Bird hide–Part 1 – from the ashes

The last few postings have been a bit short on detail about the bird hide so I thought it might be nice to put it all together even though some of it has been covered before.

It all started on the 6th of March when we went to the Arboretum and saw the devastation the extensive fire had caused to all our hard work there, particularly the bird hide Neil had spent many hours building.

The first reaction of course was to abandon the whole project, especially because Goodman and co. were very pleased with the fire and had no empathy at all with us feeling disappointed, but soon we made plans to rebuild. The first stage was to clean up the mess and see what could be salvaged.

The sheets were badly damaged and it was quite a challenge to envisage a new hide from these pieces:

With the help of Excel and some cad though we figured out the best shape and layout and soon the construction was underway. Handy to have a spare room. People were wondering how we could manage to get the hide out of the door and to the Reserve.

The puzzle pieces were quite small so it needed quite a lattice work to support it all.

What we did need however was a new roof so we bought some corrugated iron at Algoa Steel.

The original brown did not quite match the roof and, seeing we had to paint it anyway, decided on some green roofing paint for the sides. Ellie did a great job wielding the paint roller.

…..Continued