Why do birds do feeding rounds?

Our sparrows visit our feeding station between 8 and 9.30 am, then fly off to a garden a few houses from us (I can see it from the upstairs window if I stand on my toes and lean against the wall. Yes, I'm one of those people who does just that. ) After an hour or so they fly off again, over our house towards the woods. They return to us at 4pm prompt.

To me it would make much more sense to eat at one feeding station until it's empty rather than wasting energy on moving around. They can't really believe they are the only birds in the neighbourhood so saving a bit for the next day is risky.

The food we offer around here is pretty much the usual stuff (it's hard to see exactly what the neighbours offer without binoculars which I lost in when moving house) so I don't think that's the reason. Their feeding times are not based on when the feeders are filled either.

Why do birds do this?

 

Ah, as in some kind of avian pub crawl? Now this brings up the obvious question, why do some people do pub crawls? I have never understood that either.

 

I think this was a serious question from @Selleri . House Sparrows are very sociable birds and they will be mixing a lot with their neighbours. The ones that turn up on your feeders early are the ones that are roosting very nearby and in your garden. When they've fed on winter mornings they will go off socialising with their neighbours and relatives. They will be checking out food sources nearby and meeting up with 'friends' further away. This is what they do. It may be that the larger group has a preferred place to meet up. This can change year on year . I feed birds extensively in my garden. I remember one year they almost disappeared from my garden and feeding station in the autumn because, I believe, at that point they chose somewhere else for their social gatherings.....but they did come back.

The 4pm prompt return to your garden would make sense. They return 'home' to feed up before going to roost, as I said, probably somewhere in your garden or very close by. Hope this goes some way to answering your question. It may be that next autumn/winter you have the whole gang/extended families coming and spending the day in your garden......and they will eat you out of house and home.

 

Or, they may have been moulting.

 

Thanks Redwing, this makes very much sense It still however feels a bit odd that they would use so much energy on socialising especially in December. Maybe inbreeding is a big problem, or they might just be supersocial creatures. (Or maybe my logical thinking is better than sparrows'.... I think I could start boasting with that )

 

I do ave noticed that while Wood Pigeons stay in pairs most of the year. in the winter they come together in large flocks

 

We have been feeding the birds in our garden all year round for all the time we have lived in this village and are now up to over fifty House Sparrows visiting the garden so have had to buy more bird tables and feeding stations for all of them plus the other species that visit as well.Most of the time the Sparrows will come to the garden for their breakfast feed and then will go off foraging for o5errich protein food that could be put out in other people’s gardens although next doors feeders have remained empty for quiet a few weeks now so they are dependant on us to keep them going

Once their tummies are full up with breakfast they usually go back to the hedge twenty foot away and will spend time keeping warm amongst the foliage and by hiding they are out of the way of predators namely Sparrowhawks who do the rounds of the village looking for weaklings to pick off.

Since I have been unable to go out Mr Kandy has put up a bird feeder outside my lounge window and on the nuts and seed container over the last few days I have had a Robin,Coal Tit,Wren,Long Tailed Tit and also a Goldcrest looking for spiders amongst my pine branches. The rare ones only usually come when we have snow and a hard hoar frost so it has been a pleasure to see them in my garden again...

 

Like people. And sheep. Possibly a survival trait.

 

Birds pair up for obvious reasons during the breeding season. Post breeding many species flock but by no means all. Post breeding with some species there are many many juveniles. There are certainly survival advantages to flocking for some species. Finches and thrushes come to mind. Other species, predators for example, there are no obvious reasons to flock. (but some do, sometimes.) Some species are very sociable and this is a time for sociability, like House Sparrows which this thread was originally about.. Also family groups stay together post breeding for varying lengths of time; with some species dependency on parents is longer, some it is very short. There is definitely no one rule for all species. Then migration come into it for the migrant species . Some stick together, some don’t. It’s all fascinating to me and the more I learn, the more questions I have!