BIRDS IN PARADISE – Residents of Marches Housing-owned Paradise Court, Leominster, have put up bird and bat boxes around the children’s play area. The local children, inspired by a past project where they made bird boxes out of orange juice cartons and feeders out of plastic cups, wanted to make them a more permanent feature as the home-made variety were coming to the end of their life.

Paradise People, the residents group, applied for funding from CSV Action Earth, a five-month campaign supported by Morrisons to help create opportunities for people to play an active part in the life of their community, and from the local Marshfield Centre, a Herefordshire Council Day Service supporting people with learning disabilities who provided the bird feeders.

With the grant of £50 from CSV Action Earth, Shane and Vicky Marchant, active residents of Paradise Court, bought bird boxes and the materials to make bat boxes; as Shane explains bat boxes are not available in shops so he and his son researched them on the internet and made their own, even using parts of an old wash bag to stop the rain getting in.

Children and adults alike were at the playground on May 2, to see the bird feeders and bird and bat boxes put up.