All our sparrows have gone.

Hi Alan
Firstly thank you for taking the time to reply,
No absolutely nothing, with the year we have had nothing has changed.
The summer was normal with the sound of the hedge alive and well it’s 40’ long and at least 6’ wide and every year around the end of October I put the two bird feeders out to start to show them there’s extra food through the winter.
It was November when I noticed the food hadn’t been touched, I’ve been checking the hedge every week through December and not a single sparrow.
It’s never changed in the 20 years we’ve been here.

Hi Neil, very strange that they have all gone. If they bred and raised their young as normal this year and yet none have returned when they normally would have, something has stopped them. As Robbo has said could be disease, but again odd that would have wiped them all out, or as Alan has said interrupted/disruption of some sort? Keep us updated, would be interesting to find out what happens.

Hi All
Thank you for helping but....
I think we need to start again as I’m not just giving up on this but I believe I’m limited in the knowledge of this subject and thus not helping very much with my answers. All I know is we had a beautiful beech hedge that was very much alive all through the seasons with our “sparrows” and suddenly within a few months there all gone after 20+ years, even with limited knowledge of birds I know this is wrong.
So I will try and answer your very good questions again.
I know there has been no building work in the area apart from a small shed being erected by a neighbour.
As for breeding I can only imagine they have bred in this hedge every year for generations as there has never been a month when they were not there.
We have had a cat all the time we have lived here and I can count on one hand how many birds it has caught in the last 10 years. I have gone through every month for this year of what we did or what happened differently and I can’t think of any change to any other year.
So we’re left with a beech hedge that suddenly doesn’t seem so beautiful any more and bird feeders with no use as they are usually ravaged by them and changed weekly.

Predation threat often causes them to leave; perhaps a new cat in the territory. Unfortunately cats have catastrophic effects on small fragmented populations as with birds like sparrows.