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Tammy,
How do you keep the decoy alive? The other night I caught two house sparrows in a cavity trap inside my purple martin barn. My dog knocked the sparrow trap over as I was trying to open the side of my repeating trap and the male got away. I did get the female inside the repeating trap. I had food and water inside the trap. By the end of the day she had expired. I had this problem last year, too. The sparrows always expire before attracting other house sparrows into the trap.Tammy, to answer your question about my house sparrow population. I don’t have many at all in my background. My backyard faces a large open area. However, the development I live in does have an over abundance of house sparrows. The front of my house faces other houses that have trees and bushes where the sparrows love to congregate. Every year I get one or two pairs of house sparrows that either chase off my native birds or destroy their eggs. I have spent way more money on sparrow traps and prevention than I have on the birds’ housing. I have a repeating sparrow trap, Van Ert trap, different kinds of in cavity traps for my purple martin houses, and a pellet gun. They always seem to out smart me when it comes to trapping these birds. The house sparrows have no interest in the repeating trap. I have used everything ever mentioned to me in attracting HS to the trap (such as feathers, cotton balls, bread, crackers, popcorn, etc.) and still no luck in getting the HS to go inside the trap.
As for the monofilament, I’m attaching a picture of how I have wrapped the fishing line on my house. Please comment on weather I did it correctly or incorrectly.
https://goo.gl/photos/biRjvnwLPRD8XyPS6
In addition to the string on the roof and around the door, I strung a few pieces from a clothes hanger attached to the sides of the box and weighed them down with washers then stuck pieces of dowel rod into the washers to keep the string from getting tangled and twisted. I did not take the monofilament off my hose I believe this stay on the house all the time?The picture I posted here is from last year when I had a pair of BBs with eggs in my box. I currently only have the monofilament string on my box. Should I remove that too until I have BBs with eggs?
Gin,
You seem to be really knowledgable about the different BB houses. What type of BB house do you prefer the most? I have the standard cedar wood box with the front opening door. I’m wondering if there is a better box than this that will attract BBs and deter HS.A couple years ago I took the roof off my BB box and replaced it with piece of wood with a hole drilled in it and covered the wood with plexi-glass. My husband accused me of trying to cook the BBs. He said all it would do is generate heat inside the box and cook the birds’ eggs. So I took it off and put the original roof back on the box. What is your thought on the plexi-glass retaining too much heat in the box?
I was wandering if there’s a chance one of the babies that fledged from my box last year would come back this year to lay his/her eggs with a mate? Don’t last year’s babies nest later in the year?
Yes, I have a home made sparrow spooker. I also have monofilament string wrapped around the house as suggested on Sialas.org. I once read that putting up a decoy bluebird on the box will attract new BBs and deter sparrows. Has anyone else heard this?
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