Des Higgins wrote:
"Mike" wrote in message
...
Before we went away we had a great number of different birds, but mainly
Sparrows, both House and Hedge, along with Dunnocks, Blue Tits, Great Tits
etc etc etc. but there seems to be a great decline in the Sparrow
population. All the others have returned to the many feeders we have, but
the flocks of Sparrows which would number 20 - 25 sometimes, are down to
half a dozen.

I understand there has been a hard winter, is this the reason? Killed of?

House sparrow numbers have been doing odd things over the past 10 years.
Where I grew up (council estate on north side of Dublin), they used to be
easily the commonest birds and every house had one or two nests under the
roof tiles (big orange ceramic tiles). Now they are still there but in
very small numbers. Where I live now (Dublin suburbs, we have a local
resident flock of about 10 birds. I worry that nesting sites in cities are
getting harder to find as people do not like them nesting in their fascia
and soffits and under tiles. Suburban gardens are also now tidier, possibly
with more cats and fewer big seed covered weeds? I wonder what the sparrow
numbers are doing in the countryside?

This is not scientific, but they are one of the most numerous visitors
to my feeders. The tits (great, blue and coal) are next, followed by
green finches and chaffinches. We had a few magnificent gold finches
around during the long cold spell of early spring, but no sighting of
them this week end (I am a week end observer, not being about in
daylight hours during the week).

Cat(h)