Thursday 15 January 2015

Doing a good Tern

Following the success of floating out Tern rafts at Watermead Country Park, Leicestershire & Rutland Ornithological society (LROS) decided to purchase two more rafts to be added to the ones already at Watermead CP, so, in the spring of 2014 I helped  a friend of mine, Andy Smith, construct two 'kit form' Tern rafts that had been purchased by LROS. The rafts were made of recycled plastic, and, being a carpenter for my sins, I started wondering how much would it cost for LROS to source the materials and  build their own. I broached this subject with Andy Smith and Jim Graham, who are both LROS committee members. They thought this to be a good idea and asked me if I would mind sourcing suppliers and costs etc. To cut a long story short, it became apparent that we could indeed build these rafts for a lot less - but without compromising the quality of the finished product! The Conservation and Education Sub-Committee of LROS are financing the project, and Christine and Graham Middlebrook very kindly offered us the use of their premises at Church Farm to build them. The first three rafts are now well under way, and will be ready to be sited in good time for the return of the Terns in the spring. Below are a few images of us building the rafts.

Yours truly cutting the sides

Start to construct the box

Andy fitting the side stubs

Filling the raft with polystyrene

All the polystyrene in

Almost the finished article
All that as got to go on now are the perspex sides and the gravel dressing and its good to go.
I will keep you updated on the progress of the project, and hopefully I will be able to post some images of the birds using them! 
Thanks for stopping by!