Save our sparrows!!

Day 103 #365DaysWild 

Save our sparrows!! 

Formerly common house sparrows are in crisis! Their numbers have crashed and they are now on the red list of birds of conservation concern.

Juvenile house sparrow 

The reasons for their decline are complex and not fully understood. But lack of nest sites and food shortage are major factors.

Close to us there is a small population of house sparrows at the Sandy Oaks retirement village. The birds have no other local population with which to connect.

So, I’m sitting with my neighbour Nigel with a cuppa and talking about practical steps we can take to boost local biodiversity. 

We both bemoaned the fact that the Sandy Oaks sparrows could be heard chirruping barely yards away but rarely made it to our gardens.

So, we decided to think about how we could support the local house sparrow population. 

We thought we’d get like-minded souls and the RSPB to survey the local sparrow population.

We’d encourage Sandy Oaks to provide wild areas and shrubby areas for the birds.

And make and site nest boxes with the local community.

Thanks to Sandy Oaks we now have timber and fixings.

So then onto a production line with Roger joined by local residents with the aim of siting 30 boxes fixed to walls, sheds and fences.

Our box design was from the British Trust for Ornithology nest box book. 

And we’ll go on to encourage residents to provide bird food.

And check the sited boxes in the spring with licensed bird ringers.

And coming back to my garden and to Nigel’s … we’ll look to see how many sparrows from the hopefully burgeoning population fly over the hedges to the promised land on the other side….

Revisit the blog later in the year for progress!!