Sparrows Need HedgesHouse Sparrows and The Houses They LikeHouse sparrows prefer nesting in holes in houses. All the bird books say this and observation confirms. They will also use thick ivy to build their nest in and have been known to use all sorts of nooks and crannies, and even dense bushes. The common thread to their nesting choice seems to be stability. Their loose structure of twigs, dried grass, feathers, scraps of cloth and even shreds of plastic bags would fall apart if movement were brought into the equation. Multiple habitation is another characteristic of house sparrow nesting choice. They like to have other nests nearby for their extended families. Don’t be misled by their bouts of squabbling, they enjoy having other sparrows around, benefiting both socially and from mutual protection. Results from various surveys have indicated houses of a certain age are favoured by house sparrows. This is down to the number of gaps that have appeared in older buildings over the years as wood warps, mortar crumbles and tiles dislodge. Also, it was traditional to leave gaps under the roofline to facilitate ventilation, avoiding dampness from warm internal air rising into the roof space and condensing on the underside of cold tiles. Are there houses being built today which house sparrows’ can live in too? Sadly I doubt it. With special attention given to insulation and weatherproofing, modern roofs are designed to keep the warmth in and everything else out; namely insects, birds and the cold. Better treated wood, plasticises in mortar, and secure roof tiles - unfortunately for the house sparrow - will not shift in time. The modern apartment blocks replacing traditional two-storey houses in the suburbs are often of three floors; the top one being incorporated into the roofline, so the overall appearance is that the new building is no higher than the one it replaced, and is surrounded by. This means very often there is no roof space. Nothing for wasps, bats or birds to nest in - even if they could squeeze through the plastic soffit vents behind the guttering. I was fortunate growing up in a typical three-up, two-down semi-detached house in the often referred to, ‘leafy’ suburb of Finchley, in north London. The house was built in 1928. I know this for a fact, as a thoughtful builder marked the cement screed on the chimneybreast inside the loft with this date - and it also says so on the deeds! The exterior of the house was almost completely pebble-dashed, with red bricks used for decoration around the front door porch and under the ground floor bay window. It was a delightful welcoming house that I was happy to live in, having moved from an ominously dark condemned building in Islington - which the Council saw fit to demolish shortly after we moved out in 1964. I was eight years old at the time and was pleased to see we had house sparrows living in the roof; they seemed to be everywhere.
The street we moved into was very attractive. All the houses had neat privet hedges and a wooden gate matching the colour of the woodwork of the house and garage doors. The colours used by the houses were all deliberately different and made the street exceptionally distinctive. Our house was painted black and white. That was black woodwork and doors, with the window frames and gateposts in white. Other houses were either yellow, red, pink, brown and differing shades of green and blue, all with their window frames and posts picked out in white. What also made the street attractive were the red tiles edging about 40% of the pavement width and the established hawthorn trees, regularly spaced down both sides of the road. With their fresh green foliage in the spring and striking pink blossom appearing in May, they were a beautiful sight every year. Sadly, the street did not stay this way. It started in the late 60’s when one of our neighbours, during the repainting of his house, decided to paint all the woodwork in white. This was a trend followed by others over the years, leaving the remaining houses with the white and coloured paintwork, looking quite old-fashioned in comparison, rather than holding true to the original character of the road. (My parent’s house remained black and white till it was sold in 1999.) Then some of the gardens were removed and paved over to facilitate off-street parking for extra cars, even though each house already had a small driveway in front of the garage. This resulted in many hedges being grubbed out and several hawthorn trees being removed that were in the ‘wrong’ place. Worse still, a lorry, struck the tree outside our house in 1975, which tore a major branch off. The council in its dim wisdom decided to take the whole tree away! This did not please us, or the sparrows!
The hawthorn trees provided food for the house sparrows; both in the form of red haws in autumn & winter, and young buds in the early spring. Likewise today, hawthorn trees and bushes are still a great favourite of house sparrows. The thin sharp thorns on the branches provide excellent security for the bird from larger predators. The introduction of aluminium framed large paned double-glazing units changed the look of many houses, as did the replacement of the two glazed garage doors for a one-piece metal, up-and-over door. All in all, the street looks totally different today with various driveway surfaces, assorted window and front door styles and a mixture of trees in the road. Even most of the red tiles were removed from the pavement, when new gas pipes were laid in the late seventies and replaced with red ashfelt. On our house the house sparrows usually accessed their nests by flying up under the eaves. It was not uncommon however, to see them cling onto the pebbledash before they did this. Often they clung on in this way just to look under the eaves to seek out new access holes. I was always impressed with this feat, as it must have taken great skill in eyesight and claw coordination to fly directly to the wall and grab hold of the half buried stones. Since I started my recent investigation into sparrow decline, I’ve wanted to get a photograph of house sparrows doing this. Last Saturday (22/01/05) I finally managed this with a cheap 8x22 binocular/digital camera device. Although the quality is not great, I was able to take some pictures of house sparrows clinging onto the pebble-dash, of a house with the same design and characteristics as my parent’s home in Finchley. The behaviour of these sparrows is identical to what I first observed 40 years ago.
Pebble-dash was a new form of roughcast rendering, where the stones are thrown into the cement render, rather than mixed into it, as was a traditional weatherproofing coating for walls. It became extremely popular for houses built in the 1920/30’s, especially on council estates, and later in the 1960/70’s when it was often used to cover walls of houses showing their age or to easily disguise conversion work and blend in new extensions. While pebble-dash is a helpful surface for sparrows to use for observing suitable future nesting holes, any edge, rough brick corner or ledge is handy for birds to explore possible entry points. Modern houses are built without these useful ‘perches’ and prevent sparrow investigation. Pebble-dash is generally not used as a surface material nowadays, it basically states that a house was built in a defined era, and the roof will also be of a certain construction and age, with its open access under the eaves. I suggest this is why these houses are most prized by house sparrows. The widespread use of privet as borders when these houses were built, fortuitously provides the essential cover sparrows also desire.
If a modern house has nowhere for sparrows to enter anyway, I guess it doesn’t matter if there’s nothing for birds to cling onto to explore. Regrettably, new houses and apartment blocks are having nesting options designed out, and none seem to have appropriate hedging planted around them. Refurbished properties also become bird unfriendly. An example is the building I rented a flat in for over twenty years. It was built around 1890, and had starlings and house sparrows living in various parts of the roof when I first moved there in 1981. Each year I was able to feed the new broods on the window ledge as they emerged from their nests under the small roofs above the bay windows, which were covered with traditional Welsh slate. The main roof was extremely leaky, and even today I suffer occasional nightmares where I’m trying to deal with multiple leaks, and don’t having enough buckets and bowls to go round. This was based on reality, as sometimes during prolonged heavy rain there was a desperate struggle to catch them all! Eventually the house was sold and my new landlord thankfully paid for the repairs, and some years later had the whole roof renewed in the summer of 1995. This led to the eviction of any birds nesting in the roof space ever again. Sparrows were already in decline around the house, as the previous landlord had the delightful wild front garden, including the black & white mosaic Victorian tiling of the front path, covered with a thick slab of grey concrete, presumably several cubic metres of ready-mix poured on top of what was there before. I never knew the precise details; it was just a real shock coming back from holiday and staring unbelievably at the starkness of the new ‘garden.’ Incidentally, a few months earlier, it was probably the last front garden in the road to have a horse on it. Once when my girlfriend visited, she tethered her steed there. It caused a bit of trouble though when it leaned over the hedge and started eating the neighbour’s flowers! Where the horse was stabled, unsurprisingly, there were plenty of sparrows - as they still have today. House sparrows will only live where they are comfortable, where they have everything they need. Food, nest and cover - the three basics requirements. Take one away and the other two are not enough. Older houses have the necessary places sparrows can use. The houses in the photographs accompanying this article have multiple nests holes in the roof, and the extensive hedging around the property enables them to travel safely to the neighbouring houses in the street to interact with the other sparrows and to search for food along the adjacent hedgerow. There are more than two-dozen house sparrows visiting about ten nest sites in this colony. They chase around from hedge to hedge and take communal dust baths in the shallow bitumen depressions in the road. They congregate in the hedges for noisy chirruping sessions and seem quite tolerant at times towards passers by, by staying still while keeping a watchful eye just in case someone gets too close. They also sit in the chainlink fence next to the hedge like it’s a natural extension of it. And when you think about it, having the ability to easily pass through chainlink when any of their predators can’t makes this fencing a great protection apparatus!
The generally brown plumage of the sparrow makes the bird blend well sitting in a sun-dappled hedge. The white and black markings on the male’s head reminiscent of the US Dessert camouflage with the similar black/white contrast markings, supposedly representing brightly lit stones with their shadows. The female and young are less streaky and duller. When many species of bird sit still they easily merge into the background, the sparrow better than most. And birds do rest during the day, even the most active. It came as some surprise to me when I first watched a pair of goldcrests sit motionless in a tree for half an hour. Usually they are seen constantly on the go. Similarly, blue tits, ever the lively acrobats, will just sit and rest for some of their day. It seems even the most energetic of birds like to put their claws up, so to speak, for a few minutes. Likewise, the house sparrow will often just sit and observe - and what better place to do that than in a hedge? And more so if the suitable house nearby also contains its nest.
back to top Donald E Lyven © 2004 donaldelyven@aol.com |
