GOING ALL THE WAY FOR BLUEBIRDS
The question of what to do about the house sparrow quickly becomes
the new birder's most pressing problem. An alien and unprotected pest
like the starling, they are moving into nearly all areas of the United
States and southern Canada.
The idea of doing away with any small bird is foreign to most people,
and unfortunately this vicious bird looks much like our "good"
sparrows. It is not a sparrow, however, but a weaver finch, and its
heavy finch bill and its aggressive disposition allows it to destroy the
eggs, young, and the adults of several other small cavity nesting
species including Bluebirds and Chickadees.
Passive methods such as the freezing, micro waving, etc. of house
sparrow eggs just gives the male more time to roam and kill, and also
ties up a nestbox so that a native cavity nester is unable to use it.
This may cause them to miss a nesting cycle or to nest in a dangerous
location.
Just removing house sparrow nests is also a bad mistake as this drives
the house sparrow to attack, kill, and dispossess some luckless weaker
bird's family. And releasing house sparrows in some other area is the
worst action of all! It is like releasing a murderer from your town in
some other city - it just moves the problem to someone else, and also
house sparrows will fly for miles to return to their original area.
Trapping and eliminating house sparrows early and late and whenever they
appear in your area is the only way to go. Don't move a nestbox if house
sparrows seem to favor it. Use it as a "sting" operation and
be glad that you know where they are so that you can address the problem
properly. Let them start a nest, use the Huber type trap, release them
into a plastic bag and whack them against a solid object. In this way
you don't even have to handle them. House sparrows are the rats of the
cavity nesting world, and if you do not have the will or the courage to
trap and eliminate them you should not put up houses as if there are
house sparrows in your area you will be just erecting death traps. The
Huber type nestbox insert traps are available from THE BIRDS' PARADISE
at 814-587-3879 or MARTIN MARKETPLACE at 814-734-4420.
It may sound harsh, but any time that a birder misses a chance to
eliminate a house sparrow they bear some of the responsibility for the
native cavity nesters that this bird and its future young will kill, and
they are very prolific. I take a very tough line in this, but it is
reinforced every time that I have to take dead babies out of a nestbox
that has been raided by a house sparrow, or have to put babies to sleep
because they have been injured so badly that they cannot survive.
Fortunately most birders come to realize that the only complete way to
help our native cavity nesters is to trap and eliminate the house
sparrow, but it usually only happens after experiences such as this.
There has been much success in bringing the Bluebirds back from their
earlier downward spiral. However future human population growth spells
significant habitat loss for the Bluebirds, but large increases in areas
favored by the house sparrow and the starling. The best that we can do
is to maintain the Bluebird populations in every oasis that will remain
open to them - golf courses, parks, rural areas that still have space to
support them etc., etc. And last but not least, we must do everything
possible to convince those who practice passive house sparrow habits
that this is absolutely not the way to go. As noted above, our Bluebirds
and other native cavity nesters are going to need all of the help that
we are able to give them.
Bluebird Bob, Northeast Oklahoma.
10/02/02
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