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WHO'S TO BLAME FOR DEAD BABY BIRDS?

CULPRIT: House sparrows seem to be taking over house martin nests and hurling out the young.

Friday July 11,2008

By John Ingham

THE Case Of The Bodies In The Flowerbed would have kept Miss Marple busy for weeks.

It was first brought to my attention by reader Brian Cannon from Banbury who told me of a colony of house martins where young have been thrown out of two of the nests.

Their broken bodies lay on the ground 30ft below the mud nests under the eaves. Had they been killed by their parents, he asked?

So I called the British Trust For Ornithology which is carrying out its first ever survey of house martins, black and white relatives of the swallow, and it turns out the same thing has been happening up and down the country.

BTO spokesman Paul Stancliffe says: “We are getting a lot of reports of very small house martins under the nests.”

Perhaps pairs returning late have found another couple in last year’s nest and thrown out the occupants.

This year house martins were up to a month late in many areas. Bad weather south of the Sahara and later in Spain and France held them up on migration.

But the prime suspect for the carnage is one of our most familiar birds – a chirpy character with problems of his own.

House sparrows seem to be taking over house martin nests and hurling out the young. Sparrows are on the red list after declining more than 50 per cent in 25 years.

One reason is that modern housing and the mania for refurbishment has stripped them of nest sites by sealing off the insides of roofs.

So they are turning into squatters and stealing the nests of martins.