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Disappointing start to this season. I was lucky last year, I guess.
Right away a pair of House Soarrows claimed the nest box. Bluebirds are in the area even now, but if they go near the nest box the sparrows chase them away.
I don’t want to harm the sparrows. Every evening I remove their nest material. I’m fortunate to be able to watch the nest box and see who is going in, and the nest material of the sparrows is clearly different, so I am removing sparrow nest material.
Prompting this post, this is the first evening there hasn’t been any material to remove, not one strand of straw or moss. They’ve been persistent, back at it every day for a couple weeks, until today. So, maybe they’ve given up. We’ll see. The true test will be whether Bluebirds try again.
- Ira / Coastal NW Florida
Hey, Ira. Sorry about your house sparrow problems. I didn’t realize that you haven’t started trapping yet. You’ll have a very frustrating season, I’m afraid. The House Sparrows will not give up! And the problem is, as you are removing strands of grass for several weeks the bluebirds move on to find another nesting place.
I know you don’t want to hurt the House Sparrows and I get that. That will change when they kill an entire nest of cute little bluebird nestlings. Or kill the parents in the nestbox. At least that’s when it changed for me. One thing you can do which I did in the beginning is to trap the House Sparrow with a Van Ert trap and take them far away to release. I used to do that at my church. It’s not legal but it’s all I could do at the time.Tammy
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