A family from Great Staughton managed to build a robot during the long hours of lockdown.

Robert Mumford, aged eight, his three-year-old brother Christian and dad William designed and built the robot to scare off birds on their farm.

William, who owns Agden Green Farm, says the robot was a six- week Christmas lockdown project.

He said: “Being unable to go anywhere over Christmas, my son and I have built a field scale pigeon scaring robot.

“Its mode of operation is very simple – we have a series of waypoints in the field and every day it wakes up moves to the next waypoint and wiggles it gun all day then goes to sleep at night, it actually works really well.

“We have done everything ourselves apart from machining some axels and folding a bit of aluminium for the covers.

“Not only have they enjoyed working together to build a robot, but Robert has learned a whole lot of new skills without realising it, including practical maths, design technology, physics and some practical engineering skills – definitely ‘home schooling’ with a difference!”