An unpromising Saturday morning which started with unexpected rain whilst opening up but soon cleared to be a fresh but quite lovely day with lots of visitors coming to make the most of it – and enjoying their views of all the usual winter suspects in the process, including bittern and brambling.
Our small, but growing, Wildlife Watch group met at the Centre for their monthly meeting in the morning too.
First job was to make some fat balls combined with a special individually hand picked ‘n’ mixed selection of sunflower seeds, hearts and/or sultanas. Unfortunately one of our leaders is vegan, but he stoically saw the activity through, albeit from a distance, knowing full well that the vegetable equivalent of beef suet is not palatable to birds…
With the food itself made we headed outside into the winter sunshine to saw:
Drill:
Poke, snip and tie:
(Actually, I didn’t take any pictures of this activity, you will just have to imagine sliding willow withies up through all the drilled holes until wedged tight, cutting them to size and securing the tops – and bottoms/sides, depending on the style of creation of the individual Wildlife Watch member!)
Before finally filling – and proudly showing off – the finished bird feeders:
Next month we meet 10.30am-12.30pm, on Saturday 9th March, for a wildlife walk in search of Spring!
E-mail Blashfordlakes@hiwwt.org.uk to find out more… or if you’re not aged 6-12 but wish you were simply watch this space to enjoy the session vicariously!
Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve 
Reblogged this on New Forest Education.
What attractive looking bird feeders. Those ought to go on sale somewhere as produce from the site to make funds for the site?
There’s a thought… thanks Gail!
Going to have to ask though: how much do you think you would be willing to pay for one?
Might be something for our Welcome Volunteers to have at the new Welcome Hut when it opens?