Good song sparrows (1 Viewer)

Hi,

Those house sparrows have become a true nuisance in my backyard. Currently, they're having a hard time getting some share out of the feeder. A small group of territorial song sparrows often visit my yard, and unlike many other native birds (juncos, finches, etc), they're not easily intimidated, and it's always the songs that chases away the house sparrows. Therefore, house sparrows became more wary before visiting the feeder, and they're not as abundant in my yard as before. Other bird species also recieved chance to get some share out of it. A good solution for house sparrows is attracting song sparrows.

Tim

The House Sparrows at my feeder eat about 95 percent of the seed in the feeders. It seems the only thing they do not like is the suet. They try the niger seed (not really to their liking), the peanuts (they eat some of them) and the black oil sunflower seed (they really devour this!). Unfortunately we only occasionally get a Song Sparrow in our yard. I believe the House Sparrows are actually keeping the native sparrows away from our yard.

When I first made an attempt to get rid of these sparrows, what I did was I changed all the seeds into entirely black and oil sunflower. The house sparrows didn't arrive for a while (it's not their favorite food), but when they tasted it, they started to arrive in small numbers, which became really irritating. I don't think there's really a way to dispose every single house sparrows from coming to any backyards in U.S. Have you tried setting up house sparrow traps in your yard? I've never done it before, but you can try to see if it controls their numbers. If there's a raptor center nearby, that's where you can deliver the trapped birds. If not, well, then, I guess you'll have to use the "unkind" way for them...

Tim

Ok, maybe I was rather wrong about song sparrows (SOSP) being able to defend of those house sparrows (HOSP). Today, a swarm of 15-20 HOSP suddenly arrived, all fighting for the feeder. I realized that one SOSP can defeat 3 HOSP, but two SOSPs were invaded by 10 HOSP, and now, they're outnumbered roughly 5 to 1. The numbers of HOSP are increasing, and there are too many of them for SOSP to intimidate with. Anyone else here had success with getting rid of HOSP by attracting larger bird species? If not, what other techniques did you use?

Tim