The New Woodland Bird hide, Gedling Park

By Joe Coles

Client Brief / Specification

The client has specified that they wish for a Bird Hide to be built on the east side of the Gedling Country Park (site specified on site plan). The Bird Hide is to be built for birdwatchers and other visitors to view birds in the country park from a site which provides wide visibility from a slope of a woodland area of the Country Park.

They have specified:- Materials should be locally sourced- Cannot use Power from the Solar farm- Eco friendly as possible- Disabled Access- Sheltered and Comfortable- Little disturbance to wildlife

Apart from the Clients brief I specified three key things I see important to the design of the bird hide…

It’s important to ensure that I integrate good access to the bird hide to ensure that the visitors can go to and from the car park/bus stop to the bird hide with ease. As it stands there is a proposed path that goes round the side of the park, this route is currently quite a distance from any transport links. I may choose to integrate an additional path coming from the east of Gedling park.

Its key to make the bird hide wheelchair friendly so I should ensure the bird hide is spacious and the door width is a comfortable width so wheelchairs can get through.

The reason visitors go to a bird hide is to find a tranquil place to view birds in their natural habitat, this means having a decent shelter from the surrounding elements, Camouflage and excellent visibility. These key points will help influence my final design.

Strength WeaknessesOpportunities Threats

The site is based in an already camouflaged location, allowing the bird hide to already serve part of its purpose which is to obviously to stay out of sight of birds. Site is based on the top of a slope allowing excellent visibility for bird watchers to make good sightings in the conservation area.

The site is based in a location of very bad weather conditions and one of the worst in Nottingham. It is very windy and will mean that the structure will need to be angled in a certain position so that it isn’t prone to any wind damage and possibly risk of falling. Elderly people may be unable to gain access to the bird hide as its location is fairly hard to get too, this depends on the quality of the proposed footpath.

Due to the site being very large it means that there is a lot of room to work with, which allows us to be more creative with our design. There are a lot of trees are in the vicinity of the site which could allow us to integrate our design a the tree and if not we could use the idea of the tree’s to make a design that is inspired by the tree’s and the woodland that surrounds it. Figure 1 shows a good example of this..

Strong winds may cause structural damage to the Hide when the wind levels reach a high level. Weathering to materials is a risk as the weather in this area of Nottingham is especially bad due to the latitude and the wind speeds in the Country Park

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

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Then make their way down the proposed footpath, which will be completed in phase 2.

Here below shows the boundary of the actual site in orange.

Here the arrow shows where the entrance is to the park and where the revelors will be able to park.

On this side of the site we have a main road which could be used for access of the site for trucks and lorries to deliver materials to site.

I have chosen to change the site plan as the area chosen for us to build on initially had a slight draw back, this being that the path was in plain sight for birdwatchers and could cause birds to not habitat in this area and therefore cause the birdwatchers to dislike their experience at the bird hide… One obvious way of preventing this would be to elevate the Bird hide in its current site position. This however didn’t favour wheelchair users and so changing the site was to the opposite side of the path was a more logical move. Doing so means that we will need to clear a large space for the Bird hide to be built and to create a viewing area for birds to be lured in and build bird feeders and other features in this area to create what a bird watcher will really appreciate as both the views and pictures that may be taken will be especially good.

Here shows a picture taken by myself off the initial site, and also the site I wish to build on, on the opposite side of the path…

Initial site

New site

Location Plan

Here on the left shows the path that divides the two sites and on the right shows the same path but from a different angle.

One drawback from the change in site is that the birds in this area are all Woodland Birds and this influenced me to build this bird hide to a low budget but to introduce a whole new theme to the project. This is simply to build three bird hide’s rather than one in Gedling park so that birdwatchers can view all sorts of birds from three different habitats. Firstly we would have Woodland Birds then Wetland Birds and lastly grassland after a detailed visit to the sight I have found two sights that may be used for both phase two and three. I believe that this change will give Gedling park a good name amongst the bird watching community as I believe Gedling park has good potential of this as it provides a range of different habitats in such a small place. Both this and the new visitors centre will easily make the Park a bigger attraction.

Due to the change in site and it being very close to the woodland itself, an area will have to be cleared surrounding the bird hide to allow space between both the birdwatchers to ensure the birdwatchers are camouflaged from the birds. I have completed a basic sketch to show some landscaping surrounding the bird hide. It includes bird feeders and other features which should prove helpful for birdwatchers…

The diagram shows the area that will be cleared to create a distance between the birdwatchers and the

birds. I am also planning to install two birdfeeders in this area and a bird statue which I believe wil make the bird hide more of an attraction. I found some examples online…

https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/151503974937140244/

Sun path

http://www.ashwinstudio.co.uk/ridger-bird-sculpture.php

Nottingham Wind Direction, 2016

Site Analysis

I started my design by making some sketches which were influenced by research I made on the internet. I wanted to use the idea of having three different windows at different heights to allow wheelchair users to see from the lowest one and also allow a person standing person to do the same. The design also gives off a rather abstract modern design and should be rather aestetically pleasing to the eye.

My designs later developed slightly… These are shown below

Design Development

The Client specified that materials should be sourced and making my own research on twitter when conferring with an actual birdwatcher I was inspired to use log’s from a local source and possibly cut these trees down in Gedling itself. The information I gained on twitter showed that I should use natural colours to match the surroundings so that birdwatchers stay camouflaged. A log cabin inspired bird hide works perfectly because the colours match the surroundings perfectly.

When confirming the Log Cabin idea, I made a sketch up model to provide some 3D visuals…

Here is the rest of the research I gained on twitter, some information is fairly unclear as the guy is in fact Dutch so some of his responses are a tad confusing…

There were some additional questions I would like to have asked but the lack of English made it all the more difficult to gain a useable answer.

Here are the proposed Drawings I later made on AutoCAD, these drawings are shown at 1:50

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Front ElevationRear Elevation Side Elevation

Side Elevation

Floorplan

27 Nov, 2016