We know that the natural surroundings at Cypress Primary School are highly prized by parents and since Pegasus have been at the school we have invested heavily in the woodlands that lie between the school buildings on the Lower site and Cypress and Auckland Roads. We have our grounds workers on site again this week for the third year of a four year project to bring these woodlands into use for educational purposes. A story on this will follow when the works are done. However, this week another long planned project in the woodlands has come to fruition with the installation of a sparrow terrace with boxes for nine pairs of sparrows.
House sparrows were once ‘ten a penny’ in cities and many mums and dads at Cypress will remember sparrows being everywhere when they were young. Now sparrows are few and far between and we haven’t spotted any at Cypress for many years so we thought we would try to tempt them back. We have installed a new sparrow terrace today in the woodlands (see photo gallery below) but just because you build sparrows a new house doesn’t mean they will come and live in it – as the writer Caitlin Moran found out. We may have to wait many years for the sparrows to find their new home. The site is a bit exposed at the moment until the hedge we have planted for them grows taller. We may also have to turn the terrace around to give them more privacy if our first plan doesn’t work. In the meantime we shall wait, with our fingers crossed, to hear if they have taken up residence in spring 2023.
Jolyon Roberts
