Middleton Hall Retirement Village’s bird box project has reached an exciting milestone with the 2025 awards ceremony, celebrating the dedication of residents and co-owners who have helped make the site a thriving home for local wildlife.
The project began with a simple goal: to repair and build enough bird boxes to support 40 families of birds by the end of 2025 and it all started with a series of hands-on workshops.
🛠️ In the first workshop, residents and co-owners teamed up with the maintenance and estates team to build bird boxes from scratch. With tools in hand, everyone came together to support biodiversity and create safe nesting spaces around the grounds of Middleton Hall.
🌳 The momentum continued with an installation session, where everyone selected just the right tree for their box. Then during a follow-up workshop, residents and co-owners designed unique house number plaques for each of the 60 mapped locations, giving each bird box its own identity and charm.
Throughout the spring, the community watched as their hard work paid off – and at this year’s 2025 bird box project awards, they gathered to celebrate some remarkable results:
🏆 Award Winners:
- Rarest Species: A delightful nuthatch claimed this title.
- Best Nest: Awarded for its cosy construction and feather-lined comfort.
- Largest Family: A box that welcomed 12 healthy chicks!
Together, we provided homes for 211 chicks across 32 occupied boxes – just shy of our target of 40 families, but still a tremendous outcome! These included 18 Blue Tit families, 11 Great Tit families, and represented 4 bird species in total.
Looking ahead, the team plans to clean and repair all boxes over winter. Empty boxes will be carefully relocated to new positions around the site to help increase occupancy. And of course, anyone who wants to adopt a bird box for 2026 is warmly encouraged to get involved.