Preparing Habitat Boxes for Wild Weekend Events

With plenty of forthcoming Wild Weekend Events, of which many involve bat or bird boxes, it can be daunting to make these at the event while the accuracy can be variable. As a rule, I strongly believe in teaching from the foundations upwards. This is in accordance to the wise biblical principle of teaching a man to fish rather than giving a man a fish. With the recent dormice boxes one young fellow, Ben, was keen to learn and get engaged with the entire process and that was great if you have the opportunity. Sometimes, however, you just have to go home, lock yourself in the garage and get sawing. In this case it was a friends garage and instead of a hand saw it was a sliding mitre saw. The accuracy and speed of this was fantastic and what would have taken several days took about a full day's work. Cheers again John!!!

Even with the boxes cut into the right lengths and angles, predrilling holes for volunteers saves time and wood which are both limited. John Adkins, tinkerer extraordinaire, quickly knocked up this jig to help me drill end holes for bat or bird box back plates. This quickly allows the operator to have a central drilled hole at a pre-determined distance from either edge of 150 mm width wood. These are the points in which 4 inch nails are driven into the tree or post when it comes to final siting. The jig is simple, but saved a load of time. Moreover, the jig was flipped over and bolted in place to give accurate side drilling holes. Pre-drilling helps to speed up the process of building the boxes at an event and crucially decreases wood splitting associated with straight nailing. Nice one, again John.



Roll on the events now!! Photos, videos and stories to follow.