What I like about sparrows most is when I see them flitting around my plants, clreaning them of aphids! For some reason they don't like blackfly though, so still have to keep an eye on the broad beans and dahlias, which the blackfly seem to prefer. Had a host of around 50 house sparrows in 2011, but a sparrowhawk started to regularly appear and was down to about 20 last year. The most I've seen visiting my feeders at any one time this winter/spring was about 8, but hopefully numbers will rise agin once the breeding season starts.
A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
The sound of housesparrows in the eaves of the farmhouse where I grew up is one of the strongest memories of my childhood, as are the images of them scuttering around in dustbaths in the dried dust of the farmyard in summer. They were very numerous and hoovered up the inevitable spillages of grain at harvest time.
Then they seemed to disappear from my life until I moved to my previous house in a Victorian terraced street where most of the roofs were of traditional pantiles - a neighbour was very keen on birds and had shrubs growing right up his windows and a flock of noisy sparrows spent their days in his cotoneaster and nested in his roof.
Now we've moved here and our new neighbour's roof provides a nesting site for house sparrows and starlings, and their chatter fills my days again
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I think alot of the disapearing wildlife is due to the way we are living our lives.Roof extentions are everywhere as are gravel and bricked over front gardens where no hedgehog can live or birds in the cold sterile surroundings.I like tidy garden but to have one perfect and no wild over patches is a bad thing for wildlife,along with our interferences with the natures chain.
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we have about thirty around the flats where i live.
three of us regularly feed them. and put out water.
What I like about sparrows most is when I see them flitting around my plants, clreaning them of aphids! For some reason they don't like blackfly though, so still have to keep an eye on the broad beans and dahlias, which the blackfly seem to prefer. Had a host of around 50 house sparrows in 2011, but a sparrowhawk started to regularly appear and was down to about 20 last year. The most I've seen visiting my feeders at any one time this winter/spring was about 8, but hopefully numbers will rise agin once the breeding season starts.
The sound of housesparrows in the eaves of the farmhouse where I grew up is one of the strongest memories of my childhood, as are the images of them scuttering around in dustbaths in the dried dust of the farmyard in summer. They were very numerous and hoovered up the inevitable spillages of grain at harvest time.
Then they seemed to disappear from my life until I moved to my previous house in a Victorian terraced street where most of the roofs were of traditional pantiles - a neighbour was very keen on birds and had shrubs growing right up his windows and a flock of noisy sparrows spent their days in his cotoneaster and nested in his roof.
Now we've moved here and our new neighbour's roof provides a nesting site for house sparrows and starlings, and their chatter fills my days again
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I think alot of the disapearing wildlife is due to the way we are living our lives.Roof extentions are everywhere as are gravel and bricked over front gardens where no hedgehog can live or birds in the cold sterile surroundings.I like tidy garden but to have one perfect and no wild over patches is a bad thing for wildlife,along with our interferences with the natures chain.