Kitchen Garden Forum

Our sparrow population looks very healthy for the future. We have new arrivals in the shape of the second brood hanging around the feeders being fed by the cocks. The hens, we assume, are on the next clutch of eggs.

Evening Alan, we have loads too, but they are being a real nuisance with the beetroot seedlings.

We have masses of Sparrows as well. They have been building up for a couple of years now after a total absence of about 15 years.
The RSPB say the Sparrow is in steep decline yet my observations are that they have moved out of towns into the countryside.
Of course I will be wrong according to the RSPB who depend far too much on the Spring Garden Bird Count.
JB.

Lots of young here: more than normal.

I reckon the late spring means more insects for the young...

(Same for great tits)

We have more sparrows than in recent years, too, and, like OH, they are playing havoc with our beetroot, cut-and-come-again lettuce and the tops of the peas, eating the young shoots! I thought it might be the dry weather so have put out lots of trays with water, but they are still dining on the veggies.

Hi OH & Monika

What you have seem to be hooligan English sparrows (Passer domesticus subsp. Asboensis

Ours are much better behaved, their only misdemeanour being dustbathing on the polytunnel path and covering nearby plants with dust. Otherwise it's chapel on Sunday, choir on Thursday and the rest of the time good honest toil

Ours dine on seeds too which we give them and leave the rest alone - touch wood.

I'm delighted to read that they're not in decline elsewhere because we rarely see one around here these days. Don't know whether it's because we have a lot of relatively modern houses with plastic eaves, etc. and most of their traditional habitats no longer exist. And the siskins and greenfinches have all but disappeared too.

Yesterday we didn't see a single one of the hundreds Maybe they've all migrated to the fields. Or they'll just as suddenly reappear.

Our sparrows have discovered strawberrries.. I rescued one under the nets this morning...

Still no sparrows today - well, just one, and now he's gone too.

...then suddenly yesterday afternoon they were back

Where they had been I don't know, but they were certainly ready for a feed

Lots of sparrows in my garden eating hearts that I keep putting out, I have a whole family of chaffinches as well never had them before in the garden, Blue tits nested in the box in the trellis earlier none have come back since the babies fledged.
Bren

I have had House Sparrows in my garden for the first time in a few years too. All the houses around here have UPVC soffits etc. but we used to still have Sparrows visiting the feeders, then they just disappeared. There hasn't been flocks but there are regularly half a dozen of the bonny little things on the feeders and stuff on the ground...one was even doing acrobatics on the fat ball yesterday morning. There have been no Greenfinches or Chaffinches this year either.
Cheers.

There I was looking out of the kitchen window as I was preparing the vegetables for lunch at the latest brood of sparrows which were hunting in and out of the bushes for a morsel or two when a Sparrowhawk appeared from nowhere and took one of them.Silence.I've seen birds disappear so quickly and not a peep for about an hour.