For the last few days I have been watching my sparrows gathering bits of hay, small twigs and especially feathers. Two of them even had a squabble over a rather nice feather. Are they making nests already, or are they just practising!!??
Cheers, Linda.
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Wow Sparrow, it sounds like you have many thrushes - how many do you get? I also like the idea of your "hidden" feeder. I have a caged feeder too but this is mainly used by the blue tits, chaffinches, one robin and dunnocks.
The sparrows like a particular blue one which is away from the cottoneaster so if the nearer one fails I will try that in it's place and move the other elsewhere.
As to the cat, he may sound lovely but he's a real heftie with an attitude (ginger tom) - He walked in one day (much thinnner than he is now) about 2 years ago and never left. He's not interested in birds but he do like to catch a mouse or two. As I keep him so well fed the mice he brings in are alive if not a little put out!
Regards
Kerry
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Hi Kezmo,
There were 3 thrushes, that's all. I have just put more sultanas in a mesh tray on the new feeding station, hopefully to entice them back again tomorrow. (I don't exactly get up as early as the birds!!).
My dunnocks don't use the feeders. They hop in and out of the bushes and round the tubs picking up scraps, and my robin is very shy. I hear all the time about tame robins, but mine hangs about on the shed roof until the feeders are free then flies down, grabs some food, then flies away again at the slightest movement. He is sometimes on the ground or on my duck statue next to the bird bath, but if I move an inch he is off.
Your cat must know which side of his bread is buttered! He found a warm home with lots of good food 2 years ago, and there is no point in working hard catching birds if lots of lovely food is available for doing nothing!
We had a black lady cat. She was lovely, but our worst experience was about 20 years ago when hubby and I were away on holiday in Lanzarote. Our daughter and her friend were "home alone" looking after the house and animals for us, when we got a phone call from her asking us to fly home immediately. The reason? She had left her downstairs bedroom window open, and on going in her room she found a very nasty dead rabbit on the carpet! It can only have been the cat's doing. She wanted us home as neither she nor her friend could bear to move the rabbit!!! Needless to say, we ignored her pleas and told her to shape up and deal with it! She was the last cat we ever had because sadly boxer dogs and cats don't see eye to eye.
HI,
a flock of about 40-50 House sparrows hang around the gardens of the lane I live in, they skulk in and on the tall hedges (leilandii -sp) close to a year round feeding station. Towards dusk they disappear to roost. This used to be in my garden near my oil tank in some thickly leaved 20 foot high bushes. However they now have a new roost I have not discovered.
A pair of tree sparrows nest 200 yards away in an old barn. They do not associate with the House sparrows at all but visit the feeders at random then disappear.
:)
S
Please state the nature of the birding emergency