OPERATION TREE SPARROW – update
Thanks to the magnificent team effort by everyone
concerned, we now have 35 nest boxes up in the Cockersands area. All have a
reference number and have been allocated to the sponsors who will be notified
with this newsletter.
A preliminary check of the boxes has revealed that
Blue Tits occupy Brian Hugo’s box (B2) and Elizabeth Holcroft’s box (A8)
already. Within 5 minutes of
putting up box A3 (Pete Fletcher’s) a Blue Tit was inspecting the hole. Within
60 seconds of putting up box A6 (Jill Blackburn’s) a Great Tit and then a Blue
Tit inspected the hole, and no sooner had Bill Cross stepped off the ladder
after putting up box A9 (Gwen Dix’s) a Blue Tit was peering into the hole.
Meanwhile, Tree Sparrows flew overhead and landed in a nearby hedge to
watch the proceedings from a distance.
We have a variety of nest box designs and ways of
opening the boxes to test the skills of Paul Cammack, who has kindly volunteered
to ring any nestlings. We are also going to fill in nest record cards and
compare our findings with those of Bob Danson’s on the Fylde.
Some of our nestbox makers have donated their time
and materials free of charge which is extremely generous of them.
The young nestbox-makers in the Fylde YOC group, though, could not be
expected to do the same so the £51.50 raised from sponsorship went to them and
we got a nice letter from their Assistant Group Leader which I would like to
reproduce at this point:
The response to the nestbox scheme has been so good
that we have a nice stockpile of boxes for future use, either as replacement
boxes or to extend the scheme if it is successful.
My thanks once again to everyone involved. All we
have to do now is watch this space…………………….