 The future of the Tree Sparrow colony at Tyttenhanger received a boost this week with a donation of £500 from the gravel company who operate the site.
Lawrence Cooper, area manager for Lafarge Aggregates & Concrete UK, handed over the cheque to Herts Bird Club members Ken Smith and Jim Terry at the breeding colony at Coursers Farm last week.
Lawrence said: "I'm pleased we've been able to support the club with this donation, especially as 2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity, which Lafarge is supporting globally. We hope that the work of the Herts Bird Club will continue to raise public awareness of the importance of protecting and assisting rare and endangered species of birds and enhancing biodiversity."
Herts Bird Club chairman, Ken Smith said
‘This is great news, we will use the money to continue our supplementary feeding programme in winter and provide more nest boxes for the breeding season. We work closely with Lafarge to ensure that gravel extraction and Tree Sparrows can co-exist at Tyttenhanger. We are grateful to Laurence and his colleagues at Lafarge for making this possible’
The Herts Bird Club is the lead partner for the Hertfordshire Tree Sparrow Action Plan and for over a decade we have been monitoring the nest box populations at Coursers Farm and Tyttenhanger Farm – the only known breeding colonies in the county. The 2009 breeding season was the best ever with 79 young fledged from 25 nests – the highest number we have ever recorded. More details here. With such high numbers fledging in 2009 we are hopeful of an increase in numbers in 2010 and will increase the numbers of boxes to accommodate them. However much depends on how they survived the recent cold weather.
 In the winter, tree sparrows can be seen from the public footpaths around Tyttenhanger Farm. Please submit all your records. We also welcome records from elsewhere, you never know tree sparrows may be breeding at other places in the county.
The Tree Sparrow project is only possible through of the efforts of a team of volunteers: Jim Terry, Steve Blake, Daphne Deane, Alan Gardiner and Rupert Pyrah look after the supplementary feeding during the winter months and Ken Smith, Jim Terry and Peter Delaloye monitor the nest boxes. |
