The Ubiquitous Sparrow

Redpolls at breakfast - Margaret Madsen photo

Chickadees are the first birds to arrive again at first light this Boxing Day but as soon as it's fully light, those wretched sparrows descend like a plague. I've been trying to photograph them to prove what a demanding and unruly mob they are, but the moment I lift the camera, they scatter far and wide. The charming little Redpolls aren't as nervous and just continue with their breakfast.

When we first moved here, we set up feeders with black sunflowers in one and mixed seed in the other. The sparrows seemed to prefer the smaller seeds, leaving the sunflower seeds alone and because we didn't want to attract the sparrows, we abandoned the mixed seed, using only sunflowers in the winter. Well, that plan failed. The sparrows soon developed a taste for the sunflower seeds and now can clean out all the feeders in just a few days.

Someone told me that the advantage of having a mob of sparrows visit is that they attract other birds and actually, this might possibly be true. There are often Redpolls or House Finches or other kinds of sparrows mixed in with them. If we look closely, we're often surprised.

John hates sparrows for another reason - he thinks they deliberately single out his vehicle for attack, dropping their splotchy white bombs on it. This was a really great problem for him when we lived in Delisle where Manitoba maples (box elders) grew in the front yard and provided perching privileges over the car when he parked on the street. He would gnash his teeth and say really unprintable things. In the summers, there were a lot of grasshoppers that splattered yellow gobs on the windshield and hood when we drove on grid roads. But it was the greasy carcasses caught in the radiator that drew the sparrows. "Darn things think we've brought home take-out dinner for them," he would growl.