An approach that worked well for me, was to permanently discourage the House
Sparrows through the use of a pellet gun with scope purchased from Cabela's.
R/Steve


>From: "Clarice Clark and Jerry Broadus" <jbroadus at seanet.com>
>Reply-To: jbroadus at seanet.com
>To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
>Subject: house sparrows
>Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 16:21:12 +0000
>
>The House sparrow(s?) struke this morning with an attempted hostile
>takeover of a Violet Green swallow box. I don't know if it was the
>same bird all morning, but he was sneaky and persistent.
>Although he was discouraged with BB fire, he repeatedly entered the
>box and tried to shove the nestlings out the hole.
>I heard their cries of protest and picked up birds not yet ready to
>fly from the ground and put them back into the nest. I tried to
>stay close by doing yard work in the vacinity, but as soon as I was
>out of sight, he flew back in and did his dirty work.
>I attempted to discourage him with a BB gun, but I failed to hit him,
>andafter about an hour, went on the other side of the garage and
>harassed another box.
>the lesson learned is that the sparrow is much more successful with
>the style of box that has a hole in the bottom. He can fly in much
>too easily and it is a snap to drag the little ones out and toss them
>into the bushes below. The other style has the narrow slot on the
>front, that the sparrow supposedly can't get in - he can, but it is
>harder . The parents sucessfully defended this box, because he has
>to hang on to the outside before he can squeeze in and they dive bomb
>and make it hard on him. Also, once he is inside, it is much harder
>to get the babies out that little slot.
>Clarice Clark
>jbroadus at seanet.com
>Puyallup, WA. 98371


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