House sparrows were the most common bird for the second year in a row,
although sightings are falling. An average 4.56 sparrows were spotted
per garden this year, compared to an average of 10 in 1979, the first
year of the survey.



hmmmm, sparrows decrease, sparrow hawks increase ...see if you can work out
the connection. .

--
Tumbleweed

email replies not necessary but to contact use;
tumbleweednews at hotmail dot com

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.

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.