Bird Table News

We have several bird feeders in our back yard and every day for the past week we have had dead sparrows, one day 4. Their beaks and sometimes their heads have been pecked or eaten off. We haven’t seen them kill each other but they certainly do fight constantly. We are thinking of taking down the feeders to prevent the killing.

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This sounds horrible, especially when it should be a time of nesting and new life.

It may be a good idea to take the feeders down, but then would these attacks happen somewhere else.

It may not be sparrows. 

Take a look at my category about bird eating bird    http://birdtablenews.com/category/bird-eating-bird/

There seems to be a lot of mayhem going on in our civilised gardens.  Nature.

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I was watering my garden when I saw a dead baby sparrow, as I continued to water, I saw another baby sparrow alive. I put on my garden gloves and picked it up.

My husband got the ladder out and climed up the side of the house and put the baby back in the nest. My husband went back in the house and I stayed out in the yard but backed up far enough away and watched. The nest was empty except for the baby we placed back in the nest.

A male sparrow came back to the nest and killed the baby, then through it out of the nest. I was heart broken.

Two female sparrows were on the ground churping at the dead baby sparrow. After a while they left.

The next day I was going to water the garden again and there were two more baby sparrows, but these were alive, I gave them dropes of water and some worms. I don’t know what to do with them. Do I let nature take its course or do I take care of them.

How can these little tiny things pull on my heart strings so so bad. I know this happens all the time with birds killing other birds and I guess it’s no different than humans at war killing each other, but it makes a different when you see it happen, weather its a bird or a human. Male lions kill baby cubs when they enter a new pride. Why is this an instinct with animals & humans. The only thing is Humans have a belief system and a consious but animals don’t.

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Hello and thank you for getting in touch

I would say you will have to let nature take its course.  On saying that, I don’t know what I would do if I was in your shoes and the sparrows were there in front of me.

But really the only way is to let nature take its course.

I know how this can pull at our heart strings.  I saw a sparrowhawk with its talons in a blackbird and the blackbird was so shocked and frightened I was caught up in the moment and so wanted the blackbird to live.

The only thing I can think of is that the male sparrow maybe was not the father of the chicks and wanted to make room for his own young.

There is such a lot we don’t know about our wild birds.  As you can see from the orher comments from people – this is not just a one off.  It must be part of their nature and all we can do is accept it!!

Thank you for getting in touch.  Let me know what you decide to do.

Trisha

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Every year we have several pairs of house sparrows nest in it successfully.

Yesterday, there was a commotion and several sparrows emerged from the ivy, fighting in the air.

They were pecking and harrassing one particular male, who then fell to the ground – stone dead. I have never seen such behaviour before.

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Thank you Lincoln Birder.  Amazing.  We see a flock of sparrows every day.  They are tree sparrows though.  These sparrows spend ages on the grass together pecking at the bird food and some open soil that I have near the feeders.  I still find it hard to realise that birds do kill birds.  I know robins fight to the death sometimes, but watching robins it is hard to believe that as well.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

Here is a report from 1912 about sparrows evicting a martin from its nest.  But in this case the sparrows met a grizzly ending

http://birdtablenews.com/2009/03/sparrow-evicting-a-martin/

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This is the original thread about sparrows attacking other birds

http://birdtablenews.com/category/do-sparrows-attack-other-birds/

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I have lots of hedge sparrows in my garden. 

Last winter a hedge sparrow (or Two) took over a house martin’s nest outside my bedroom window but nested in hedge as normal in Spring. 

They have recently pushed 4 feathered baby house martins out of nest and have taken up residence once more.  They are also attacking another nest with baby martins in it and dive bombing the parents.  

I now hate them will think twice about feeding them this winter.

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Hi, Thanks for getting in touch.

  That is a good point of yours about feeding sparrows in winter.  We feed them and help them survive and they kill other birds.  If we didn’t feed them then, it seems as though, higher numbers of other bird species would survive.  That is very thought provoking.  Thanks for getting in touch

I cannot see a house martin killing a sparrow can you?

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Yes i have seen this happen.   (she has seen sparrows killing sparrows!)

we have bird houses set up we love our garden sparrows and love watching them nest,but this year we had sparrows killing other sparrows and killing all oue little baby sparrows as well.

now all the sparrows have left their houses and our yard, it was a very sad thing to watch

Char sent me her story of what she had seen.   Previously she had asked about sparrows killing sparrows.   Click the link below if you would like to read it.

DO SPARROWS KILL OTHER BABY BIRDS

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I replied

You have seen it happen! Can I ask where you live? The world of birds is so strange isn’t it? I know robins fight robins, and I have found out that sparrows can be thugs, but sparrows killing sparrows!! Also sparrows killing young sparrows. I wonder if some where house sparrows and some where tree sparrows. I wonder if there was a shortage of food and so they killed to get the food – but that does not really make sense does it?

I am sure it would have been sad to watch. You think of spring as being a time of re birth not a time of slaughter. Think of all the other birds that are toiling to feed their young and watch the other fledglings as they visit your garden and grow and surive. Trisha

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Please get in touch if you have seen or heard of this happening.  

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I received this question from Char

do sparrows steal each others nest? do they kill other baby sparrows ?

What a question to think about -  I replied

I have a Catetory on Bird Table News called  DO SPARROWS ATTACK OTHER BIRDS. 

Here is the link
http://birdtablenews.com/category/do-sparrows-attack-other-birds/

If you read the articles  you will see that people have observed sparrows behaving like thugs!  They have beeen seen taking eggs from other nests and dropping them on the floor.
Read all the articles in that Category.  I wouldn’t put anything past sparrows.  If they can steal another breed of birds nest and get rid of other eggs then, I suppose they could do it to their own breed.

Have you seen this happen?  I just wondered why you asked the question. Thanks for getting in touch please give us more information about your question
Trisha

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 I posted awhile back about sparrows taking over a Robin’s nest in my back yard. !

Well they scared off the Robin as she never came back.  The odd thing is though is that I never found any dead baby birds.  I found egg shells on the ground so I know she laid them but where are the babies? 

The sparrows sat and picked in her nest for about a week and then they disappeared too. There is nothing in the nest either.  I checked it all out.  hmmm very odd

I have always been a animal and bird watcher since I was a young child.  I hung out with the woods with the critters more than I did with people.

In all the years I have watched nature, I have never seen anything like
that happen before.

The sparrows acted totally as if if was their nest.  They sat on the edge
of it chirping away …flying back and forth and bending their heads inside the nest.
Sometimes they would even sit in it.  I thought at first they were feeding the Robin’s babies and then I guessed they were probably eating them.

 Thank you Linda for sharing this.  Did the sparrows take the robin’s eggs /chicks?  It really sounds like it doesn’ t it.  It it is very odd.  I wonder how many times this happens out of our view?

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Yesterday evening I observed a male house sparrow ‘divebombing’ a male blackbird. 

On the first occasion the blackbird was simply foraging in the lawn, on the second he was singing from a branch at the top of the apple tree.  Why would the sparrow do this?  Is it a territory thing? 

On each occasion the sparrow made a swoop and went for the blackbird’s head, but did not persist, flying off again about his business.  The blackbird seemed relatively unperturbed.

Thank you Deborah for this.

I have never ever seen such a thing.  I get sparrows and blackbirds in the garden every day.  Sometimes they feed together on the same bird table or on the ground feeder.

I must say the sparrows are more aggressive than the blackbirds.  The blackbirds always seem to hang back a bit.  But divebombing!  No I’ve never seen that.

Maybe it is a territory thing – if your garden is small and you put a lot of food out perhaps the sparrow wants the good territory all to itself!

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Have any readers seen such things or do you have any bird stories.  Ordinary or extraordinary would be interestiang to hear about

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Today I was in the back garden and was watching a group of some 10 sparrows and a starling on a roof of a house behind mine.

In the gutter  a starling was playing with a bit of fluff or something. The sparrows sounded quite excited so I watched for a minute or so.

The sparrows were mostly within 1 metre of the starling. Several times the starling hopped onto the roof near the gutter and the sparrows showed little sign of moving back.

All of a sudden a sparrow flew in towards the roof from over my head (I think it was a female sparrow). She lunged at the starling, landing on its back and the pair fell off the roof towards the ground with the starling sqwarking madly. I could not see how far they fell but within a second the starling flew up to the house ridge and did not return to the gutter area.

Several of the sparrows went down into the rain water gutter for a while. I assume that there is a roost or old sparrow nest there. We have many hedges close by and the sparrows are by far the most common feeders at a feeder that we have in our front garden.

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I found this really interesting. A reader took the trouble to send this to me.   Thank you for sending this to me. 

I really like hearing about the behaviour of birds.  When you see them in the garden you tend to lump them all together and not see them as working in flocks and working as a team against other birds.

Sparrows must be very aggressive – not timid like the tiny wren.

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Hi, Very interesting posts. I live in Devon.

I would like to tell you that last year I noticed a House sparrow chasing a Jackdaw for over 40 metres including 4 change of directions – quite a coincidence as the sparrow was less than a metre away from the Jackdaw.

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Isn’t it amazing the things that happen in our countryside.  I wonder what Bill Oddie would say to that. 

House sparrow chasing a jackdaw goes against all the normal bird behaviour that you can think of.

Through people getting in touch with me I have heard of a lot of ‘bullish’ sparrow behaviour.  Maybe I should write a book!

Thanks for telling us about this.  I wish I’d seen it.   

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