Six bird boxes have been positioned around the vegetable garden and orchard. Some with a 28mm hole are for Great tits and tree sparrows. The others with a 25mm hole are for blue tits and coal tits. Within an hour of the first one being put up blue tits were inspecting the new accomodation.

One of the towers has been completed this week. When the other is finished the ‘Cumbrian blue slate’ roof  will be started.

This year, snowdrops were quite late to appear but have given a spectacular show and have flowered over a long period of time.

Coppicing work with BTCV is continuing in one of our wooded areas. Most of the trees being felled will re-grow from their stump but some like this Scots pine will not. They provide rapid growth and as evergreens are good windbreaks but they shade out other trees and suppress the growth of many flower species. Not all are taken out in any one area.

The main trunks and thicker branches become firewood whilst the smaller branches and twigs, or brashwood, is piled into compact heaps to provide wildlife habitats.

Additional volunteers came from Lancaster University and Lancaster Royal Grammar School sixth form to help out which enabled us to clear a larger area.

Today was our first chance to look into our bees. With the cold winter so far, there has been very little sign of activity at the front of the hives. We went into the winter with two hives but one was quite weak. We discovered a nosema infection which we treated but possibly too late to allow them to build up strength before the cold weather.

The other hive was very strong and had plenty of late himalayan balsam honey left on. They seem to be doing well but we gave some additional ambrosia feed today. This picture is looking through the ‘rapid feeder’ into the brood frames below.

With just one hive this year our focus will need to be on increasing this colony rather than honey production.

This weekend, we have been making nest boxes for blue tits, great tits and coal tits to be sited in and around our vegetable plot and orchard. This is to encourage the birds to eat sawfly and codling moth caterpillars that damage our soft fruit bushes and apple trees. Pressure is on as blue tits are regularly seen now inspecting our existing boxes so the new ones need to be put up this week.

The boxes make use of offcuts of timber, waterproof roofing membrane and ECOS paint sample pots from our resource centre work.

Our window and door frames, made by local Galgate joiner Andrew Corless, were delivered this week. The frames are now being painted using ECOS organic paints based in Heysham which are solvent-free and give off no fumes.

Work continues on the towers of the resource centre including making 20-30 swift boxes. These have been constructed behind the stone work, then the plastic pipe removed and the entrance slit finished to the correct size. Slits have also been left to allow bats access to the centre of the tower to roost or breed.

Colin and Ginny recently attended a ’sense of place’ training day at Chipping village hall run by Cathy Hopley of the Forest of Bowland AONB unit. The day was organised around Bowland’s ’sense of place’ toolkit and how this can be used in your own business.

The day included a walk around Chipping photographing its many features.

The Bowland AONB and Sustainable Tourism group had their meeting at Forrest Hills this week and took the opportunity to have a guided tour of the resource centre.