Early last year I had a couple of sparrow nest boxes put up along the side of the house, and a Swift box under the front eaves. This year, for the first time in roughly six/seven years I’ve had sparrows all over the feeders, including a bunch of fledglings.
Problem is, they’ve ignored the bespoke sparrow boxes, and a pair are raising a brood in the Swift box! I’ve been hearing a lot of cheeping, and I could see some grass sticking out, so I got my binoculars and had a look, and there’s definitely one chick, I could see it looking back at me, and see the yellow gape around its beak.
So, do I just hope they all abandon the nest soon, and then hope that the swifts turn up and think it looks like a ready-furnished pied-a-terre, and settle in?
Sounds like they've gone direct to the des'res'...your luckily our boxes are empty, swifts flying all over the place, just not ours! Enjoy your wildlife:)
I never had success with sparrow terraces - despite lots of online 'they love them, go for a terrace' information, ours only ever went solo and in boxes designed for other bird species...
Bloody nature eh? Never does what it's told
Currently got a nest in my workshop, between the paint tins and the sandpaper stash. They are tolerating our presence. even when we wanted a tin of paint. They are not bothered in the slightest, I was in there this afternoon and it was sat on my chop saw next to me!
Our sparrow nest box has only housed multiple broods of blue tits.
The robins are nesting in the ivy on the fence.
Sparrows and terraces are a bit of a lottery round here. I had 2 terraces once upon a time, but never more than 1 unit in each got a nest. One terrace then fell apart, so only 1 left now. And that's had zero interest for 3 or 4 years apart from a male chirping briefly. The spuggies are more or less extinct on this 1970s estate, sadly. And the swifts have gone from the Gr 1 listed church 100 yards away since some repair work was done 😢
I've a different conundrum for you bird fans:
Our garage is tall and at the front of it there's overhanging roof eaves which are/is supported by some diagonal wooden beams that are high up, about 4 inches across and painted/varnished (so slippy).
Pigeons are nesting up there, with their shambles of a "nest" overhanging both sides of a beam. Same happened a few years ago and over the course of a summer we had a kind of hail of newly hatched chicks and nest components raining down on the drive and either just dying on the spot or being euthanised by Barry the cat from next door. I meant to put up something to deter further nesting but it seemed to stop anyway and it all sort of slipped my mind.
Should I disturb (well OK, demolish) the current nest, losing its eggs and then pigeon-proof the beams so there's not another summer of dead hatchlings ? (I'm led to believe it's actually some sort of offence in law - maybe not for pigeons, since you can shoot 'em etc can't you ?)
Pretty much confirms my thoughts. There were tits checking out the sparrow terraces earlier this year, but they don’t seem to have actually built nests, and I’m not sure I’ve even seen any swifts around yet, although they were screaming around the roofs in Biddestone earlier when I popped over for a pint or two after archery. Over there, it’s a proper old Cotswold village, with traditional stone tiled roofs, so plenty of spaces for the swifts to crawl into, whereas my roof, and all the surrounding houses are pantiled, so no spaces for them to nest in.
It’s possible that putting the sparrow terraces towards the back of the house is a bit too bright, although it’s well shaded and east-facing, they used to nest under the eaves of next door, at the front side, so I’ll get them moved sometime this year and see if they use them next year, or if the tits adopt them.
I’m just glad to have a bunch of sparrows cheeping around in the hedges and on the feeders in my tree, they’re such cheerful little birds, and don’t squabble like the starlings do!
