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Sparrow take-over

NeilW
29/04/2017 16:54
Hi folks, first post here so hope i get it in a suitable place! Just wanted to ask the community for their experiences with sparrows. We recently moved to a new house with a reasonably large garden. Over 6 months i started to build up a good little feeding regime with many species coming, some that id never seen before. This was especially so over winter. We always had a handful of sparrows and i happily fed them too. Since Spring however, the number of sparrows coming has probably more than trebled, they have become a permanent presence in the garden, they take nearly all the food (i cant keep up!), and they bully other birds off feeders. One even knocked a goldfinch of the nyjer feeder, and started eating nyjer - which i thought they didnt even eat! I see less of the other species now, i expected this in Spring anyway, but not sure if part of this is due to the sparrows who have very much taken over the garden. I was wondering if this was a common thing in Spring, and was hoping they'd disperse more after Summer? Any shared wisdom and experience would be really appreciated. Its not nice seeing them prevent or stop other species feeding, but i'm guessing now they've found my garden this is it!
  • 0 29/04/2017 17:18

    Hi Neil. I have the same situation in my garden. I usually have a handful of Spadgers for most of the year but in the Spring and much of the Summer I can get over a hundred. I have Goldies too and they're usually pretty feisty and will fight back. I have Starlings too and they also visit in much larger numbers from now on. If you think Sparrows are dominant you should see and hear 50 Starlings! I just let them get on with it to be honest. I have a Robin that feeds from my hand and I have to throw large numbers of live mealworms into the bushes to distract the Spadgers, otherwise they mug the Robin and pull the food from his beak. See if you can set up a feeder in a more secluded spot if you have one.

    Unicum arbustum haud alit duos erithacos

    (One bush does not shelter two Robins)

    Zenodotus (3rd Century B.C.)

     

  • 0 29/04/2017 23:24 in reply to monkeycheese

    Hi monkeycheese, thanks for the rapid reply and for sharing your experience. Ha ha! Yes i can imagine the spectacle with the starlings! I've actually started putting out a small dish of live meal worms in a more secluded spot this last couple of days - away from the main feeding areas - and i've started to get a robin who seems brave and will wait expectantly for me to put them out - coming quite close to me. They are nesting nearby and take the worms back to the nest. Hope to one day encourage one to take from my hand! I also have nesting dunnocks who will come out whilst im there to take meal worms back to nest. They seem quite comfortable with me. This area is just by our back door and the sparrows are much more wary of me and will fly off. So im currently able to deliver food parcels to the robin and dunnocks without the sparrows bullying them if i remain present. Working so far! Im hoping things will cool off in Autumn. I actually have always loved sparrows and their chirping, it was more the dominance over the other species that bugged me - but i've now seen two goldfinches stand firm in the face of a sparrow dive bomb seemingly unphased which was great, and also saw a robin peck at a sparrows bum which cracked me up, so a fight back has begun! Cheers.