Sparrow decline. Radio 4; 9pm Wednesday 18 March

[cutecoot]

Originally Posted by Wild-Woman

As a child, I grew up on the outskirts of London, and 40 years ago I can remember many, many more house sparrows than there are now. If my Mum threw out bread crusts in the morning (we didn't understand the techologies of bird-feeding then), within seconds there were many dozens of sparrows down from the hedges and houses. I can recall my Mum getting fed up with them dive bombing her washing on a monday morning.

Same here, WW .. but .. what I noticed was that although there was a huge decline in the humber of sparrows, the number of other species increased significantly and more recently when I used to visit my late mum I would see things like Long Tailed Tits and Jays, birds I could only have dreamed of seeing when I were a nipper living in south London in the 60s/70s!

[Geoff F]

As I understand the programme's attempt at some sort of answer.

A shortage of insects in some areas reduces the number of surviving chicks. Wet summers and over tidy gardeners all play a part.

But adults also appear to be having problems in survival, particularly over winter; and putting out mealworms etc could help. But how do you limit them to only being eaten by sparrows. And the problem isn't just within cities, as there seems to be a decline in many rural areas as well.

Until this spring I always had a few pairs of sparrows around my garden (on the edge of a small S. Devon coastal town) but not this spring.

On one side of my house the birdtable and feeders are used by many species ranging from Crows to Dunnock and Tits but suddenly no sparrows.

On the other side, amongst the vegetables, I get Collared Doves, Blackbirds, Robins, etc, and one female sparrow which has waited in a nearby hedge and been the first bird on the table.

The only alternative suggestion I can make is that most of the larger and more forceful birds are doing well but could they be pushing aside the more placid sparrows? Blackbirds are quite protective of feeding areas and Chaffinches get rather agressive. The Tits survive on speed, rushing in grabbing a bit of seed from behind the blackbirds and disappearing.

Possibly, people who overfill their tables, and I have seen some massively overloaded, are attracting too many birds to their gardens. More than the area will naturally feed, so the loosers are the quieter tempered birds like sparrows who are being squeezed aside.

Just a thought.