What a difference 12m makes!
1st April 2011, FridayI have said before that house sparrows seem to be very parochial birds, and slow to adapt to new opportunities. This appears also to apply to nest building as well. The birds in our garden started this activity in January, and this week I checked the boxes to see if any had eggs yet. They didn’t, but the difference in nest construction was astonishing.
Birds on the eastern side of our back garden have made large nests, filling the nest boxes (using 5 nest boxes in total).
Over on the western side it is a different story. The three nests here are pathetic in comparison.
These boxes are the same size, and it is pretty clear how little nest material has been gathered. The birds all appeared to start work at about the same time, and both are still actively gathering materials.
The eastern birds, 12 m away, have learnt that there is a bag of hay in our greenhouse and have been visiting this over the past few weeks to rob it. It appears that the western birds have not learnt this trick and are concentrating on trying to pull bits of stem from live plants, or use rather poor material that has been through our compost bin and spread in the garden.
Fascinating how there is such a difference from two groups of nest boxes in the same garden!
The number of nests is very encouraging and supports my view that our sparrow population is growing. We had only two pairs nesting last year. This year we have at least 5 pairs, possibly 8, although it is possible that some birds are making multiple nests at this stage. Our back garden house sparrow BAP appears to be working!