European Gardening: Birds in the garden Part 3, 1 by bonitin

bonitin wrote:
My sparrows are very ambitious in procreating!
Apart from the many nesting opportunities provided by the 20m long and 9 meters tall garden wall entirely covered with thick ivy and other climbers, also the fact that they get food year round must play a part in that..
I guess each couple has some 4 nests a year.
The strange thing is that the total amount of sparrows in my garden stays more or less the same of approximately 25 individuals, so I guess part of them must imigrate to other places.

Since some years ago there is considerable concern from the bird protection organisation about the decline mounting up to a 50% of house sparrows in Belgium, also in the rest of Europe, in 2007 statistics showed a decline of 96% (!!!) of Passer montanus in GB.

So it gives me a good feeling that I can do my bit in helping the specie to recover..

There is always a dangerous fase when the babies have left the nest but cannot really fly very well yet and I do my best to keep neigbour cats away (a garden hose is a good weapon!)