John, Uwe - I've had some success discouraging House Sparrows from entering nest boxes by placing a strand or two of monofilament line so it blows near the entrance of the nest box. You only need a strand or two, but the sparrows seem repelled by it while the other birds species aren't bothered. it works on feeders, too. Not sure why... You probably don't want to have it too long, so it doesn't tangle and form loops that could catch birds, but that's pretty easy to do.
Jesse Ellis On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 7:05 AM, Uwe Kausch <[email protected]> wrote: > John, > Are you using the Peterson styled nest boxes? I have found that House > Sparrows don't favor them as much, since they have a more difficult time > constructing their nests in those, since the box is tapered. They seem to > favor the rectangular boxes. The other interesting observation is that I > see many less sparrows and starlings around my property when I have > Kestrels nesting but still get my bluebirds and tree swallows. Good luck. > > Uwe Kausch > Duluth > -----Original Message----- > From: Minnesota Birds [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John > Nelson > Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 6:10 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [mou-net] Losing HSP > > Watched a beautiful adult male Sharp-shinned Hawk lite in a shrub outside > the bay window briefly before pouncing on a HSP. It flew to a nearby log to > feast. Later we found another pile of HSP feathers nearby. Along with 6 in > the sparrow trap we aren't even making a dent in the population prior to > Eastern Bluebird nesting time. > The 4 pm Northern Cardinal show yesterday numbered 21 a record high for > our PFW count and equalling our all time high. > > John Nelson > Good Thunder MN > > Sent from my iPad > ---- > Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net > Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html > > ---- > Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net > Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html > -- Jesse Ellis, Ph. D. ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html
