When we moved in to our last house in Crew Green, Tree Sparrow were the prevalent bird - the humble House Sparrow was for the first 3 years relatively rare. Then around 2005 the Tree Sparrow disappeared and we never saw them again - not got a clue why. Hence it's nice to have these two birds in the garden at the moment, presumably part of the much larger group up around Bishop's Moat (can easily see large mixed flocks of Tree Sparrow with Yellowhammer up there around the sheep troughs through winter). A bit of light would be nice though to get a bit more depth of field!!
A pair of French hoover dropped into the garden yesterday afternoon cleaning up the dropped food - almost dark when I took this. Nice birds but obviously bred solely for the shooting fraternity - some inevitably escape and I know of a number of instances where spare birds have simply been released. Never understood why there are no controls on this
Well done-did you see the Cardigan site? Thousands released!
ReplyDeleteyep its ridiculous Kev - tens of 000s of Pheasant and RLP bred round here, know of 9 sites doing 35k each within 5 miles of me. Clearly not all going to a) make it to the estate or b) be shot so what does that do for our biodiversity?
ReplyDeleteThose Tree Sparrows are very handsome things. Agree on the released game birds, they are going to end up as road kill and/or take valuable food/habitat from our native species. Less than half these birds will see the dinner plate, so most likely just shot for fun.
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