracting lots of tweety birds to the tree, and the neighbour’s three hens to the spot under the feeder, to collect the grains dislodged by the tweety birds.

Whilst on the subject of tweety birds, I was invited shooting recently to a shoot which had a number of cover crops planted for the pheasants. I could not help noticing as I waited at my allotted peg, that there seemed to be clouds of tweety birds flying around attracted and fed by the cover crops. It was a lovely sight but don’t ask me what sort of tweety birds they were, I have no idea. The point is, that shooting interest was keeping these little birds alive during the hard winter months and I for one was delighted. It occurs to me that the shooting brigade does not make enough capital out of wildlife add-on extras that come about as a direct result of the sport.

Anyway, I wonder if anything will settle in the refurbished nest box. As Rosemary herself would say “We’ll see shall we?”

Balfours Forestry Consultant, Stephen Habershon, is based at our Craven Arms office and can be contacted on: 01588 674034