Bird man Sam's new fundraiser
A pensioner whose bird nesting boxes have raised more than £2,000 for an historic castle has come up with a garden bird feeder which he hopes will be equally successful.
Sam Evans, 81, of Green End, Oswestry, has won the nickname, Bird Man of Green End for the items make for the Whittington Castle Covid-19 appeal.
When the castle, which saw bookings for weddings and other functions cancelled overnight, appealed for funds back in April, Sam designed and made a nesting box, expecting to sell perhaps ten of them at £20 each.
But within a couple of days more than fifty had been ordered and Sam set about creating a production line in his garage which he uses as a home workshop. So far orders worth £2,200 for the larch boxes have been completed, leaving a clear £2,000 for the castle appeal after materials were sold under generous terms from North Shropshire Timber at Rednal.
The couple’s son Jonjo is chairman of the trustees of the Castle.
Now Sam has designed a matching feeder, in which the nesting box becomes a gravity-feed hopper. He explains: “A problem with most bird tables is that the moment you dump seed onto them, it pours with rain which blows in and the food goes soggy. The beauty of a hopper is that it keeps the food out of the weather until the birds peck it out through the six holes. As you can imagine our garden teems with birds as we test these things, and a hopper holds three or four days supply. It’s a labour saver.”
“Another feature of a flat bird table is the way squirrels gorge on it. To our astonishment the squirrels who live in a neighbour’s oak tree seem to hate this hopper. They paid it a visit as soon as we put the prototype out to test it, but none of them has been back since. They didn’t seem to be able to cope with pecking from the holes. I would love to know what an expert has to say about this/ I did not set out to ban squirrels, in fact I am quite upset by having apparently found their Achilles heel!”
The feeders will be on sale at £30 each at the Castle’s pop-up Christmas shop, but people wanting to order one may email samandtibsevans@gmail.com.
