In article , Janet Baraclough
writes

Where we lived in rural Stirlingshire beside hillfarms, we never saw a
single house-sparrow in 20 years, although 4 miles away there were
plenty in the village. Here on Arran, we're again beside a hillfarm,
quarter mile to a village, and have a few house-sparrows in the garden,
though in smaller numbers than any of the other small birds.(Both
gardens have a wide variety of other small birds which seem able to keep
up their numbers despite the hawks etc).

Both areas have numerous birds of prey. I suspect that house-sparrows
must be the easiest small birds to catch.

Hence 'sparrowhawk'?

BTO have just done a survey of who turns up first at the bird table in
the morning (answer - blackbird). In their blurb they make the point
that it's a balancing act between getting much needed food and putting
yourself at risk by being out in the early half-light. Sparrows were
quite late in the sequence, which to my mind suggests they are a wee bit
vulnerable and counteract this by coming out later than some of the
other birds.
--
Kay
"Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river"

In article , Douglas Douglas.1k
writes

We have Sparrows up here (West Central Scotland), and too does it
surprise me to learn that they are 'scarce'.

They are not 'scarce'.
But they have declined by a large proportion over the last 20 years or
so.
A big decline from a high starting point may not make a species scarce,
but it is still a cause for concern.

--
Kay
"Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river"

Kay wrote:
In article , Douglas
Douglas.1k writes

We have Sparrows up here (West Central Scotland), and too does it
surprise me to learn that they are 'scarce'.

They are not 'scarce'.
But they have declined by a large proportion over the last 20 years
or
so.
A big decline from a high starting point may not make a species
scarce, but it is still a cause for concern.

I have no expert knowledge, but I bet house-sparrows are one of the
species which multiplied hugely because humans were about, and that
they've been declining steadily with the urban horse population. The
increase in the size of cereal fields, along with the decrease in
hedgerow cover and wild seeds for them to eat while waiting for the
grain crop, and the universal use of combine harvesters, must have
had a similar effect in the countryside.

There's a healthy little breeding colony outside my window here in
Cheltenham, though; and the fields over the road are pasture, not
arable.

Mike.

Richard Brooks wrote:
Miss Perspicacia Tick wrote:
Martin Sykes wrote:
We've just had our first ever blackcap in the garden, feeding on the
fat balls. My book says they're usually not seen until April and
even then usually in the south so it must be pretty unusual up here
in Cheshire.


We had one here (South Bucks) on Big Birdwatch weekend (29th Jan).
What I'd really love to see is a house sparrow - they've been absent
from my garden for nearly eight years now.

[snipped]

How good are you with a ladder ?

The London Wildlife Trust have a folder entitled 'Wildlife Gardening'
and there is a basic design for a house sparrow box. It's a communal
affair and I'm sure it can be made even longer for a larger community.

If you like I could try sending the scan to a binaries group for you
to look at. Personally I think that builders should have uPVC
recesses designed into the cladding.


Richard.


Thanks, Richard, but you may email me directly - the address is sarah (dot)
balfour (at) craigy34 (dot) eclipse (dot) co (dot) uk.

I'd be interested to see it, but I won't be doing anything with it as I
don't own the property (I'm still at home) but I'm sure Dad can be
persuaded! ;o) After all, it was him who evicted the last breeding pair we
had by cutting down the garria (sp?) and filling in the hole in the wall in
which they'd nested for the last goodness knows how long.

Which brings me to another point, I may possibly be the youngest posting
here - not that it bothers me, why should gardening - and the appreciation
for the natural world that accompanies it - be the preserve of the more
mature? If I could afford it, and my body would allow, I'd love to move to
the Orkneys and be self-sufficient. I have friends who are doing just that,
and they love it (they used to live in Watford!) Mind you, I just love
Scotland, full stop - and it sure as Hades beats living under the Heathrow
(and possibly Gatwick) flight path!

--
Facon - the artificial bacon bits you get in Pizza Hut for sprinkling
on salads.

[quote=Miss Perspicacia Tick]Richard Brooks wrote
Which brings me to another point, I may possibly be the youngest posting
here - not that it bothers me, why should gardening - and the appreciation
for the natural world that accompanies it - be the preserve of the more
mature?

****
I know, I'm 22 and love nothing better than to be out and about, going across hillsides or be in the undergrowth looking for insects and other associated things.
****

If I could afford it, and my body would allow, I'd love to move to
the Orkneys

With me so far I have whittled it down the Assynt area, Ardnamurchan, or one of the Hebrides, like Harris - providing you can tolerate the divebombing Terns and that it can get a bit grim at times, particularly in the winter ;-)
It takes a particular type of person.
At least Harris is too windy for midges though, unlike the other two (due the wind, there are hardly any trees, and your hair usually isn't on purpose!)

I have only ever been to the 'Orkneys for a day, so cannot coment fuly.

Problem is staying finacially ok once you are there, so yeah, you probably would have to be self sufficient to some degree at least.

If I had the money I'd probably buy the Colonsay hotel (I have great memories of that place).

****
- and it sure as Hades beats living under the Heathrow
(and possibly Gatwick) flight path!

****
At least you would have had Concorde to look at though.
I would have loved to see that beautiful bird more (trying to stay vainly on topic).

Anyway, I thougth you would get used to the noise??

Janet Baraclough wrote:
The message
from "Miss Perspicacia Tick" contains these words:

Which brings me to another point, I may possibly be the youngest
posting here -

How old are you? Several posters here are in their second
childhood.

not that it bothers me, why should gardening - and the appreciation
for the natural world that accompanies it - be the preserve of the
more mature?

Nobody said it should. However, many offspring go through a stage
where they feel obliged to ignore/escape their parents influence,
opinions and tastes in every possible way, including gardening.IME,
enthusiasm for gardening usually lies dormant until the younger
generation is old enough to have left home and find their own small
patch of bare earth to potter in.

Janet.

I'm hopeful to think that there is a generation of women who have their own
garden/potting shed, an old comfy chair, radio and wine cooler to retire to.

Schools surely still get children involved with growing mustard and cress at
least, or working on a wildlife garden in the grounds ? This might be
partly why some younger people get involved later as I've found that younger
relatives are a kind of toleration for the elderly, the youngster asking all
kinds of questions when all is wanted was peace and quiet whilst working on
that patch of ground! ;-)

Richard.

Richard Brooks wrote:
Janet Baraclough wrote:
The message
from "Miss Perspicacia Tick" contains these words:

Which brings me to another point, I may possibly be the youngest
posting here -

How old are you? Several posters here are in their second
childhood.

not that it bothers me, why should gardening - and the appreciation
for the natural world that accompanies it - be the preserve of the
more mature?

Nobody said it should. However, many offspring go through a stage
where they feel obliged to ignore/escape their parents influence,
opinions and tastes in every possible way, including gardening.IME,
enthusiasm for gardening usually lies dormant until the younger
generation is old enough to have left home and find their own small
patch of bare earth to potter in.

Janet.

I'm hopeful to think that there is a generation of women who have
their own garden/potting shed, an old comfy chair, radio and wine
cooler to retire to.

Schools surely still get children involved with growing mustard and
cress at least, or working on a wildlife garden in the grounds ?
This might be partly why some younger people get involved later as
I've found that younger relatives are a kind of toleration for the
elderly, the youngster asking all kinds of questions when all is
wanted was peace and quiet whilst working on that patch of ground!
;-)

Richard.


Not enough. Not a single school (unless Jane can correct me) round here has
one - I have been an LSA in several. My grandfather (89) 'teaches'
horticulture and 'nature appreciation' at Little Waltham C of E Combined and
was responsible for their wildlife garden. He also claims that he is
singularly responsible (going OT again!) for the reintroduction of the
Cinnabar and 5 and 6 Spot Burnett moths to Essex (and we need more of them -
a friend of my sister's lost her best pony last year to ragwort poisoning).
Cinnabar and Burnet(t)s feed exclusively on the noxious weed (of course the
ragwort's toxins are what make the caterpillars poisonous) but then he has
always been prone to hyperbole.

Actually, I tell a lie, I think my old school has one, set up by the last
remaining nun.

--
Facon - the artificial bacon bits you get in Pizza Hut for sprinkling
on salads.

Miss Perspicacia Tick wrote:
Richard Brooks wrote:
Miss Perspicacia Tick wrote:
Martin Sykes wrote:
We've just had our first ever blackcap in the garden, feeding on
the fat balls. My book says they're usually not seen until April
and
even then usually in the south so it must be pretty unusual up here
in Cheshire.


We had one here (South Bucks) on Big Birdwatch weekend (29th Jan).
What I'd really love to see is a house sparrow - they've been absent
from my garden for nearly eight years now.

[snipped]

How good are you with a ladder ?

The London Wildlife Trust have a folder entitled 'Wildlife Gardening'
and there is a basic design for a house sparrow box. It's a communal
affair and I'm sure it can be made even longer for a larger
community.

If you like I could try sending the scan to a binaries group for you
to look at. Personally I think that builders should have uPVC
recesses designed into the cladding.


Richard.


Thanks, Richard, but you may email me directly - the address is sarah
(dot) balfour (at) craigy34 (dot) eclipse (dot) co (dot) uk.

Did you get my scanned image as it bounced back with an autoresponder error
?


Richard.

[QUOTE

Nobody said it should. However, many offspring go through a stage
where they feel obliged to ignore/escape their parents influence,

****
They do the birds, I do the insects.
Suppose it comes from years of being dragged round places all over the country.
It is just the way I am, but I usually like the more unusual things anyway.
Birds are too common anyway ;-)
****

IME,
enthusiasm for gardening usually lies dormant until the younger
generation is old enough to have left home and find their own small
patch of bare earth to potter in.

****
I always help in the garden weeding and just generally tidying things up.
Having bought some pot plants and Bonsais, I am not interested in their upkeep.
No doubt I'll expand my activities in the future.
****

Schools surely still get children involved with growing mustard and cress at
least,

****
Yes, we grew cress once or twice
****

or working on a wildlife garden in the grounds ?

****
Are you kidding?, although my area isn't all that bad, I can still see it being destroyed by groups of neds, which is a real shame.
We wouldn't really have anywhere to put it anyway.
****

This might be
partly why some younger people get involved later

****
I was a late developer........

(Well, ok, starting to get into entemology when I was 19 is hardly late, but it simplifies things).

Plus, getting to know plants for insects is useful too.

It means you can see where a certain foodplant is, etc etc.

In article , Douglas Douglas.1k
writes

Douglas

Thanks for laying out your post nicely, snipping all but the relevant
bits and placing your responses just below the bit you were replying to.

However, I found it very difficult to see which bits in your post were
from you and which bits were quotes. If you look at the other posts
here, you will see that quotes from a previous poster have a '' in
front of each line (and from the poster before that '' and so on - is
it possible that you could do that?

I know you're posting through gardenbanter and not direct to the
newsgroup, so unlike the rest of us, you may have to do it manually
instead of having your newsgroup reading software do it automatically
for you.
--
Kay
"Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river"

Douglas wrote:
[QUOTE

Nobody said it should. However, many offspring go through a stage
where they feel obliged to ignore/escape their parents influence,

****
They do the birds, I do the insects.
Suppose it comes from years of being dragged round places all over the
country.
It is just the way I am, but I usually like the more unusual things
anyway.
Birds are too common anyway ;-)
****

IME,
enthusiasm for gardening usually lies dormant until the younger
generation is old enough to have left home and find their own small
patch of bare earth to potter in.

****
I always help in the garden weeding and just generally tidying things
up.
Having bought some pot plants and Bonsais, I am not interested in
their upkeep.
No doubt I'll expand my activities in the future.
****

Schools surely still get children involved with growing mustard and
cress at
least,

****
Yes, we grew cress once or twice
****

or working on a wildlife garden in the grounds ?

****
Are you kidding?, although my area isn't all that bad, I can still see
it being destroyed by groups of neds, which is a real shame.
We wouldn't really have anywhere to put it anyway.
****

Flanders! Get out of the school garden.

I knew there was something not right-diddly-ight about him.



This might be
partly why some younger people get involved later

****
I was a late developer........

(Well, ok, starting to get into entemology when I was 19 is hardly
late, but it simplifies things).

It's interesting how some young people take to gardening (or not)
independent of their parents. My father, who was given a market garden as a
wedding present, drank the proceeds and ruled with the back of the hand.
Most of my brothers and sisters don't have anything to do with gardening but
everywhere I move to gets turned into an allotment.

I'm in Cowley, Oxford now which is residential but my back garden is a
wildlife orchard and I'm lucky that it backs onto a larger orchard area.
Birds aplenty!


Richard.

The message
from "Miss Perspicacia Tick" contains these words:

not that it bothers me, why should gardening - and the appreciation
for the natural world that accompanies it - be the preserve of the more
mature?

I think it comes down to patience and vision. When you're a kid, a week
seems like a lifetime and you can't maintain your interest/excitement in
anything for that long. That's why kids start with cress and beansprouts
where the results are almost instantaneous.

As you grow up you start to see how a bit of investment up front can reap
rewards later. When a child looks at a patch of weeds, he/she sees the mess
that it is. Once grown up they can see the garden it could become and that
long-term gain outweighs the short-term effort of clearing it.

--
Martin & Anna Sykes
( Remove x's when replying )
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~sykesm

Martin Sykes wrote:
We've just had our first ever blackcap in the garden, feeding on the
fat balls. My book says they're usually not seen until April and even
then usually in the south so it must be pretty unusual up here in
Cheshire.

Just seen my first red kite over Cowley, Oxford which is mainly housing. In
past years they've been frequent over the A40 route but it's a first inside
the city for me.


Richard.

"Miss Perspicacia Tick" wrote in message news:MB9Rd.4738

Not enough. Not a single school (unless Jane can correct me) round here has
one - I have been an LSA in several. My grandfather (89) 'teaches'
horticulture and 'nature appreciation' at Little Waltham C of E Combined and
was responsible for their wildlife garden. He also claims that he is
singularly responsible (going OT again!) for the reintroduction of the
Cinnabar and 5 and 6 Spot Burnett moths to Essex (and we need more of them -
a friend of my sister's lost her best pony last year to ragwort poisoning).
Cinnabar and Burnet(t)s feed exclusively on the noxious weed (of course the
ragwort's toxins are what make the caterpillars poisonous) but then he has
always been prone to hyperbole.

Actually, I tell a lie, I think my old school has one, set up by the last
remaining nun.

I thought I had dealt with this one here last year. Here goes.
A lot of emotion can be stirred up by this issue bu before anyone
flames me about this I have done the detailed research to back up what
I am saying.

THere is a lot more about this on http://www.ragwortfacts.com/

It is possible, but unlikely that, ragwort caused the death of your
sister's pony. I sympathise greatly with your loss. Noone wahts to see
these beautfull animals suffer. However, the symptoms of ragwort
poisoning are simply the symptoms of liver damage which can be caused
by chemicals of all sorts. One case in the scientific literature was
actually found to be caused by an incinerator not ragwort as had ben
thought.

First of all lets deal with the moths. The burnet moths you mention
most certainly do not feed on ragwort they feed on various of the
species of Bird's foot Trefoil. THey never have disapeared from Essex.
The cinnabar moth is very common and has never become extinct anywhere
in Britain. I know there is someone going around telling people
different but it is total nonsense.


There is a lot of hysteria about ragwort.

Yes. As a scientist who has extensively studied the subject,I believe
that "hysteria" is the correct word to use. It is of course
understandable that people should have a concern for their precious
animals but there is little rational need for extreme concern and it
is hard to avoid the conclusion that people are being manipulated.
Certainly there will have been no harm done to certain organisations'
public profile.

There are certain researched facts that well support the contention
that this is hysteria. First of all there is the level of toxicity of
the plant. This is actually quite low. The toxic dose for a large
animal is in the order of several stone. This has been determined by
experimentation and one horse is known to have eaten over 20% of its
body weight of the plant and survived!. Of course horses eat a lot but
this puts the level of toxicity into context. This is not cyanide we
are taking about but a mildly toxic plant.

Now to the hysteria. The following is just one example of many. One
equine magazine on the net published a story that horses could be
poisoned by "seeds and Spores" (sic) blowing into pasture that they
would breathe in. On the basis of the level of toxicity this is
absolute nonsense. (Even if you ignore the inaccurate botany.)
Yet the story has spread. It has appeared in at least two _Government_
press releases and as even been copied by the BBC. It is hardly
suprising therefore that many people have a false picture of the real
story about his plant.

We are told that thousands of animals are poisoned by it every year.
However, what do the scientific data say? Well, there is apparently
only one set of official statistics available. These official
Government statistics were published in the official State Veterinary
Journal.
Here they a

The number of reported incidents of ragwort (Senecio jacobaea)
poisoning in cattle in England, Wales and Scotland were 26 (1985), 10
(1986), 16 (1987), 13 (1988), 7 (1989), 10 (1990).

Hardly the picture we have been led to believe and incidentally this
is supported by scientific papers from the continent which say
poisoning is rare.

I could go on with the false stories about it being a risk to people
etc. etc.

The real worry is even if the sexed up statistics that are being used
to generate hysteria are right, all the focus on ragwort may be
obscuring the true problem. THe following is a letter from a vet that
was published in the Sunday telegraph.


---------------------------------------
Cherchez les toxins Date: 3 August 2003


It seems that ragwort is fast becoming the subject of a nationwide
outburst of hysteria similar to that caused by salmonella in eggs
(News, July 27). In the hope of calming it, I offer the following
thoughts

.. Yes, ragwort is poisonous to horses, cattle and sometimes sheep. It
can cause acute liver damage in young stock, but this is rare. It is
most commonly encountered as chronic liver damage in older animals.
But ragwort is distasteful to horses and cattle, and they will eat it
only if they are half-starved on a pasture that is bare of almost
anything else.

In the agricultural depression of the 1930s and during the Second
World War, there was far more ragwort around than there is today.
There were no selective weedkillers available, so it had to be
controlled either by hand-pulling or by allowing sheep to graze off
the young plants, which are less poisonous. There were also many more
horses in the country, working on farms or pulling delivery vans.
Ragwort poisoning was a recognised disease, but not a major problem.

Any good stockman would not leave his animals on a bare pasture with
ragwort. I find it hard to believe that so many of today's horsemen
and women leave their horses on bare ragwort-infested pasture that
6,500 of animals succumb to ragwort poisoning annually. I realise that
some ragwort could be bought in with hay, but ragwort is easily
spotted, is normally rejected by the horse and is in any case easily
removed by the groom/ owner. It could be more of a problem to those
few horses that are fed silage.

I suggest that if 6,500 horses are dying of "ragwort-like" liver
damage each year, it is time to look for other possible toxins.
Pesticides added to grain to control weevils and mites are certainly
one possibility.

From: Frances Wolferstan BA, Vet MB, MRCVS, Tamworth, Staffordshire

-------------------------------------------

--
Neil Jones- http://www.butterflyguy.com/