The message
from "Mike Lyle" contains these words:

They're the glamorous species, [predators]
not the sparrows.

--
Mike.

We are fortunate in having a large Russian Vine on the front of the
house. It serves as a shelter for dozens of flocking sparrows each
evening. They zoom into the vine in small flights of about five birds.
Julie often comments "There go the Spitfires again" as they fy in from
their various mustering points

--
Cheers,

Compo.

The message
from compo contains these words:
The message
from "Mike Lyle" contains these words:

They're the glamorous species, [predators]
not the sparrows.


We are fortunate in having a large Russian Vine on the front of the
house. It serves as a shelter for dozens of flocking sparrows

Language!

Oh, *FLOCKING* - as you were.

each
evening. They zoom into the vine in small flights of about five birds.
Julie often comments "There go the Spitfires again" as they fy in from
their various mustering points

I have an ivy tree: properly, it's an old steel irrigation pipe set
upright in the ground, with varigated ivy growing up it. It's got to the
stage where the whole of the pipe is covered in stems so it looks like
bark, and the top is bunched-out in the form of a small tree -
prunus/flowering cherry, etc, but much denser. The sparrows love that.

--
Rusty
Emus to: horrid dot squeak snailything zetnet point co full-stop uk
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/

There does not seem to be a parallel decline in the blackbird population.
Song thrushes appear to be more specialised than blackbirds and spend a lot
of time going after snails braking shells etc.
I try to help by not using of slug pellets-I have seen a young thrush dead
after eating snail corpses.
On the optimisitc side they are shier than blackbirds-earlier this year I
have heard two singing before 6 in the morning and not seen any at all
during the day.
david T
As for house sparrows, there are still a lot in our area (South Devon) When
I was young you used to see them foraging in spilt grain and horse muck.
There
"Colin" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 21 Aug 2005 14:47:21 +0100, John wrote:

On Sun, 21 Aug 2005 15:21:49 +0200, martin wrote:

On Sun, 21 Aug 2005 13:23:20 +0100, Jaques d'Alltrades
wrote:

The message
from martin contains these words:

.... how many sparrow hawks does it take to eat millions of sparrows
per year??

Divide 'millions' by (say) 10 ? 7 ? 52 and you might be surprised at the
result.

To save you the trouble, somewhere near 275 sparrowhawks per million
sparrows, assuming that one sparrowhawk will kill (and not necessarily
eat all of) ten sparrows per day.

Oh, and I didn't see the OP (probably crossposted), but the songthrushe
population is *NOT* declining, it is growing quite markedly.

http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/housesparrow.htm
The House Sparrow is a Red List species owing to a serious decline
(over 60%) in its population

The guy is talking out of his backside. The song thrush is STILL very
firmly a RED LIST subject.

Quite.