Grounds Maintenance, Landscape Creation, Arboriculture, Sports Surfacing, Parks management, IOS Managing Safely Training, Ecology & Biodiversity, Grass cutting, Horticulture, Street Cleaning, Soft Landscaping, Hard Landscaping
idverde provides a wide range of green services, including grounds maintenance, landscape creation, and advice services, to both private and public sectors across the UK.
idverde’s Strategic Development Director and Head of Biodiversity, Sarah Hughes-Clarke, reports on idverde’s activities to support 2019’s National Nest Box Week.
To celebrate its centenary – and all the amazing people we work with – idverde is carrying out one special project each month throughout 2019.
In February, our chosen project was to take part in National Nest Box week. Since 1997, Nest Box Week was set up and developed by the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) together with Britain’s leading supplier of bird care products (Jacobi Jayne). It always runs for a week from 14th February and is timed to take place when ‘love is in the air’ and smaller birds are pairing up ahead of the breeding season!
During this week, there’s lots of advice and activity in the media to encourage everyone to put up nest boxes in their local area and help conserve our native breeding birds.
idverde looks after thousands of parks, nature reserves, school grounds and open spaces across the UK. We have over 100 long-term grounds maintenance contracts for green spaces owned by local authorities, schools and colleges, housing associations and private landlords. As part of our service, we work alongside local volunteer organisations, Friends of the Park groups, schools, and members of the public. Public interest in nature conservation has never been higher, and yet funding for nature is declining every year, not to mention the pressures of housing development, Brexit, and losing European protection for our birds!
So – this year, we decided to find out just how many nest boxes there are across the UK in idverde’s contracts, and to set ourselves a target of installing an additional 100 nest boxes, one for each year of our company’s history.
I’m delighted to report back that there are 2,208 nest boxes identified across our contracts, and this is probably an under-estimate. Some of these are installed and maintained by idverde, some by volunteers, and some are actively monitored, especially those at our Bromley contract, where we use remote cameras.
And – we’ve exceeded our target – we’ve installed 159 new nest boxes for this year’s breeding season, with still more to come. Special mention must go to our Basildon contract, where our management have committed to installing 70 new nest boxes in celebration of the town of Basildon’s 70th anniversary. Thank you, Martin and Andrew!
It’s not just birds though, my survey discovered that we have 447 bat boxes in place, 70 dormice boxes, several ‘hibernaculae’ (hibernating homes) for hedgehogs and reptiles, bee hives, and countless bug hotels/log piles.
So many thanks to all my colleagues for sending in your data and making sure idverde continues to play its part in supporting our wonderful British wildlife!
Further information can be found on the dedicated nest box week website:
www.nestboxweek.com
and on the BTO website:
www.bto.org/about-birds/nnbw
And of course through our partners RSPB’s website:
www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/how-you-can-help-birds/nestboxes/nestboxes-for-small-birds/making-and-placing-a-bird-box
