Another mixed seed question: millet

When we lived in Houston we had many English Sparrows, and there are many in Santa Fe, as well as Pigeons. We live 3 miles North of Santa Fe and in 10 years we have seen not one of either.

trois

bookworm28 - I read somewhere at some time that the expanding population of house finches was pushing out the sparrows. I don't know if that's true or not.

I see a sparrow or two. In my younger days we would see hordes of sparrows.

I have both here but the House Finch outnumber them 100/1. I see lots of them (HS) at shopping centers.

Back here where they're native, House Sparrow is a red-list endangered species.

Resin

Resin,
Now that is really interesting, that the house sparrow, which we used to call the English sparrow, is on the endangered list over there. What do they attribute that to? It can't be loss of habitat as they thrive around buildings and houses and such. Is something else displacing them?
Jimbo

Trois - that's so interesting you don't have house/English sparrows north of Santa Fe. Are you more rural and maybe not so many house eaves to nest in? There is an abandoned Martin house in the yard behind me. The roof has been off for years, and I think those sparrows just live in one big open air commune...

Also interesting that they endangered in England! I'd love to send some of mine over to you, Resin. There are over 25-30 of them hanging around my back yard all day. I have to go out and feed the cardinals very early and very late so they'll get some seed. I haven't seen any house finches here in SW Houston.

I learned this winter about the "more interesting" sparrows that stay here in Houston through early spring. The wintering sparrows - like the Lincoln, Chipping and white throated, etc. (think that's what they are) are fun to look for. They have pretty songs.

Found some sparrows for you.

more sparrows

another sparrow from yesterday.

I had 2 adult Hosps with kiddies in tow here yesterday,

Awwww! So sweet!

Sybil and Fschisolm - those are just like the ones I saw last January here on the prairie outside of Houston. So cute and sweet! Thanks for the pics. Hosps in my yard are big and aggressive. The sparrows I saw in the winter are small and fun to watch. Our Audobon Society teaches a whole class on wintering sparrows in January/February. I didn't take that class this year, but will in '08. The prairie we have is because of a foundation that is buying land in order to preserve some of the last real prairie in south Texas.

Yes, we are very rural. No other house can be seen from our house. My son lives about 600 feet North of us. We do have neighbors South and West, about 350 feet for each.
None of the houses have eaves that could be used, although there are several barns they could use. I kind of think it might be the very large spider webs that bother the sparrows. I have no idea why no pigeons.

trois

IBook: is that the Nature Conservancy or some other organization?

I guess all the pigeons and sparrows are living in the city where there are plenty of eaves. Your location sounds great - away from the city, but in the best of our zone for planting beautiful things. Have you noticed any migration beginning? I hear the hawks are on the move. The hummers are definitely picking up.

Sybil - It's a group called the Katy Prairie Conservancy - hope the link works.
http://www.katyprairie.org/home.html

Katy was a small town west of Houston years ago. Now it's hard to tell where Houston ends and Katy begins.


This message was edited Aug 11, 2007 9:22 PM

That seems to be the case with sparrows. I am seeing a lot of very small birds, but not at my feeder. They move too much and too fast for pictures. Maybe they will calm down soon.
I am not yet seeing the hawk migration. The extreme heat is changing the birds habits. They are hanging around my WL containers.

Trois - do you see the hawks in droves? I went to Smith Point in the fall last year. Pretty amazing! I saw my first oriole - we don't get them except on migration and I was so excited.

Your small birds could be acadian warblers or something like them? My backyard feeders are pretty boring with only house sparrows, cardinals and bluejays. I love to watch them all - though I'd like to see something more interesting. I want to see some migratory birds locally in Houston this fall since I know more and am paying attention this year.

Some of it is habitat loss - modern, and renovated older houses, often don't have any nest holes in them. But rather more significant is the reduction in food availability, both insects, and seeds. People keep their gardens too tidy, and spray too much insecticide and herbicide around.

Resin

House Sparrow counts from Regents Park (a major public park close to the centre of London); all counts done in November:

Year - Count
1925 - 2,603
1948 - 885
1966 - 642
1975 - 544
1995 - 81
2000 - 8
2002 - 3

Data source - British Birds 94: 507 (2001) for the years up to 2000. The 2002 figure made the national news headlines.

Resin

Wow, that is astounding. Really almost sickening.

Do you know how their numbers are in Europe?

Thanks for the info.

Yep, very sickening. It makes me wonder just what we are doing to our environment.

It is similarly bad elsewhere in northwestern Europe (Netherlands, Germany, etc); less bad (sparrows still very numerous) in eastern and southern Europe, where agriculture is less intensive.

Resin

We know what we are doing to our environment. If humans were disappearing at the same rate as other species, we would change our way of living. Since we believe we remain unaffected, as a whole we do very little to change.

Maybe we could start a forum to talk about the things we are doing in our own lives to change ourselves which would be helping the environment. Often people feel that they don't know what to do - become overwhelmed. We could learn from each other...?

Otherwise this could become www.davesdisappearinggarden.com

Having said that, I apologize if I have crossed to the wrong side of the line of socializing in this forum.

Wow, Resin. I guess I'll appreciate the little guys more today. I put the millet mix back in the feeder this morning. They are enjoying it.

I agree with you Sybil. I started putting vegetables in my flower beds so I can eat at least some healthy vegetables with no pesticides or need to be shipped! They even look pretty next to the flowers.

Book - I was thinking about that this year. We have so much shade that it's hard to find a spot to plant vegetables. I ended up putting them in pots and flats out in a sunny area that has extremely poor soil. Then I read in one of these forums that veggies did okay - not great - but okay with half day shade. So, next year, the veggies are going in and we'll see what happens.

Like you, I crave the nutrients and question what I'm actually getting out of the mass produced big box supermarket foods.

I love the idea of mixing veggies in with flowers. Why not? I would imaging that there would be some learning about what nutrients get used up by which vegetable...and I know that pests may not find the veggies the first year but will come looking for them the second year if not rotated.

I bet there is a lot to learn about doing this.

Sybil - Sounds like a great new thread! Unless there already is one. I have okra growing around my firecracker bush (for the hummers) and green beans and eggplant in with the flowers, beets in a border. I have asparagus behind daylilies and am considering putting spinach and swiss chard in my front flower beds this fall. I feed everything with an organic fertilizer and don't spray if there are bugs. I know... this is really off topic!

There must be a forum in here somewhere. I would love to see pics.

I just went to the vegetable forum - didn't see a thread about this. I'll start something over there in a bit and post some pics. I've been goofing off all morning, here - trying to avoid closet and cabinet cleaning...

BTW... veggies and flowers are a great idea. Back to sparrows. I don't recall ever seeing one out here. Most houses are spaced pretty far apart and most are less than 15 years old; most of those less than 10 years old. Our house and the two closest were some of the first and only for years, were built in the early 70's, when the 1 mile, dead-end, road was still gravel. Even these three "older" houses don't have eaves that seem inviting to sparrows.

There's only one older property that I know of, close to us, that has a real barn. The other barns, in a several mile radius, are very few and much further away.

The few sparrows that I've noticed were in Dallas proper, older neighborhoods' park areas or older shopping areas in Dallas proper.

gg=alice

I remember how sparrows used to love to build nest behind wooden shutters. It was always a chore to clean them out. Maybe one could put up fake shutters on the sides of barns and leave just enough room for them to nest. Or maybe put fake louvered eaves on barns and storage buildings.

I plant tomatoes, various greens, onions, eggplant and peppers in my flowerbeds. I tried squash but never got any bees to pollinate the flowers.

I started a thread on the veggie forum for the veggie topic. Fchisolm would you post some pictures? The link is below.

I also looked up all the other types of sparrows - they don't stay around Houston except in the winter. All we have usually is the House Sparrow.

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/759385/