WORK on a multi-million pound building site has been held up because of the special needs of a family of squatters.

Building workers refused to get into a flap when bulldozers and lorries ground to a halt on what will be the site of a £16m Stockton and Billingham College, in Thornaby, on Teesside.

The uninvited interlopers, who have since flown the nest, were a breeding pair of ringed plovers.

With the disappearance through drainage of its natural wetland habitat, the diminutive wader has substituted man-made gravel pits and stony, industrial wasteland for the loss of its own choice of sand and gravel bars.

Developer Terence Hill ordered its crews to down tools for the rest of the nesting period so the birds could hatch the eggs, which are often lost to predators or crushed under foot.

"Work had literally just started - one day earlier - on developing the college when we found out about the bird," said project manager Ed Bell. "It has delayed us by almost four weeks, but we are anticipating that the construction programme should be back on track in the very near future."

Ken Hodgson, site manager for the scheme's contractors, Shepherd Construction, said: "We are told that these birds are not easily put off by disturbance fortunately and readily lay again - sometimes within days if a clutch comes to grief or the chicks die, but the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds did not want to take any chances."

Work on replacing the colleges' sites at Billingham and Stockton with a custom-built campus at Thornaby, should be completed in October next year.