One of our favorite things is to watch the birds in our back yard. When we moved in I put out several “bluebird” boxes and immediately had numerous young blue birds around the house all summer. Last summer it was even better as we had at least two sets with young and one had two hatches… This spring has been different. One nest box was attacked by Sparrows and one of the Blue birds killed. Two other nest boxes were staked out and “owned” by sparrows. the first Bluebird box had a next as we watched the activity waiting and then one morning I found the door pulled open and the next empty? not sure what got that one but expect it might have been a cat or something of that nature…
We have also put up two Purple Martin houses and have , just this year seen at least some interest by martins to build in one but again the sparrows have claimed the houses and are aggressive enough to keep them away from them for the most part. The martins have gained a foot hold on one house so we hope for the best there…
We also lost all the baby geese to predators this spring. The geese pair has 5 young the first time we say them , then two a few days later and late last weekend, they were all gone…
Well, I can’t control all the predators but I can do something about the sparrow population. To that end I have invested in this:
I got it from : Sparrow TRap net
We put it out over a week ago and it took days to catch the first sparrow. I used all kinds of bait and old nest material, etc… but finally last Tuesday we got the first one (after I had used some old dry bread for bait) then another the next day and now we have 5 in the trap… jokingly I told my family we needed to mark the birds so we can take out the older ones as captivity may wear on them too much… but at least I have reduced the “free” population by 5 as of today and hope for many more so the “good” birds can have less competition for nest spots. To learn more about Sparrows, an aggressive, invasive and less than desired species read here:
Controlling House Sparrows
Blue Bird help
Blue Bird society
Sparrow facts, control of pests!
Until I started this search I had no idea how bad the sparrow could be. I knew as a kid that my uncle would pay me a nickle each to shot them with my BB gun… a small fortune for me and I spent hours stalking them wily little devils… he paid until I found I could more easily get them at night in the cedar trees at his house where they were roosting in a big flock… made good money one night! but we did eliminate plenty of them that night…. We got a few more than he had bargained for…