Submitted by Peter Ward

Cascade Bird Box Team is composed of members of both Delta Nats, and of Nature Vancouver.

The team built 10 Tree Swallow boxes for New Brighton Park (funded by Nature Vancouver), plus a handful of boxes to add to the number at Fraserview Golf Course.

We supplied and installed several Barn Owl boxes earlier this year. More Barn Owl boxes were built in September and have not yet been installed.

Jim Kneesch developed a brilliant new bat box design, the Dual 4 chamber, for maximizing the comfort of Small Brown Bats during maternity. David Hiscocks helped in some of the tedious work for Bat Box construction. Bat boxes were built and installed in Ladner Harbour Park, Langara Golf Course, and Big Bar Lake (4). A box is ready for installation at Jack Macdonald’s condo building in Ladner.

We cleaned swallow boxes earlier this year in 2 regional parks (Iona Beach and Boundary Bay), 3 City of Vancouver golf courses, and 2 private golf courses, and at Big Bar Lake. About 30 to 65 boxes in each location.

A barn owl box installation by our inspired biologist leader, Sofi Hindmarsh, in an industrial building in North Surrey along the river, produced immediate results for occupancy and successful breeding. Sofi is calling for City of Delta to insist that developers provide safe nest sites to replace ones in buildings to be demolished. Surrey already has this in their building permits.