West Morley Primary School

Two workshops in a row! After a wonderful day in Rockingham yesterday, we had the privilege of visiting West Morley Primary School today to install the boxes you can see above in trees around the school. It was so encouraging to spend time at a school that had invested so much energy into nature play, planting local native gardens, and valuing local wildlife! Thanks to Emma and all the teachers for making our visit so enjoyable!

Rockingham SHS

It was wonderful to see another happy bunch of enlightened and excited students who took part in a Re-Cyc-Ology workshop at Rockingham Senior High School today! The above photo shows the kids craning their necks at me as I installed their cockatoo nest-box. Thanks so much to Rachel Nixon for organising this workshop. Despite a few showery periods, we placed all 7 boxes in trees at the school, and had a great day!

Orange Grove Primary

When you find out a school has a resident population of Forest Red-tailed Black Cockatoos, and a 'peace garden' composed of native vegetation, you know the students are probably well ahead in terms of environmental education! It was a pleasure to work with Orange Grove Primary today for another workshop which focused on building cockatoo boxes to hopefully encourage breeding in the resident red-tails.

After a presentation to the whole school at their morning, assembly we began construction with students from the Year 5 class, who assembled 3 cockatoo boxes. These were installed in some fantastic tall eucalypts around the school, including a giant Rose Gum (Eucalyptus grandis) at the edge of the oval, as well as some beautiful native Marri (Corymbia calophylla) trees at the front of the school.

This project was funded by the local building company Boral, and coordinated by Conservation Volunteers Australia (thanks so much to Katie for all her hard work in organising the day!).

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.