Sparrows didn’t hang around once the bird food dried up

OUR feathered friends can be fickle ones.

I have always been pleased that a decent flock of sparrows shares my garden, nesting behind slates on the west-facing wall and filling the air with their cheery chirping.

At times I have counted up to 20 gathering to take scattered bird seed from the lawn, flying to and from a nearby hedge with loudly whirring wings. However, during a week-long visit to Scotland in July, a time which coincided with a mini-heatwave, noone was home to provide them with seed mix.

When we returned, the sparrows had, quite simply, vanished.

All the young had fledged, so there was nothing tying them to my home, and they had simply opted to up sticks and find a more reliable source of food elsewhere. Cupboard love evaporates pretty quickly as soon as the handouts dry up.

Country Notebook

Given natural food is in ready supply at this time of year, I have opted to pause on putting out bird food.

This is a quiet time in the avian calendar, when birds are moulting and keeping a low profile, some migrants have departed and the breeding season is drawing to a close.

However, the garden seems pretty empty now the chatty sparrows have gone.

Feeding garden birds can give a distorted sense of local populations, drawing them in from surrounding woods, fields, hedgerows and gardens and concentrating numbers in one spot. And without the lure of a ready source of food, I’ve not much bird life to speak of – a couple of robins, the occasional thrush, a resident blackbird and visiting mobs of magpies and crows that tuck into the windfalls.

As soon as I get feeding again I’m sure my sparrows will return.