Brill bird boxes

DZG’s wild birds will have plenty of places to nest this year thanks to the decorating skills of half term visitors.

Discovery Centre staff have been busy helping paint dozens of bird boxes, which keepers will fix to trees around the zoo’s 40-acre wooded hillside in the coming weeks to enhance the site’s population of native birds.

Sam Bottrill, aged three, from Peterborough, gets a helping hand from DZG Presenter, Pam Midwood

Birds Section Leader, Kellie Piper, said: “Our free bird box decorating activity has been really popular with young visitors and we’ve got lots ready to start putting up across the site in time for the breeding season.”

Holly Vilicic, aged five, from Halesowen, decorates her nest box

The activity coincided with National Nest Box Week and children were also able to find out more about some of the native bird species regularly spotted around the zoo site with colouring in sheets.

Eleanor Gregory, aged five, from Halesowen, shows her bird box to DZG Presenter, Becky Iwahashi

Kellie added: “We’ve got several different species of small wild birds around the zoo site that will really benefit from these boxes, including blue tits, great tits, chaffinches, sparrows and nuthatches.

“We’ve made sure they’ve all been painted in greens and browns so that they will blend in to the background and make sure that the birds have privacy and a nice hideaway to nest in.”

Hear Kellie speak about DZG’s native wild birds in the video below…