Around twenty-five young people from the Heatons’ and neighbouring areas gathered at St Paul’s Church Hall in Heaton Moor for an interactive session making nesting boxes for birds and roosting boxes for bats.
The occasion was created and hosted by Sustainable Living in the Heatons who designed and promoted the day.
The contribution of Heatons’ Men in Sheds was to pre-fabricate the boxes for the children to assemble.
Bats are not only unique, as they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. They are also quite fussy about their accommodation preferring a very natural habitat. All the bat boxes were constructed from rough sawn untreated timber and once completed are not able to be opened.
The bird boxes on the other hand have liftable hinged lids so they can be cleaned out each year and they can be painted. Once the young woodworkers had completed construction of their bird box they moved on to the painting bench to apply paint (mostly) to the box.
Each child who attended took home one of the boxes they had built, and the remainder will be hung at various places around the Heatons’
All the children who attended also heard a talk about wildlife in the area provided by the local authority wildlife officer.
A great opportunity for youngsters to learn some new skills and to hear about the importance of looking after our natural surroundings.
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