Making nesting boxes for Tawny Owls
Colin Gray, Chairman of Fleet Pond Society, writes:
Men’s Shed for Church Crookham and Fleet was set up only recently and as yet do not have a home of their own. They are very keen to take on tasks for their members and, where possible, raise funds towards building a shed of their own. Fleet Pond Society committee had decided that we would like to provide more nesting boxes for Tawny Owls at the nature reserve. Men’s Shed seemed a very good option and we approached Allan Walker with the plans. They produced two boxes for us which I collected on 19 July (see above).
The following is an extract from the Men’s Shed website (see here) which explains their aims and objectives under the general banner of:
Bringing people together to make or mend in a friendly and safe environment.
“What is a men’s shed?
A men’s shed is a larger version of the typical man’s shed in the garden – a place where he feels at home and pursues practical interests with a high degree of autonomy. A men’s shed offers this to a group of such men where members share the tools and resources they need to work on projects of their own choosing at their own pace and in a safe, friendly and inclusive venue. They are places of skill-sharing and informal learning, of individual pursuits and community projects, of purpose, achievement and social interaction. A place of leisure where men (and women) come together to work.
A shed’s activities usually involve making or mending in wood (eg carpentry, joinery, turning, carving, whittling, marquetry, furniture renovation) but may include metalworking (milling, sheet metal, welding etc), bike repair, gardening, electronics, tool renovation, boat renovation, model engineering (model railways, planes) and even building a car! Reclamation, reuse and restoration will feature strongly – and some say that is true of the men too! Although sheds mostly attract older men, some have included men of any age, women and young people. Whichever activities are pursued the essence of a shed is not a building, which some don’t have, but the network of relationships between the members.
Our Shed:
Our shed is currently located at Calthorpe Park School. They have kindly allowed us to use their design technology room and tools until we have our own shed up and running. Their tools include wood and metalwork lathes, pillar drills, band saws etc and they have many workbenches. We are gradually collecting together our own collection of tools to take with us to our shed when it is ready. We are busy working on our own projects and jointly working on various community projects.”