Verona Strauss.comjust because life is fun! …

bird box made by me and Daddy

This week is National Bird Box week. It started on Valentine’s Day, so as well as showing our love for all the people we care about, we can show our love for the birds too!

National bird box week is older than me! It’s been taking place for 10 years. Last month we took part in the RSPCA’s Bird Watch week. We saw lots of birds and we even saw two of them that were on the more ‘unusual’ list!

The main birds we have in our garden are blackbirds, sparrows, blue tits, robins, wagtails, long tailed tits, starlings, thrushes and coal tits.  We have also occasionally seen a woodpecker, wrens and kingfisher. We feed them every day and it’s a great way to reduce food waste - you can feed them old bits of stale bread, cheese, seeds, burnt toast, meat scraps and Mummy’s cakes and biscuits. They love Mummy’s baking! The robins have very round tummies and I think they have a sweet beak like Daddy has a sweet tooth.

We don’t have to worry about our cat any more. She only chases cat biscuits now, but she has jumped up onto the small log to gobble up the bird food, especially if there are meat scraps or baking out there. Mostly, she just lies and watches them with us.

For bird box week, people are asked to put up a bird box in their garden. We decided to make ours, so Daddy rummaged through his rather messy woodshed and he found a piece of log with a hole in it and a little bit of room inside; just right for a Mummy bird to come and lay her eggs. The hole had been made by a woodpecker, so I think it’s just right.

The log had a hole at the bottom and top, so me and Daddy went to find the right pieces of wood to fix on it, to stop the eggs falling out of the bottom and the rain coming in at the top.

We nailed them in and then went to show Mummy how it looked. She was very pleased and said it would probably do, so this week we are going to put it up. I have my own tool kit with real tools in it and I did some sawing, nailing and found a sanding block so there are no rough edges for the baby birds to hurt themselves on.

Our bird box was made from old scraps of wood, so I think this was a good way to reuse them and I hope the birds do too.