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Are all sparrows of the devil? (1 Viewer)

babycakes said:
The numbers are seriously falling in Britain, and the Starlings...

The Grey squirrel don't help either....Killed so many of our RED ONES..:C

I HAVE seen Grey squirrels come in our garden, and look for sparrow eggs, dunnocks, robins eggs.:-C


I am frankly sick of them....Wish all would just go away... they carry lung worm disease.....never should come to OUR Britain..:t:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign enuff said...:t:
Click to expand...


You're not the only one, I hear Italy has a huge problem with Grays (Grey as you people spell..haha).

I have them naturally by me and I love them, the funniest living beings in the garden! Some people here in the USA try to stop them from hitting the bird feeder, like the idea of a squirrel on their feeder ruins their day. Only difference from a bird to a squirrel is we human picked a good guy and a bad guy. Nature does not work like that, where there is food there is life, invite life into your yard and you will get it but no one ever said you get to choose. That is why I always tell people that don't want squirrels at there feeder to just give them their own easy to reach feeder, it works every time. In Chicago where i live we are broken up in neighborhoods, usually each one can be a few blocks or a few miles. Funny part about about it is that some neighborhoods have Fox Squirrels and some have Grays. No one knows why one type will be in one area but across the street another type thrives.

I understand your feelings on the Gray, it is the same feeling many in the USA have about house Sparrows.
 
It's funny how things aren't a problem, until they're a problem. We used to feed the squirrels until my wife realized what was chewing holes in the curtains she made for the back patio. They also like chewing the wood on our house and have taken up residence in the walls and attic of our finished shed. Well, we don't feed the squirrels anymore.

Raccoons were fun to watch until I kept having to repair where they tried to tear into the eaves to have a litter, among other things.

The first house sparrows introduced to the US didn't make it, so they tried again, and again. I bet those people were really excited when they finally started to see house sparrows survive in the US, probably as excited as people were to see grey squirrels running around the British Isles. It wasn't a problem until it was a problem. And, it's not a problem unless it's YOUR problem.

I expect most people have pests they make an effort to control, whether it's bugs eating your tomato plants, spiders in the house, or that mosquito on your leg that isn't doing anything except trying to survive in this terrible human-controlled world they now live in. We each have a line where we no longer fight the urge to use our evolutionary (or God-given) dominance to our advantage.

So, my experiments continue:
- Almost a week of nyjer in one feeder has proven that none of the birds like nyjer, except for bored/young house sparrows and a Bewick's Wren I saw on there once.
- 100% safflower in the other feeder yielded good results with the return of the chickadee, cardinal family, blue jay family, lots of house finches, and very few house sparrows. So far this has yielded the best results for me.

too be continued...
 
Just my tuppenceworth, but when I was a kid 40 years ago, you'd see flocks of 100+ sparrows and think nothing of it. These days it is rare to see more than 10 to 20. I don't recall there being any conflict whatsoever with other birds, then or now, but I might qualify that... When working in Edinburgh, I'd routinely throw down crumbs for the birds and the lovely little sparrows didn't take any nonsense from the much bigger pigeons. I don't think that really counts however, because it was a wholly unnatural context created by me.
If you do have sparrows hogging the feeder, keep feeding them. Don't forget you are still taking pressure of the other natural food sources, and the other birds will have less competition if the sparrows are busy with your feeders.
My point is, other bird populations have survived to coexist with much denser sparrow populations, so its unlikely to be creating issues when sparrow numbers are depressed.

My last point however, is that sparrows do flock, whereas many other wild birds are more solitary. If your other birds are disappearing but not your sparrows, before you blame the sparrows, just stop to consider that the many eyes of the flock may be much more alert to predators than solitary birds, and the culprit might very well be a domestic cat or similar predator which has more success catching solitary birds but is undone by the cooperation of the sparrows.

Edit: Just to add, if it is a predator depressing bird numbers, the alarms of the alert sparrows will be helping the situation by warning other birds too, and not contributing to the problem. Your predator might even be avoiding the sparrows for that very reason.
 
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wrambler said:
So, my experiments continue:
- Almost a week of nyjer in one feeder has proven that none of the birds like nyjer, except for bored/young house sparrows and a Bewick's Wren I saw on there once.
- 100% safflower in the other feeder yielded good results with the return of the chickadee, cardinal family, blue jay family, lots of house finches, and very few house sparrows. So far this has yielded the best results for me.
Click to expand...

IMO, the easiest thing to do is to simply get rid of the seed feeders and plant natural food and shelter plants with well-considered landscaping. (Well, it may help as much as you like if you have neighbors with feeding troughs.) Also, flush the HOSPs out of any roosting spot (dense hedges) and don't let them nest. If you don't feed them they won't stick around.

There are no feeders in my immediate neighborhood, and there are a variety of yard birds all over my yard and up in all the trees and shrubs. Less than 5% of the birds in my yard are house sparrows, and often none. Seed feeders just result in a bunch of nasty pigs fighting at the trough, followed by rodent problems. My yard birds are peacefully foraging and resting without the "fast food".
 
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StanS said:
Just my tuppenceworth, but when I was a kid 40 years ago, you'd see flocks of 100+ sparrows and think nothing of it. These days it is rare to see more than 10 to 20. I don't recall there being any conflict whatsoever with other birds, then or now, but I might qualify that... When working in Edinburgh, I'd routinely throw down crumbs for the birds and the lovely little sparrows didn't take any nonsense from the much bigger pigeons.
Click to expand...
I remember sparrows hopping around your legs and taking away quite large pieces of bread, carefully positioned so the beak held the bread exactly in the middle, then the bird would crouch and jump up in order to become airborne, flying far away. Pigeons would only get smaller pieces and often would grab a piece and jerk their head up so bread tears apart, they swallow the smaller bit and the larger part falls somewhere behind them and another bird gets it (often a sparrow).

Today our sparrows often keep to bushes and only come to peck on smaller crumbs. Only in one hotspot have I seen them mingling around people's feet (although that population is unusual otherwise, thinking that Danube is a park puddle and pecking around water's edge and sitting on weeds protruding from water and nesting in boats). Bread also seems different? I guess it breaks into smaller crumbs more easily so birds don't need to use acrobatics.
 
I know of a mature hawthorn hedge where house sparrows roost in recent times their numbers have fallen but
In this hedge I have often heard them cheeping and calling to one another its the main roost site which falls
down a pathway between houseing estates and other houseing they seem quite happy there with a mix of Ivy
that gives them more cover I have had up to 70 birds in there roosting In the last 10/15 years and a field near
By when it was ploughed flocks of 70 or more birds but now days I,m just pleased to see them I remember one
Year I was priviledged to see my first well almost first pure albino house sparrow with a flock there in the
Ploughed field apart from one black primary in a wing around 1990 most likely the only time I,ll ever see such
A bird, with the vast numbers mentioned on this post personally speaking this year I have not located one local
Nest site around me thou we have a few pairs around we may see some youngsters soon like last year I hope
So anyway.
 
bkrownd said:
IMO, the easiest thing to do is to simply get rid of the seed feeders and plant natural food and shelter plants with well-considered landscaping. (Well, it may help as much as you like if you have neighbors with feeding troughs.) Also, flush the HOSPs out of any roosting spot (dense hedges) and don't let them nest. If you don't feed them they won't stick around.

There are no feeders in my immediate neighborhood, and there are a variety of yard birds all over my yard and up in all the trees and shrubs. Less than 5% of the birds in my yard are house sparrows, and often none. Seed feeders just result in a bunch of nasty pigs fighting at the trough, followed by rodent problems. My yard birds are peacefully foraging and resting without the "fast food".
Click to expand...
Your winter climate is very different to the climate that many of us have to deal with. When there is three feet of snow on the ground, I believe that birds appreciate the supplementary feed that we give them through the use of seed feeders.
 
This thread started out as a discussion of House Sparrows in North America. It's nice to know how much they are appreciated on their home turf but most of us don't want them here in North America. They are an invasive species that competes with native species for food and nesting space. That puts more stress on our already stressed native species. Unfortunately the truth is that they are here and are here to stay. If I could wave a magic wand and send all the invasive species back to where they came from I would do it. Since I can't do that then the other approach is to learn to live with the invaders. When we had livestock here the sparrows used to help themselves to the animal feed. After we got rid of all of our animals the sparrows switched over to our bird feeders. We used to have 40 -50 House Sparrows living in the garden and using the feeders. They took over the Tree swallow and chickadee boxes. Today we don't have any. I might see one or two a year and they seem to be just passing in through. The reason the sparrows left was because I got rid of all the cheap seed mixes and feed only BOS or BOS/Safflower and the sparrows don't seem to like either seed. I do have nyger in a tube feeder but only the finches go for it.
Starlings are a different matter. I just had a visit from a medium sized flock, less than 100 birds. They land on the lawn and scavenge for spilled seed or whatever they can find. They don't go on my feeders. They try to take over the kestrel box but the kestrels soon chase them away. There is a roosting site not too far away, under a bridge, is being used by an estimated 10000 starlings. I wonder what all those bird droppings are doing to the steel beams of the bridge.
 
With a go of your magic wand I would trade you our sparrows for your North American grey squirrels any day of the week Dan. Our cute and cuddly little red squirrels can't compete. They don't survive the squirrel pox and the greys eat the nuts before the fruit is ripe whereas the reds only eat them ripe. The reds only survive in pockets.
As such, the greys are classified as vermin, and if injured, it's against the law for vets release them to the wild.
It's a real shame the European sparrows are on the march, but their populations have been hammered here with modern farming methods. Funny how these critters developed over thousands of years until we came along with our methods.

Edit: By the way, I didn't appreciate that sparrows and starlings were so aggressive to bluebirds. I hope my comments don't seem insensitive in the circumstances.
 
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Yes I agree stan would do a straight swap for their house sparrows In exchange for our grey squirrels one less predator
To worry about in the gardens as far as nesting birds went and where any red squirrels were too.
 
careful what we wish for........

Remove a predator and another may well fill the niche - possibly the ones we deem to be natural rather than the ones we deemed un-natural. Net result may well be same as what we have.

Unless we're just about deciding which species we like and which ones we don't, as we've been doing for so long and messing ecosystems right up along the way.
 
I share your feelings about Gray Squirrels. We don't have them here and if I saw one I would do everything in my power to trap or shoot it. The Red Squirrel is our native squirrel and we would like to keep it that way.
The Gray Squirrel is a creature that belongs in the eastern/southern USA with a toe hold in southern Ontario and Quebec. Unfortunately they have expanded their range to further north and east in Canada displacing the Reds in the process.
 
snowyowl said:
The Red Squirrel is our native squirrel and we would like to keep it that way.
The Gray Squirrel is a creature that belongs in the eastern/southern USA with a toe hold in southern Ontario and Quebec. Unfortunately they have expanded their range to further north and east in Canada displacing the Reds in the process.
Click to expand...

Dan, so is it widely considered in Canada that this displacement north of the Gray is unnatural?

The relationship with the Grey in Britain is a different situation that many might like to undo. However, those that remove them create a space for more to eventually move back - great if you're someone who likes removing squirrels though I suppose. They are now part of the UK just like Passer Domesticus is part of the North American (and other) fauna and there isn't much chance of turning the clock back.

Where the island mass is small enough, I'm sure removal of unwanted guests can prove extremely worthwhile however. Red Squirrels on Isle of Wight must be a worthy cause?
 
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snowyowl said:
The reason the sparrows left was because I got rid of all the cheap seed mixes and feed only BOS or BOS/Safflower and the sparrows don't seem to like either seed. I do have nyger in a tube feeder but only the finches go for it.
Starlings are a different matter. I just had a visit from a medium sized flock, less than 100 birds. They land on the lawn and scavenge for spilled seed or whatever they can find. They don't go on my feeders. They try to take over the kestrel box but the kestrels soon chase them away. There is a roosting site not too far away, under a bridge, is being used by an estimated 10000 starlings. I wonder what all those bird droppings are doing to the steel beams of the bridge.
Click to expand...

This is what I've found, too. Recently I picked up a different seed mix because it was pretty cheap and I figured it would keep the squirrels occupied or something. Within days there were flocks of House Sparrows with their juveniles all over my yard. I usually don't see them at all. Needless to say, I stopped putting that seed mix out. I really think it's the milo that attracts them because that was the main difference between that seed mix and my usual seed mix. Like you said, they don't seem interested in sunflower or safflower seeds.

I find with the Starlings that it's the suet that they really love (they won't come to the regular feeders) and if I take the suet down for a few days, then the Starlings will leave for a little. I am recently having problems, however, with Grackles. There had been one or two visiting my feeder for a few weeks, but yesterday there was a whole flock. They seem to eat anything and will bully other birds off the feeder. One was even on my suet feeder which I hadn't seen before. Since they eat anything, I don't really have a method for keeping them away like I do with the Sparrows and Starlings. I feel like if they keep coming, my only option is to take my feeders down for a little, which I really don't want to do. I guess I could leave the tube feeders, though.
 
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Starlings and Grackles eat suet eagerly, but they have a hard time clinging upside down. Cover the suet feeder with a plastic bell, so that only the bottom is exposed. Woodpeckers and chickadees manage that easily, sparrows, starlings and their ilk cannot.

Does not keep them from trying, but they lose interest after a while.
 
I wouldn't say that the expansion of Gray Squirrels was unnatural, but certainly unwanted. Here, since we are an island, it would be unnatural. Any arriving would have to come across 14 km on the winter ice or as stowaways on vehicles. Coyotes got here across the ice. House Sparrows and European Starlings were deliberately introduced and are therefore unnatural.
Last winter we visited the Florida Everglades and encountered the most extremely example of the danger from introduced species that I could ever imagine. I was told by the tour guides that, in past years, when they led tours through the Everglades they invariably saw some mammals, whether deer, raccoon, possum, rabbit or whatever it might be. Today the place is a desert as far as mammals are concerned. The reason - pythons, whether escaped or released I don't know nor does it really matter. I hope that the problem is localized to the area we were visiting but I was told not.:-C
 
etudiant said:
Starlings and Grackles eat suet eagerly, but they have a hard time clinging upside down. Cover the suet feeder with a plastic bell, so that only the bottom is exposed. Woodpeckers and chickadees manage that easily, sparrows, starlings and their ilk cannot.

Does not keep them from trying, but they lose interest after a while.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. I read about that before and I guess I will have to try that soon if the Starlings keep coming, which they do. I'm afraid that the Grackles will remain as they seem to like eating seed, too, but at least they won't be on the suet.
 
snowyowl said:
Last winter we visited the Florida Everglades and encountered the most extremely example of the danger from introduced species that I could ever imagine. I was told by the tour guides that, in past years, when they led tours through the Everglades they invariably saw some mammals, whether deer, raccoon, possum, rabbit or whatever it might be. Today the place is a desert as far as mammals are concerned. The reason - pythons, whether escaped or released I don't know nor does it really matter. I hope that the problem is localized to the area we were visiting but I was told not.:-C
Click to expand...

The Human problem here is probably not reversable, exaserbated from a desire to own and collect non-native species with little desire for controls. I read somewhere that there are more Tigers kept as pets in the US than there are in their natural wild - is this true?
 
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