Spring is one of the busiest times of year for tree work bookings. It’s also, by coincidence, the worst possible time to cut back a hedge or fell a tree without checking first. Bird nesting season runs roughly from March to August, and any tree or hedge with an active nest inside it is protected by law during that window, regardless of whether the tree itself has a Tree Preservation Order or sits in a conservation area.
It’s a part of tree law that gets far less attention than TPOs or planning permission, yet it catches out homeowners and contractors every year. This post covers what the law actually says, what counts as disturbance, and how to book work sensibly during the months when birds are nesting.
The law behind nesting season protection
All wild birds, their eggs and their active nests are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. It’s a criminal offence to intentionally take, damage or destroy the nest of any wild bird while it’s in use or being built, and for species listed on Schedule 1 of the Act, such as barn owls and kingfishers, it’s also an offence to disturb the birds while nesting. According to Sussex Wildlife Trust, the nesting season generally runs from March to August inclusive, though some species start earlier and others finish later depending on the year.
This protection applies everywhere, not just in nature reserves or rural hedgerows. A blackbird’s nest in a garden hawthorn carries exactly the same legal weight as one in open countryside. Most prosecutions under the Act involve ordinary residential or commercial sites where someone simply didn’t check before cutting.
What counts as an offence
The offence is intentional damage or destruction of an active nest, which covers felling a tree, removing a branch, or cutting a hedge that contains one. It doesn’t require malice. If you or your contractor knew, or reasonably should have known, that a nest was present and went ahead anyway, that’s enough to fall foul of the law. Penalties can include a fine and, in serious cases, the case can be escalated, with no upper limit on what a court can impose for the most severe offences.
Why "I didn't know it was there" isn't always a defence
Genuinely unforeseeable nests, ones hidden deep in dense ivy or built only days before work starts, can sometimes fall under a narrow defence if the disturbance was an unavoidable result of otherwise lawful work. But that defence only holds up if reasonable steps were taken beforehand to check. Climbing straight into a tree in late April without so much as a visual inspection from the ground isn’t going to satisfy a court, and it isn’t going to satisfy us either. Any work booked during nesting season should start with a proper check, not an assumption that nothing’s there.
Species that need extra care
Some birds carry stronger legal protection than others. Schedule 1 species, including barn owls, kingfishers, and several birds of prey, can’t legally be disturbed even without nest damage, which means access routes and noise levels matter as much as the cutting itself. Garden species such as blackbirds, robins and wrens are still protected, but the law focuses on the nest and its contents rather than disturbance alone. Either way, the safest approach is the same: check first, every time, regardless of which species you expect to find.
What this means for booking tree work in spring and summer
If you’re planning tree pruning or hedge cutting between March and August, the work itself isn’t illegal, but it carries real risk if a nest is missed. The sensible approach is a pre-work check by someone competent to spot active nests, ideally a day or two before work starts and again on the morning the team arrives, since nests can appear quickly once birds start building.
Dense evergreens, ivy-covered trunks, and old woodpecker holes are the spots most likely to hide a nest from a quick glance, so these need closer inspection rather than a five-second look from the ground. Conifers and thick laurel hedges are particularly easy to misjudge, since the foliage can hide a nest just a few feet from where someone’s standing. If a nest is found, the work on that section needs to stop until the chicks have fledged and left, which can mean several weeks’ delay depending on the species and how far along the brood is. Larger jobs are sometimes phased around this, with unaffected areas completed first while the section with the nest is left until later in the season.
Urgent and dangerous tree work
Nesting season doesn’t override safety. If a tree is dangerous, storm-damaged, or poses an immediate risk, work can still go ahead, but it should be documented properly, with photographs and a clear record of why the work couldn’t reasonably wait. We cover the wider rules around emergency tree removal in more detail, and the same record-keeping principle applies whether the urgency comes from storm damage or from a tree that’s become structurally unsafe.
Planning work around the season, not against it
The easiest way to avoid the issue altogether is timing. Routine pruning, hedge maintenance and non-urgent felling are far simpler to manage between September and February, well outside the main nesting window, when there’s no risk of an active nest forcing a stop midway through a job. If work genuinely needs to happen in spring or summer, building in a nest check as a standard first step, rather than an afterthought, keeps the job legal and avoids the cost of a delay discovered halfway up a tree.
Our tree survey service includes a nesting check as part of the pre-work assessment, so you know exactly what’s involved before any cutting starts, not after. If you’re in Greenwich or anywhere else across London and you’ve got work planned for the coming months, get in touch and we’ll talk through the timing before anything’s booked in. Visit our tree surgeon services page for the full range of work we cover, nesting season included.