Tree Sparrow - Passer Montanus
This is not just your run of the mill House Sparrow. This is a rural specialist which has different requirements - half a chance for example. Unfortunately numbers in the UK plummeted by 94 % from 1970 to 2004. It needs year round seeds, insects to feed its chicks when it breeds and nest holes. There are according to breeding surveys perhaps just 60,000 pairs left in the UK. That may seem a lot but compare that to the million that existed in 1970. It was a common farmland bird.
They breed in small colonies - these birds were nesting in boxes and eaves provided by the information centre at RSPB Bempton. I have seen them before at a country in park near Nottingham and there is also a small colony at Beddington Sewage farm of all places in South London. I would drive down there on an annual basis when I lived in Balham to get my tick for my year list.
You can tell them apart from a House Sparrow by the warm chestnut brown cap (as opposed to a grey cap) and the black spot on the cheek (absent on a House Sparrow).
The RSPB doesn't just create reserves to protect birds it actively engages with farmers to encourage wildlife stewardship. There are a network of advisors who visit farms to explain wildlife friendly policies and these days grants. You can see some information for the Tree Sparrow here. I gave money many years ago for a project called Hope Farm - an experiment in effect to take a farm and adopt every best practice possible to demonstrate what could be achieved. Its a working farm but it sets out to encourage back the farmland birds that have been persecuted at all levels by intense agricultural, monocultural more like practices. Spraying crops that kills insects, ripping out hedges to create bugger and bigger fields - everything too tidy. The practices have then been developed on Hope Farm have been cascaded out and the government and EU lobbied over funding issues.
Farmers have the chance to really earn money now to encourage wildlife and I was pleased to see that the government is continuing to support this. You can read about some examples of farmers who benefiting themselves and wildlife here.
The retirement dream for the Crossleys is a country cottage and small holding either in the UK or France. Wherever it is I am going to have some fields and grow weeds - bundles of them ! The neighbours will hate it but the birds will have a field day. Weeds and a big pond. I'll let a small area be gardened properly but then it will be so nice to have a transition into something thats supports a good crop of breeding farmland birds.
Tree Sparrow, Passer Montanus
Bempton RSPB
June 28 2013
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