It is known that many birds only use gardens and feeders at certain time of the year, does anyone know if dunnocks and wrens are like this?
When we first started creating our wildlife garden we had a fiesty little wren nearly always about and one or maybe two dunnocks lurking around the edges. However we haven't seen either species for many months now, even though our bushes and shrubs are denser and there is more food around.
We live right in the middle of London, we have some small parks and a school nearby, but only our little row is houses with gardens, mostly nearby its blocks.
We have a lot more sparrows and blue tits than when we first arrived, they certainly seem to be benefitting from what we've done. We did have a pair sparrowhawks hunting around everyday for a few months around the time both species seemed to stop appearing, but the hawks have also gone now and I only ever saw them kill pigeons (I liked this - the pigeons are a pain) and blue tits.
Happily the dunnocks are back, at least 2 and I see them very easily every day, often in very visible places, like on the shed roof or out on the lawn. Its difficult to believe they were here all along, does anyone know what their home range sizes are? Or do they disperse far after fledging (these could be new birds).
No wrens still though.
I do notice the sparrows do dominate our feeders, they definitely put the goldfinches off the nyjer feeder. Not a problem though, I like sparrows as much as the next bird.
Its been interesting seeing changes in numbers over the last year or so. We were the first in our row to put up nyjer seed and for a long while it was always full of goldfinches, then 2 doors down put one up and the goldfinches seem to prefer that one. The sparrow numbers around here have boomed this last year and sparrows dominate all our feeders, but just 2 doors down I only ever see goldfinches on theirs, like gang boundaries... The only time the sparrows get booted off is when the occasional starling flocks storm in. Having said all that somehow in amongst all that the tits seem to do very nicely nipping in and around the squabbles.
We are getting all usual birds, but would like to pick on one point Marjus made and that is, 'there is a distinct lack of thrushes'. We always would see at least a couple of thrushes but not one now for quite some time.