DOWN TO EARTH in The City

Nature Improvement Area The Birmingham and Black Country Nature Improvement  Area is one of the first twelve  Nature Improvement Areas in   England. The vision of the partnership is to achieve   long-  term environmental gains for the wildlife and people of  Birmingham & the Black Country by delivering targeted, on  the ground, biodiversity projects at a landscape scale. We are currently working on plans for a comparatively large NIA proposal for the Rea Valley, and this will include a management plan, funding for woodland and meadow management along with site interpretation. The RSPB Woodland at Cannon Hill is prime for consideration. For further information on NIA's checkout the following link for The Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust http://www.bbcwildlife.org.uk/NIA

Despite the cold temperatures earlier in the spring the birds did eventually make use of the nest boxes I installed with many resulting in successful outcomes (i.e. young fledging the nest). It will be interesting to see how things progress in subsequent years and whether any patterns are emerging within the nest box data. The aim of the next stage of the project is to investigate the movement patterns of birds across the City and in particular answer the following research questions: Are the birds that were ringed as pulli in the nest boxes remaining on site or are they dispersing to other sites? What is the general turnover of birds within each of the study sites? Are birds settling at a particular site or are they constantly moving onto other sites due to factors such as predation/competition/resource availability etc? Are there any links between landscape structure, habitat quality and habitat occupancy for the study sites? In order to carry out this stage of the project and theref