House Sparrows - eating us out of house and home.

staffitaxi

staffitaxi

Suspended / Banned
Messages
1,702
Name
Andrea
Edit My Images
Yes
Much as I like sparrows it would be really nice to get something a bit more colourful at our bird feeders.

Also they are costing us a fortune in bird food as they fly into the garden in a gang of up to 30 birds at a time, arriving in tens until the bushes around the water feature are full of them. They are emptying two large feeders of mixed seeds / mealworms in the space of about two days and then starting on the nuts!

They have managed to draw such attention to themselves that a couple of them have been swooped away by a kestrel for lunch! (This normally happens when I'm not there typically) Not really suprising though as they must be pretty fat and tempting by now!

Do we just have to be patient and hope the more colourful birds start to pop by as it starts to get colder?
 
I've got a flock of about 30 house sparrows on my feeders but seeing as they are on the red list I'm happy to have them. I do however also have about 20+ goldfinches that visit constantly. I've got niger seed and sunflower hearts in the feeders which the goldfinches love maybe try some niger seed and see if that attracts any goldfinches?

ps Wilkos are the cheapest I've found for niger seed and suet pellets I get sunflower heart in 25kg bags from here but they have just gone up in price to £40 http://wildbirdfood.uk.com/acatalog/Plain_Seeds_and_Peanuts.html

staffitaxi said:
Much as I like sparrows it would be really nice to get something a bit more colourful at our bird feeders.

Also they are costing us a fortune in bird food as they fly into the garden in a gang of up to 30 birds at a time, arriving in tens until the bushes around the water feature are full of them. They are emptying two large feeders of mixed seeds / mealworms in the space of about two days and then starting on the nuts!

They have managed to draw such attention to themselves that a couple of them have been swooped away by a kestrel for lunch! (This normally happens when I'm not there typically) Not really suprising though as they must be pretty fat and tempting by now!

Do we just have to be patient and hope the more colourful birds start to pop by as it starts to get colder?
Click to expand...
 
stormcrow said:
I've got a flock of about 30 house sparrows on my feeders but seeing as they are on the red list I'm happy to have them. I do however also have about 20+ goldfinches that visit constantly. I've got niger seed and sunflower hearts in the feeders which the goldfinches love maybe try some niger seed and see if that attracts any goldfinches?
Click to expand...

We are happy to have them too, but they aren't arf greedy little beggars.

We already add sunflower hearts and thistle seed (don't know if that's the same as niger) to the feeders.

YV - Far to quick off the mark to be able to box them up for you I'm afraid . They are lovely to watch though, I guess we are lucky in that they use the waterfall feature to bathe and drink as well, perhaps that is why they are so attracted to the garden.

Its only since we built the new feeding station and moved it to a more secluded location close to bushes and water that we've really had any birds using them at all so I suppose we should be grateful.
 
LOL, a big net perhaps Andrea!

Seriously, it is very strange, sparrow numbers as we all know have plummeted, but you can still see them in most places. I can go 2 miles in any direction from here and see them, but our immediate neighbourhood is an absolute sparrow free zone! :shrug:

We get almost every other common bird on our feeders, this year we have added gold and greenfinches, siskins and parakeets to the usual array of coal/blue/great/long tail tits, robins, chaffinch, black caps, GSW's [and greens feeding on the grass edges] and so on...but no sparrows and for the last 2 years, not a starling in sight either. That is probably even odder, because for the previous 4 yrs I couldn't keep up with the amount of food the starlings would take. :shrug: :thinking:
 
I have a couple feeders of 100% sunflower hearts and the sparrows don't touch those quite as much as mixed seed food. I do however put out food for the sparrows at the other side of the house. I have a lot of feeders :lol:

Sunflower hearts at my location attract all the finches (including gold finches). I know from personal experience that birds have different tastes in different areas of the country though!

Just a thought... maybe split the food types up to different feeders if you're able? Because some bird species can bossy little so-in-sos and scare others away from THEIR feeder
 
Last edited:
We too have a group (or groups) of house sparrows that visit the sunflower hearts feeders. However, they seem to have their fill and fly off and the blue. great and for the first time today long tailed tits arrive, along with the goldfinches. It seems however, that your sparrows come to stay.

If you are feeding live mealworms try placing them much closer to the house. The sparrows here are quite tolerant of humans but no where near as tolerant as robins and great tits who will both come in the back door to take live mealworms.

Dave
 
I was feeding mine loose seed but most of it ended up on the ground so I just stick with fat balls. A lot less messy and they last a reasonable amount of time.
 
I feed mine a mixture of Red Millet, White Millet and Canary seed which the local reserve use for Tree Sparrows, Started feeding this about a year ago after 3 months a dozen Tree Sparrows appeared to supplement the growing House Sparrows now they go through 3 big feeders every couple of days Costing a fortune Tree Sparrow mix is about £40 for 60kg if i mix me own + niger and Sunflower hearts in the other feeders
 
I must have 50 or 60 Sparrows resident in the garden in dense Ivy all along one side and in big wide conifers, It's ideal roosting and nesting for them, Couple that to the fact that they're getting regularly fed and they're not going to stray far away. We get through a small fortune in seed, peanuts and fat balls.

Obviously, the regular feeding also means that the garden supports more birds which would normally move further afield soon after fledging. The numbers of Sparrows is certainly having an adverse affect on visits from other species so I know what you mean, but it's not that long ago that Sparrows were on the vermin list and shot in huge numbers, so it's sad to see them on the endangered red list today. It's actually the change in gardening practices and their disappearing habitat which has had the most adverse affect on their numbers, so at least you're helping them to get re-established.
 
Someone told me the sparrows were in decline so I don't mind feeding ours.
 
We have about 40+ in our garden at the minute (which the local sparrow hawk has been making great use of), luckily my dad gets free bags of barley from his work which they like to chow down on when they have eaten all of the mixed seed we put out, which can easily be done in one day. We get the odd blue tit, great tit, green finch, blackbird, and starlings, but during the summer we got a pair of regularly visiting yellowhammers and tree sparrows which was a nice treat :)
 
We too are inundated with them, I actually thought they were a common bird
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top