Over the years, Liela Talka has grown from a simple waste collection into an initiative for the improvement and cleaning of the territory: as mentioned on the Talkas.lv homepage, the amount of scattered waste and polluted places has halved since 2008. The municipal company “Rīgas Meži”, which manages not only the capital’s forests in Pierīga, but also Riga’s gardens and parks, this year, in addition to dozens of ordinary bird cages, also installs three large cages, which are similar in size to mini-bar refrigerators found in hotel rooms and are meant for owls, but maybe even for oops.
Over the years, Liela Talka has grown from a simple waste collection into an initiative for the improvement and cleaning of the territory: as mentioned on the Talkas.lv homepage, the amount of scattered waste and polluted places has halved since 2008. The municipal company “Rīgas Meži”, which manages not only the capital’s forests in Pierīga, but also Riga’s gardens and parks, this year, in addition to dozens of ordinary bird cages, also installs three large cages, which are similar in size to mini-bar refrigerators found in hotel rooms and are meant for owls, but maybe even for oops.
“This is something new: we have not yet installed such in the four years since I have been working in “Rīgas Mežes” and climbing trees to perform all kinds of maintenance work above ground,” says arborist Nils Raubens. The three new large-sized cages will hang on the trees in the Solar Garden, which is located between the Ķeizarmež sports base and the Jugla lake.
As ornithologists have told the employees of “Rīgas Mežu”, recently, cavity-nesting birds are having a hard time, because the number of cavities has decreased – nowadays a decent forester tries to clean the forest and cut down damaged trees with cavities, but this approach of careful owners is not good for owls, whose number of habitats is decreasing. In cities, in general, hollow, rotting trees in parks are often considered dangerous and they try to harvest them in time, so the change in conditions for owls should be compensated for by providing cages of the appropriate size.
Good will is not enough to get one in a tree – you need at least two professional arborists. First, a thin red thread is thrown over a thick branch, which must be at least eight meters high, with the help of a grenade-like weight. A neat string is tied to it, put on a branch and lowered down the other side. Nils Rauben can now use the thick rope to climb the tree, while his colleague throws a weight next to the branch and prepares another strong rope, which is used to pull the owl cage up the tree. It is important to install the cage near a tree where branches and leaves do not obstruct the flight.
“A layer of sawdust will be placed in the cage, because the scientists explained to us that it is not typical for burrowers to stretch the materials themselves and wind inside the nest cavity, where soft roaches tend to be, so we will give them shavings with the cage,” say “Rīgas Mežu” employees. On the other hand, common starling and sparrow cages nowadays are made with a removable back, so that the cage can be unhooked from the tree in the fall and the dung can be cleaned – the sparrow and chickadee are too small and weak to be able to lift the dirt from the cage floor to the escape hole on their own.
Six letterbox-like cages for bats are also being put up in the Sun Garden to encourage them to move from the attics of nearby houses to live in the park – but scientists have warned that it could take a decade for such a cage to become inhabited, as bats do not see anything during the day, do not fly around and therefore unable to see that useful residences have appeared for them. Therefore, these cages are made of impregnated boards and covered with roofing felt-like material, so that their service life is several decades.
