Will was fortunate enough to have a full-time Grandad who was already retired by the time Will was born following a lifetime as a deputy down the pit. The school holidays, evenings and weekends were spent with Grandad and it was very rare to be inside during time together! Grandad would take Will and his brother Hugo on long walks through the countryside which often took all day to complete, teaching them both what each bird was and how to identify them in call and flight. Will took to this and became obsessed with birds, gaining the nickname 'kes' at school and accumulating more bird books than his mom would care to mention! 

 

Will found bird nests the most fascinating, writing down in books of where he had found them and would often write a nest record card without even realising he was doing one! A nest record card is what the BTO ask that people monitoring birds complete to help learn more about nesting birds and their success and failure rates. Whilst still in Primary school Will acquired a saw, drill, hammer, nails and any wood that he could get his hands on! Using a bit of railing and a slab to hold the wood against on his back garden he made his first nest box.

 

Will then started to make more nest boxes and acquired permission to put some up in a local woodland which included a Tawny owl box which was used straight away - Will was on top of the world and felt like he'd won the lottery! After this his teacher at school got him on work experience at Longshaw in the Peak district - work experience that he never wanted to leave after learning about all the bird projects that were going on up there. Following this Will gained permission from the Lead ranger to put up more boxes for the Pied Flycatchers and raptors before meeting the Sorby Breck Ringing Group at his teachers farm where he was introduced into bird ringing. The National Trust Pied Flycatcher project is now a big project with many volunteers involved and over 200 chicks ringed annually in the nest boxes. We also found that the adults often return to the same woodland or area after making the mammoth journey south to Africa for the Winter, how cool is that!

 

Will trained for 2 years in bird ringing, first obtaining a restricted C licence where he could tag the chicks in the nest with a small aluminium ring, about the same as a person with a watch/bracelet. Lots of nest boxes went up during this time around Sheffield, Rotherham and Chesterfield and these are still monitored today by various people. Then came the C licence to catch birds in mist nets and tag them to find out more about their life cycle, movements and much more. The most interesting find from Will's ringing was a Swallow that was sadly found dead in Treeton, when Will retrieved the bird there was a ring on its leg, after inputting the data to an online database it was discovered that the bird was ringed around a month earlier in Cape Town South Africa! 

 

Nest boxes have always been a passion for Will, slowly acquiring the tools and know how over the years to produce them to a high, lasting standard. When Grandad Terry passed away in 2024 Will began the journey on a long-standing vision to start a company creating homes for Wildlife.... and here we are!