Kingfisher Nesting Boxes - Pitch for the Planet
Earlier this year we attended 'Pitch for the Planet' an opportunity to pitch a meaningful environmental action, we proposed installing four Kingfisher nesting boxes to help support our local wildlife in the East of Bolton, we had been successful coming 7th of 8 funded projects.
We had to wait until we had been outside of the breeding period for Kingfishers, with our first box installed on Sunday 20th September at Bradshaw Brook, watch the video below.
Establishing two boxes side by side helps promote the opportunity for Kingfishers to host two broods rather than a single breeding for that year. We had to ensure it was installed one meter above the water, with a surface that was safe to dig into, ground stable enough it didn't collapse, ensuring all soil was backfilled into the box. Not only all those requirements, a spot we knew Kingfishers used but didn't have a nest within a mile to avoid territorial conflicts, installed in a straight section to avoid erosion and most importantly a flat bank to avoid weasels entering the nests and killing the fledglings.
A massive thank you goes out to Jan and Simon for joining us on the Sunday 20th September and another big thank you goes out to Andy, Peter (two local photographers), Dave and Alexander for their help on installing the second Kingfisher nesting box on the 27th September. The work does not stop here, over the coming years the locations of the boxes will be shared with local photographers for monitoring of the sites, to better understand our local Kingfishers and their breeding habitats. If the site proves unsuitable for either location, due to the boxes being made from concrete it allows us to retain and install in a better suited location, although extensive work had been done to find these two locations we believe are perfect. They're have also been built in consideration for monitoring and photography. The end result of this project is not only will we have established four habitats for Kingfisher's but the wider public will benefit from the photography and therefore appreciation of local wildlife. We can't wait till March/April 2027 to see if they've been successful!
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