Why should doves get all the fun? In my travels I have seen loads of white painted dove cotes around, some with doves or pigeons but many ‘to let’.

And recently, garden centres have been selling every strange design they can get for bird boxes, mostly for tits.

Just as I was about to move a wood store at the HoBB, I halted, because a nut hatch had taken up residence and was building a nest. It was easy enough to let nature continue so I backed away and got on with another job. But I must have disturbed the wood hatch because it stopped building there and instead, started to build inside one of a pair of regularly used half circular doors. This might have been problematic, had the pair of nut hatches disliked our continual comings and goings, but they seemed to be happy, continued their work and created two fine chicks. I managed to take a picture of one emerging for the first flight (above)

Having witnessed wrens nesting in bright blue nylon rope bundles and nut hatches in swinging doors, I started to think that the rules and regulations of where a bird would, and where it would not ‘nest’ might as well not have been written. But then, what do we humans really know.

I have now designed a major ‘bird cote’ (picture above) for the HoBB Gardens – such a grand triple-decker structure when complete that it’s reputation will be sure to spread swiftly around the local flocks.

For this temple of take-offs and landings, I am collecting pieces of distressed wood that already have natural holes in them.

This tower of nesting opportunities will be the HoBB’s first journey into ‘Bird Architecture’, so if you are a keen Ornithological Architect or Bird-Watching Carpenter and wish to volunteer to help build it, contact me.

Waves from the west wing ~~~~~~~ <+))))))))>< ~~~ Grant