Just managed to get into the garden for the first time this week, where are
all the sparrows, is it just my garden, or me.
Anyone who has to many send them up to the north east, I have plenty of
food.

Harry

We have about 20 odd who have been with us for ages.

--
H.M.S.Collingwood Ass. Llandudno 20 - 23 May Trip to Portmeirion
National Service (RAF) Ass. Cosford 24 - 27 June Spitfire Fly Past
H.M.S.Impregnable Ass. Sussex 1 - 4 July Visit to Int. Fest of the Sea
RAF Regiment Assoc. Scarborough 2 - 5 Sept. Visit to Eden Camp
"Harry" wrote in message
...
Just managed to get into the garden for the first time this week, where
are
all the sparrows, is it just my garden, or me.
Anyone who has to many send them up to the north east, I have plenty of
food.

Harry

"Mike" wrote in message
...
We have about 20 odd who have been with us for ages.

--
H.M.S.Collingwood Ass. Llandudno 20 - 23 May Trip to Portmeirion
National Service (RAF) Ass. Cosford 24 - 27 June Spitfire Fly Past
H.M.S.Impregnable Ass. Sussex 1 - 4 July Visit to Int. Fest of the Sea
RAF Regiment Assoc. Scarborough 2 - 5 Sept. Visit to Eden Camp
"Harry" wrote in message
...
Just managed to get into the garden for the first time this week, where
are
all the sparrows, is it just my garden, or me.
Anyone who has to many send them up to the north east, I have plenty of
food.

Harry

House sparrow population has declined by about 50% since 1970. Numerous
reasons have been put forward invluding loss of hedges and bird proofing
of homes.
Although around my area in SE Scotland, the decline isn't too obvious,
(my beech hedge is providing shelter to loads at present) there is a lot of
literature on the web about the problem. I have copied across some links for
those interested

http://www.sparrowsneedhedges.com
http://www.bto.org/gbw/HOUSP/
http://www.bto.org/gbw/GBW_NEWS/NEWS...OUSPINSERT.pdf

regards,

David

House sparrow population has declined by about 50% since 1970.

Vermin cats don't help the matter, but a wonderful little device called the
Cat and Dog Repeller, it works off 2 x 9 volt batteries and is a small and
very portable unit and is easy to hide. It is made by STV International Ltd
2002 at Little Cressingham in Norfolk. This will help the situation for the
gardener who likes to see the fruits of his labour AND the wild birds which
come.

Mike
who has a cat crap free garden :-))))))))))))))))))))))))

"Harry" wrote in message
...
Just managed to get into the garden for the first time this week, where
are
all the sparrows, is it just my garden, or me.
Anyone who has to many send them up to the north east, I have plenty of
food.

Harry



I have loads of them. Whole flocks sit in the hawthorn hedge in the morning
waiting fo me to chuck some corn to the chickens and geese and them too.
There must be around 80-100 at a time and also hedge sparrows (Dunnocks).
Don't tell feloginistic Mike but I also have 12 cats. Cats don't touch the
birds though.

Don't tell feloginistic Mike but I also have 12 cats.

It has been stated on this newsgroup many many times, that people who have
cats, have 'multiple' cats. Does anyone admit to having TWELVE DOGS?

I will now watch the paint dry

"Mike" wrote in message
...


House sparrow population has declined by about 50% since 1970.

Vermin cats don't help the matter, but a wonderful little device called
the
Cat and Dog Repeller, it works off 2 x 9 volt batteries and is a small and
very portable unit and is easy to hide. It is made by STV International
Ltd
2002 at Little Cressingham in Norfolk. This will help the situation for
the
gardener who likes to see the fruits of his labour AND the wild birds
which
come.

Mike
who has a cat crap free garden :-))))))))))))))))))))))))


I know someone who breeds parrots in 2 large bans. The barns are infested
with huge flocks of parrots who come into the aviaries and steal the parrot
food. He was losing some 20% of food to the sparows at one time and the risk
of them spreading disease was great. Now he classes them as vermin and
employs someone to come and shoot them by the score.
Odd how some people class one lot of animals as 'vermin' and like anothe
lot, and someone else classes what the first lot like, as vermin.

"David" wrote in message
...


snip

House sparrow population has declined by about 50% since 1970.

......Damned statistics!
I think that 1970 figure coincided with a peak in the sparrow
population.
So the current low may not be quite as dramatic as is put about.

--
ned

http://www.bugsandweeds.co.uk
last update 08.03.2005

I will now watch the paint dry


Thank you all for your imput,I may give the cat repeller ago, the woman next
door to me has little boxes that she keeps cats in, 7 of the little s****.

Harry

In article ,
Malcolm wrote:
In article , ned writes

I think it is. Here are some counts of the numbers in Kensington
Gardens, London, made by Max Nicholson:

November 1925 - 2,603
December 1948 - 885
November 1966 - 642
November 1975 - 544
February 1995 - 46

This decline, in central London, which has been going on for more than
50 years, is attributed, firstly, to the disappearance of horses from
the streets and, secondly, as already mentioned, to the absence of
nesting places in modern buildings.

Well, I will swallow the first as a very likely cause of the decline
from 1925 to 1948. The latter is pretty dubious, because there are
still a lot of older buildings around, sparrows aren't all that fussy
and smaller numbers need fewer places. c.1985, we had some nesting
behind the guttering in a (then) new extension. It is almost certainly
a cause for some birds, but sparrows?

The decline in farmland also dates to earlier than 1970, with the
widespread introduction of tractors in place of horses and all that
meant over the next decades in terms of cleaner arable fields, loss of
hedgerows, more rapid ploughing, etc., etc.

And there has been very little change since 1975 over most of the
south-east, certainly not enough to account for a tenfold reduction
(unless you bring in the passenger pigeon effect, which is not
intrinsically impossible, but is a bit implausible).

My hypothesis is that many declines have been due to cats - and I
don't mean feral ones. If you consider the proportion of the south
east that (a) has vegetation and (b) is outside the territory of
any cats, it HAS decreased by tenfold or more since 1966. Whether
this is the cause for sparrows, I can't say.

What we need is some larger predators, both to keep the deer down
(especially for birds that rely on woodland undergrowth) and to keep
the cats down. Bring back lynx. I know that you disagree, but I
can't understand why - it is not as if any likely prey of lynx are
even rare, with the POSSIBLE exception of a few birds that are
currently seriously endangered by the combination of deer and cats.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

Malcolm wrote:
In article , ned
writes

"David" wrote in message
...


snip

House sparrow population has declined by about 50% since 1970.

.....Damned statistics!
I think that 1970 figure coincided with a peak in the sparrow
population.

What's your evidence for this? The reason the year 1970 is often
quoted in bird statistics (damned or not!) is because it was the
mid-point of the first BTO Atlas project which mapped all species
accurately for the first time, combined with an estimate of numbers.

So the current low may not be quite as dramatic as is put about.

I think it is. Here are some counts of the numbers in Kensington
Gardens, London, made by Max Nicholson:

November 1925 - 2,603
December 1948 - 885
November 1966 - 642
November 1975 - 544
February 1995 - 46

Damned statistics! It seems that the graph I was quoting from showed a
'mild' peak around that time - but did not go back much further.
However, I've just dug this out,

"Possible explanations for the decrease in House Sparrow abundance
include general reductions in food supply, reductions in the amount of
grain spilt during agricultural operations, tighter hygiene
regulations, increases in predation, and the use of toxic additives in
unleaded petrol (Crick et al. 2002). BBS data have shown increases
recently in Scotland and Wales. Following widespread declines across
Europe during the 1990s ....." ( - so its not just a UK concern.)

I can report that there seems to be no decline in tree sparrow
numbers - at least not in my back yard.

I would have thought that Kensington Gardens figures might be
significantly influenced by inner city traffic polution.

--
ned

http://www.bugsandweeds.co.uk
last update 08.03.2005

In article , Harry
writes


I will now watch the paint dry


Thank you all for your imput,I may give the cat repeller ago, the woman next
door to me has little boxes that she keeps cats in, 7 of the little s****.

When I arrived in my new home in Surrey, I was pleased to hear the
sparrows twittering. The next year they had gone.

Now there are masses of them. Reason? Long, high, thick hedges,
trees. School children feeding birds perhaps. There was a gap of about
2 years. I did get the top of my hedge cut off but it was still 6 feet
high.

Plenty of cats around but they do not seem to catch birds.
I think there is more feeding of birds here, perhaps using different
foods. I put out (in a wire container) a fatty suety confection with
berries in it and I have had a wide selection of birds feeding, not many
sparrows though. Food attached under revolving clothes drier. Probably
mostly starlings, tits, robins.

I have not seen the squirrel that was very clever at reaching
everything!

--
Rosalind Walter

In article ,
Malcolm wrote:

"Possible explanations for the decrease in House Sparrow abundance
include general reductions in food supply, reductions in the amount of
grain spilt during agricultural operations, tighter hygiene
regulations, increases in predation, and the use of toxic additives in
unleaded petrol (Crick et al. 2002). BBS data have shown increases
recently in Scotland and Wales. Following widespread declines across
Europe during the 1990s ....." ( - so its not just a UK concern.)

Well, I will swallow the first as a very likely cause of the decline
from 1925 to 1948. The latter is pretty dubious, because there are
still a lot of older buildings around, sparrows aren't all that fussy
and smaller numbers need fewer places. c.1985, we had some nesting
behind the guttering in a (then) new extension. It is almost certainly
a cause for some birds, but sparrows?

Yes, and you have admitted that there are smaller numbers. And although
there are *some* old buildings around, they are not nearly as common,
nor widely distributed, as they once were.

In most of the south-east, there are enough to provide for a sparrow
population of 10 times that of 1975, probably 100 times and possibly
1,000 times. As I said, they will nest behind guttering where there
is a suitable board to start building - and there are a LOT of such
places, even on modern houses. While they LIKED thatch, they were
not dependent on it, and the practice of wiring thatch was near-
universal well before 1975.

The decline in farmland also dates to earlier than 1970, with the
widespread introduction of tractors in place of horses and all that
meant over the next decades in terms of cleaner arable fields, loss of
hedgerows, more rapid ploughing, etc., etc.

And there has been very little change since 1975 over most of the
south-east,

Have you figures to back that assertion? The pattern of cropping in the
south-east will surely have changed in the last thirty years as it has
elsewhere with, to give just one example, autumn stubbles being ploughed
immediately after the harvest instead of left through the winter.

I have the evidence of my observation, from having lived in the area
over that period, having been interested in such things, and having
watched the changes. Have YOU any evidence of a change large enough
to account of a population reduction of over 10 times?

Please don't quote winter wheat figures for the UK as a whole, because
it was near-universal in the south east a long time before it was
across some other parts of the country.

certainly not enough to account for a tenfold reduction
(unless you bring in the passenger pigeon effect, which is not
intrinsically impossible, but is a bit implausible).

I wasn't bringing in the passenger pigeon effect, I was relying on good
evidence that there has been a tenfold reduction.

I never said there hadn't been - I have posted in the past that I have
observed it, too. I am casting doubts on your statement of possible
causes, which strike me as uninformed and implausible speculation.
If you disagree, please provide at least some reasons to back them
up, and preferably evidence.

My hypothesis is that many declines have been due to cats - and I
don't mean feral ones. If you consider the proportion of the south
east that (a) has vegetation and (b) is outside the territory of
any cats, it HAS decreased by tenfold or more since 1966. Whether
this is the cause for sparrows, I can't say.

I know there is a modern estimate for the number of cats, at 7-9
million, but has there been a significant increase in the last 30 years
and sufficient to account of declines in birds?

In much of the south-east, yes. It isn't the NUMBERS, but the fact
that infilling and the conversion of other buildings to houses has
meant that the area outside the territory of at least one cat has
almost vanished. That was not so even in 1966.

What we need is some larger predators, both to keep the deer down
(especially for birds that rely on woodland undergrowth) and to keep
the cats down. Bring back lynx. I know that you disagree,

No, you don't. When have I argued against bringing back the lynx?

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...browse_thread/
thread/952053ed420dddaa/f30c954e3cb465db?q=lynx+(malcolm+OR+ogilvie)+
group:uk.rec.natural-history#f30c954e3cb465db

gives evidence. You have got Google to remove your postings from
the archive, so they are not present, but there is enough quoting
to show what you said.

I can't imagine the lynx, even if well established, accounting for that
many deer, though I suppose they might take some muntjac.

(a) muntjac are perhaps the main problem in the south and (b) most
populations of Eurasion lynx are said to prey on roe deer (the
other deer problem).


In article ,
Malcolm wrote:

Then you are very lucky, because there has been an even greater decline
in tree sparrows, to the point of complete disappearance in some parts
of the country, than in house sparrows. Farming changes are again
implicated at least in part.

That is, at least, plausible. They always were more dependent on
hedgerows than house sparrows, and there HAS been a change in the
management of hedgerows.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.