Who Killed...?

Only had the Playhour, Dandy ,Beano ,Knockout & Buster in our house Bob:D
http://www.phil-comics.com/NewsletterIssue3.pdf
It was called the 'THUNDERBANG'!
Have a browse on the link ...it's the trianular toy.You held it at the angle where the letter'T' is and crack it downwards like a whip...and BANG!!! The sound was caused by a fold of strong paper(visible in the picture) being forced open with the air pressure... Great bird scarer:gnthb:

 

I think in different parts of the country the bird counts are a bit confusing we need a nation wide census on all our british birds then we will have some idea.
I think the rspb have one in Jan called birdwatch
We are very lucky where we live as we get a lot of birds in our garden
Sparrows
Blue tits
Robins
Dunnock
Wood pidgeon
Collared dove
Long tailed tits
Coal tits
Magpies
Blackbirds
Song thush
Starlings and we had a Sparrowhawk last year
These are long tail tits that come to the back garden every morning at half past ten sorry if the pic is not good I will get the camera right one day

 

Have a look in here Woo..it's a good site
http://wild-birds.suite101.com/article.cfm/british_garden_birds

 

Nobody likes starlings?
I love em, they're noisy and gregarious and very entertaining. I once watched a family of 9 try to get into my bird bath at the same time. It was hilarious! I love their squabbling, they're so alive.

They also eat leatherjackets in the lawn. Catch them in the right light and their feathers are irrridescent.

 

There's no such thing as a hedge sparrow, there's tree sparrows and house sparrows. What gets called a hedge sparrow is a dunnock or hedge ascentor. They have a grey head, almost stripey plumage and red legs. They don't have the complicated blobs and patterns of the tree and house sparrow.

 

Maybe people replacing their privets with fencing also has something to do with the decline of our house sparrow. When I moved here 20years ago most people had privets and 75% have replaced them with fencing,it's such a shame.:tnp: Im one of the few left that have kept mine.:thmb: 02

 

I was told that it was related to the decline in the horse. Less 'oss muck, fewer flies, less sparrows. Bring back horse drawn carts! There's a decline in insects in general, hardly any butterflies, wasps or flies, I remember when every house had a can of fly spray. Not needed any more.

 

We get swarms of sparrows in our garden here, especially in winter. They descend on the berberis that overhangs from next door and spend hours stripping it bare of the berries, much to the annoyance of the chickens who are directly underneath the bush!

I suppose we are very lucky-at the back of our garden is the original hedgerow from the farmland that was there before the area we live in was built on. Over the years this has grown into a huge rambling mess of hawthorn, damson, ivy, ash and holly. Now every Spring we get a pair of magpies nesting in it. The garden also seems to be host to several pairs of blackbirds that love nothing more than trashing the "lawn" looking for worms. The chickens couldn't have made as much of a mess as the blackbirds have!!

I also read that the decline of sparrows in big cities is due in a large part to privet hedges being ripped up and replaced by concrete in front gardens, as we have more cars and need somewhere off the road to park them.

 

The little bit I know about the two sparrows is:-

House sparrows have a grey head , Hedge sparrows have brown heads. I understand Hedge sparrows, also know as Dunnocks, are not actually related to house sparrows.

cheers

 

Late as usual:o

Is that a chaffinch woo?

cheers