The return of the sparrow

Well its great to see the return of the House Sparrow in our garden. For years, statistics have shown a dramatic decline in the House Sparrow population over the last 30 years. Before a couple of years ago, the sparrow was a rare sight in our garden. Since then, we have seen more visit the garden. Today, its really nice to see a group of around 8 of them hogging the feeder perches for once.

I am thrilled to see at least 4 juvenile sparrows in the garden at the moment along with at least 4 adults. The youngsters have been so entertaining over the last week or so and have caught my attention plenty of times. Whilst I was filling up the feeders a few days ago, the sparrows couldn't resist the idea of feeding on the feeders. Whilst I was out, they allowed me to take a few shots. You can tell that the sparrow in the photo below is a juvenile because of its small size and yellow gape on the beak.

This is probably my favourite photo of the lot (see below). A female sparrow was feeding with her youngsters:
One of the juveniles seemed quite shy and sat in a nearby bush whilst I watched it.
Whilst the make was happy to watch at the top of a shrub.

As I was sat in our little office building, I captured the video below of a male House Sparrow feeding its youngsters. It was great to see them share a perch on the feeder. It did seem a bit strange that the juvenile was reliant on the parent to feed it, despite the fact that the seeds were just next to it. It made me think just how vulnerable these birds are.

It can be quite easy to attract more sparrows to your garden. It appears that the sparrows in our garden prefer seed mixes to the sunflower hearts. I now fill up at least one of our feeders with seed mixes for the House Sparrows. I suppose putting seed mixes out is just one way of attracting sparrows to your garden. Another way to help is to have plenty of water available for them. They sometimes visit our garden just so they can have a quick drink at the bird bath, and it isn't uncommon to see 4 or 5 of them having a wash too.

As many of you will know, you can buy House Sparrow terraced nestboxes with 3 seperate compartments. Unfortunately our box has never been used by House Sparrows, but hopefully, they will use it to nest next year. If you buy one, you may well find that a different bird uses one of the compartments to nest in, as Blue Tits did in ours last year! The sparrows that have visited our garden this year nested in the wall of a house a few doors away from us.

Elsewhere in the garden, birds are visiting our feeders in large numbers. A group of at least 7 Greenfinches have been around in our garden as well as plenty of Chaffinches, Starlings and Woodpigeons. One bird I haven't seen in a while, however is the Coal Tit. I imagine they are probably nesting far away from our garden. The Blue and Great Tits have been providing lots of entertainment though...

This is because we have now seen both Blue and Great Tit fledglings from nests in other gardens. We have also seen some very scruffy parents visiting the peanut feeder. Earlier on this year, when Blue Tits were choosing somewhere to nest, they declined our camera nestbox after visiting several times. They then built a nest in our non-camera nestbox, but moved out of that too, to nest in a garden nearby. It is amazing how fussy they are!

Last, but by no means least, I have also seen a couple of juvenile Starlings about. Not sure this is a good thing, judging by what other bloggers have said about the noise they make!

BBC Countryfile's Blog of the Month

My blog is around 3 weeks away from its first birthday, and its early birthday present was to be chosen as BBC Countryfile magazine's June 09 Blog of the Month. I was thrilled so see the article about Joe's Wildlife Garden in the magazine which I bought today when it came out. HUGE thanks to Countryfile for choosing my blog. Another HUGE thanks to the people who have visited my blog to make it worthwhile me sharing my wildlife encounters.

The editor of the magazine emailed me recently to let me know that my blog had been chosen. In a mad panic to get the magazine today as a family, we somehow managed to buy two copies of the magazine...oops!

I started my blog as a way of recording the wildlife and particularly the birds which visited our garden in Buckinghamshire. Since then, I have started to improve the blog and get some more visitors to the blog. I really like talking to other people about their garden sightings as well as sharing my own, and I suppose that's why I have a garden wildlife blog. In the future, I hope to buy a DSLR camera, which should improve the photos a bit too. It can be difficult with the camera I use at the moment to capture quality photos of birds at a distance.

I think that the Blog of the Month competition is such a great idea, and really spreads the word about blogs that were previously unknown to people. I also found that the rest of the magazine was a great read, and a really good look into the british countryside. And I'm not just saying that because my blog was chosen as their Blog of the Month. It really is a fantastic read, and definitely deserves to sell more copies.

Thanks to you again for visiting and commenting, and to Countryfile magazine for choosing my blog. To nominate your own blog, email the editor of BBC Countryfile magazine (email address in the picture above) with the link to your blog. I think I'll leave this post for at least 2-3 days to give people the chance to read. And after that, I have plenty more posting material. I look forward to posting about our new but very small pond which was created over the weekend.

Happy blogging and have a good week!

June Corncockles

Whilst we were away on holiday in Norfolk plants got, well a bit out of hand in our garden. Weeds had popped up everywhere. But there was one surprise waiting in the garden when we got back...

Yep, the Corncockles which I planted myself have sprung into flower. Even now as I look out into the fading light in the garden, the flowers are still showing their bright colours. I must admit that pink isn't my favourite colour, but they are really a fantastic feature in the garden. I planted quite a few of them in rows and they are very close together. I realise I should have thinned them out before they flowered, but they seem to be doing ok.

I love the way they sway in the wind, as in the photo below:

Some of the flowers were just emerging with the June sun.


I have already seen a couple of bees on the corncockles and hopefully we will see some more, as well as some butterflies over the coming summer months. Moving onto more June colours in the garden, my dad just planted a Lavender shrub and a Veronica shrub. Hopefully, when a bit bigger, they will look a bit more natural and will fit in better with its surroundings. Below is the Lavender:

And a close-up of the flower.

And the Veronica shrub:
Dad's veg seems to be doing well at the moment, despite the best efforts of the local slugs, snails and caterpillars. Lots of watering needed in this hot weather though!


I think its incredible how much our plants have grown in the week we've been away. Over the coming week, I will probably update on our garden birds. If you watched Springwatch today or watched the Springwatch webcams, you will have known that many of the chicks in the nests they were following fledged earlier to try and cool down. It seems that the same behaviour is taking place in our garden when the birds have been visiting our feeders in the evenings to avoid the warm midday sun.

Just a quick note- if you missed any of my Norfolk holiday posts and you would like to read any of them, please click on the links below:

Norfolk holiday birds
Norfolk holiday plants
Norfolk holiday extras

This week, I'm doing work experience out of school at a local ranger service, who help to maintain important wildlife habitats in our area. More on that soon, but for now, have a good week.