This week was a busy week for the NCVs with some of them working a 2 day week....
Plan: Take 60 planks of wood, four men with power tools and some rubber inner tubes.
Intention: Make 54 nest boxes in two days. Then take them all apart again.
We started before 9am, measuring,
marking, cutting, drilling, and sand papering. The noise was considerable. After an hour and a half we were
joined by Paul Harris, official photographer of the Upper Nidderdale Landscape
Partnership (UNLP) who is making a film of the different projects involved in
the scheme.
The team get busy with the planks.
One break mid-morning for
coffee and Dutch ginger cake (very good), kindly provided by Jan, and a slightly
longer break for lunch at 12.30 afforded a rest for the ears, arms and shoulders.
Jan realises he's forgotten a knife
so improvises with his handy drill bit.
John joined us after lunch so the
production line got even longer. We were also joined by a young hedgehog but we
declined additional help. We already had good backs for the boxes and didn’t
need additional spines. Angus kindly took him away to a place of safety.
Spike arrives to offer his services -
By 5.15pm we had 30 finished boxes,
but without fixing the lids. Only 24 more to do tomorrow!
As the day wore on the stack of boxes grew bigger.
It sounds crazy to make the boxes and
then take them apart again but this is part of the very important education strand
of the Sand Martin wall project which will encourage children to take an
interest in birds and the local environment, and give them a chance to make
nest boxes. A team of NCVs and Nidderdale Birdwatchers will visit four
Nidderdale schools in October to help the children to put the boxes back
together again which, unlike Humpty Dumpty, will be successful and good fun for
all concerned.
Tony
(Update - by 3:30pm the following day the rest of the boxes were completed and all of them dismantled, with all the bits put together as separate kits. What a job! What a team!!)
Tony
(Update - by 3:30pm the following day the rest of the boxes were completed and all of them dismantled, with all the bits put together as separate kits. What a job! What a team!!)
Tuesday at Old Spring Wood:
Today we welcomed Tom, a new NCV, to our band as well as a group of 4 young ladies who were out with us for a 'taster' day for their Heritage Skills course placement. If they enjoyed the flavour then they will come out with us on a more regular basis in the coming months. Consequently, in spite of the rather damp start to the day and the alternative activity at the barn, we managed to muster up a working party of 17.
The tasks were varied and included sycamore shoot pruning (we mustn't let them get a hold again), lopping off holly branches that were overhanging the paths and removal of parts of a fallen tree that was causing an obstruction to a gate. Of course, a bit (well quite a lot actually) of bracken bashing was needed in order to find the sycamore shoots (that was how I sold the task to them to avoid any possible rebellion!!). Any cut vegetation was brash piled.
Here are the photos of the day (flash photography needed until the afternoon!!)...
some wildlife this winter.
The team: "Are you sure that there are sycamores along this stretch?"
Ros E.: "Yes - just bash the bracken a bit and you will find them!"
What we did find were lots of frogs.
have been having a good time.
(Although it really needs further work with a chain saw.)
hunting down those elusive sycamore shoots
(and realising that they had been duped).
Ros E.
No comments:
Post a Comment