We have not been in our house long and the garden in the morning and evening is alive with sparrows. they are pretty much the only birds we have at the moment (the house had been empty for a while) and i delight in watching them while i am eating my breakfast.
We have a holly tree in the garden where the sparrows nest but there are fewer here than last year, sadly. I'm not sure why as I feed the birds with seed, currants and lots of fruit. We have several families of blackbirds, plus thrushes, which is wonderful as I rarely saw them in my previous house in Hampshire. We are down on robins, too. We also get dunnocks and blue and great tits but not in great numbers so I am wondering if the colder weather is having an effect. It is as cold here as early Spring and I wonder if this is affecting the insect population - does anybody know?
We have large groups of sparrows living in and around our garden which is on the Isle of Dogs in East London, which says that you don't have to live in the middle of the countryside to get a decent population. I think there is a fair bit of neighbourhood feeding going on, including by me! The adults are bringing their young to feed, and I love to watch the youngsters "flutter-begging" as I call it. I can just hear the parents saying "There's some really good fast-food outlets around here - stick with it, kid."
I just found this site a few months ago and decided to do my bit, i have been feeding a family of blue tits and have loved watching them they seem to have stopped coming, also i put out fat balls and bags of seeds in my yard and ended up with 11 sparrows, i hadn't seen sparrows here for about 5 year so thats been fun they seem to have deserted me too?
I encourage small birds with an adjustable bird food sanctuary by Meripac. You can set the size of holes to accommodate different species. I have mine so birds up to blackbird size can go in but doves and pigeons can't. It is used every day, and I put out other food for all birds. It keeps out cats and birds of prey - from Soar Mill Seeds. A blackbird waits on the wall every morning for me to come with the food, which alerts the rest that breakfast is being served!
This is strange. Earlier in the year April May time we had loads of sparrows visiting the garden feeders along with a couple of robins some type of tit blackbirds etc. Now there seems to be hardly any activity.
When I lived in the surburbs of B'ham I had loads of gold-green-bull finches, blue-coal-great tits etc but no sparrows or starlings. Now I have moved to the country I have had loads of sparrows and starlings but very few of the others although I did put up two niger feeders in the front garden which encouraged the goldfinches and they are now eating me out of house and home - at least 3 kg a week. I did at one time have a kestrel and amazingly enough a green parrot daily for about 6 months but he seems to have disappeared now. I also had one robin who used to come and tap on the lounge window for his daily supply of mealy worms when he was feeding young. Being disabled my birds give me so much pleasure to sit and watch.
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