Hollis Park

Today a group of keen bird-boxers gathered at Hollis Park in the City of Fremantle to build some nest boxes for local parrot species (especially Australian Ringnecks, and hopefully not invasive Rainbow Lorikeets!). This former landfill site has seen a great deal of restoration works in the form of planting and rehabilitation by the local Friends of Hollis Park. The weather was very warm but a nice shady spot beneath some trees helped us brave the heat and humidity! We made 6 parrot boxes in total, with 3 being installed in Hollis Park and 3 at the nearby Clontarf Hill.
 

If anyone would like to provide feedback or observations of fauna seen inspecting the boxes, please post your comments below.

Bushfire Recovery

We have recently completed two nest-box workshops run in conjunction with the Mundaring Shire as part of their Bushfire Recovery Program. These workshops saw a happy bunch of fire-affected residents from Stoneville, Parkerville and Mount Helena learn a new set of skills in how to build and install nest boxes for their own backyard. All attendees got to take their own nest box home and we had some very positive feedback, suggesting everyone had a great time!

Attendees at the post-fire recovery nest box workshops had a great time.

Cockies at Canning River

Today we visited the Canning River Eco Education Centre and ran another nest box workshop as part of Nearer to Nature's school holiday program. You can read more about some exciting observations we made on Simon's blog here.

Trayning Primary School

TRAYNING! Today we had some great fun visiting Trayning Primary School in the WA Wheatbelt and getting back into the swing of workshops, conducting our first one since February this year. We worked with a brilliant bunch of kids who were all so well mannered, and super keen to learn about Australian birds and tree hollows. They were very excited to have a few different designs to work on (bats, parrots, pardalotes and a cockatoo) and had a great time at the end of the day painting each box under the shade before we installed all 6 in some very pretty gum trees in the school grounds.

Thanks to Glen Buder from the Shire of Trayning/Nungarin for organising this workshop, and of course to the teachers and parents at Trayning Primary for having us attend the school. We know the kids had as much fun as we did!

Wandoo Prison

Last Monday we took our nest box workshop to yet another sector of the community - residents of the Wandoo Prison. We worked with 10 young blokes to engage them with the environment through constructing nest boxes for Endangered Black-Cockatoos. When the woodwork was underway and everyone had a good idea of how to build a cockatoo nest box, we stopped for morning tea and Gill and Simon gave a talk about the importance of tree hollows, and re-using waste material for nest boxes. Phil Digney then showed some live cockatoos to the young guys, demonstrating their placid nature and amazing feeding capabilities. Above is a picture of the team involved.

Today (a week and a hlaf later) we returned to the prison to find the residents had completed all 10 next boxes for which we provided materials, a fantastic outcome! Simon then installed one box in a tree inside the prison grounds, so the lads and staff at Wandoo are able to keep an eye on the box for birds showing interest. The location of this tree is only a few hundred metres from similar nest boxes in the Murdoch University grounds, which have had Red-tailed Black-Cockatoos successfully breeding since 2011. Fingers crossed that Wandoo's new box has similar luck!

Thanks to the staff at Wandoo Prison and Extra Edge Community Services for coordinating the event, and Phil Digney from Conservation Outcomes for including Re-Cyc-Ology in this fantastic event!