This year, as you are going in and around Ipswich’s green spaces and parks, you might expect to hear the rapid “tititic” of wrens calling, the sharp “tsip” of song thrushes, chaffinches colourfully calling “pink, pink”, and great tits sounding “tea-cher, tea-cher” for all to hear. Different to the usual hammering of the town’s resident woodpeckers, you might also hear busy hammering and people hard at work building nest boxes, as Suffolk Wildlife Trust celebrates National Nest Box Week.  

Every year, Suffolk Wildlife Trust hosts several nest box building sessions where we invite members of the public to join us to make a nest box for their own gardens and green spaces. This year, we are going bigger and better than ever before as hope to make hundreds of nest boxes in one week, with sessions every day across the county throughout February half term.  

Why are we upping our game this year and ambitiously trying to make hundreds in just one week, I hear you ask? Well, research shows that if just one person in every four takes up a cause, this can be enough to change the minds and behaviour of the majority. Imagine what we could achieve if that cause was nature: if a quarter of people in Suffolk created more space for wildlife to bring back what we’ve lost. That’s our goal: to harness the collective energy and talents of our county and bring everyone together into a bigger, bolder movement for nature’s recovery. We are calling this 'Team Wilder'. 

Whilst we know that large scale change and nature recovery will take more than an army of people across Ipswich and Suffolk making nest boxes, but it is an excellent place to start and an activity that people can do with us to begin rewilding their balconies, work car parks, allotments, school grounds or their own gardens. Is there anything more rewarding than watching wildlife benefit from something that you have made by hand and a patch that was previously devoid of anything wild, then flourish with life?  

Our efforts in Ipswich are often made possible by working in partnership with our friends in the town, and 400 nest box kits have been lovingly and painstakingly prepared by Ipswich Wildlife Group, and we can’t wait to turn these into nest boxes with you in a greenspace in Ipswich near you. Many thanks to IWG for all their hard work preparing the locally sourced, Ipswich timber from Bridge Wood and all of the kits for our team ahead of our ambitious feat.  

We hope that you can join us in Ipswich in many different locations across the town, and across the county at our Suffolk Wildlife Trust reserves, Bradfield Woods, Foxburrow Farm, Lackford Lakes, Carlton Marshes and Redgrave and Lopham Fen.  

You can follow our Team Wilder progress and map your nest box on our interactive map, by heading to our Team Wilder page.

See our events page or the listings below for more details of sessions in Ipswich green spaces and across the county. We hope that you can join us.  

View all our events