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keeping sparrows away from bluebird nest box

9 years ago

Hello,

I put up a bluebird nest box a couple of years ago and spent the last couple years chasing sparrows out of it. Starting a few weeks ago, at least 2 pairs of bluebirds are showing interest in the box. Visiting frequently and even chasing each other away. I have seen up to six in the yard at times apparently competing for the box. I plan on putting up a second box soon (that's about all my yard size will handle).

My question is, how to I keep the house sparrows away? They don't seem to be hanging around too much right now, but they will be back in the spring.
thank you

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Comments (3)

andy99mich
9 years ago
There are many products for this specific purpose online. You can look into them on Amazon I'm sure. That's the most help I can provide :) Good luck ;)
parkernicole01
9 years ago
According to where you are, they could start nesting as early as March. They may already be shopping around. After the nest is built & 1st egg is laid (usually blue- if white with dark speckles, that's a HOSP egg), I put up a sparrow spooker & haven't had a problem with HOSP invasion yet (& they are EVERYWHERE). If the HOSP keep trying to set up shop, you'll need to set up a Van Ert trap inside the house. You can find these items online. If HOSP really become a problem, many people use ground traps & use a decoy & millet seed to attract others. There's a great site that explains it all (can't think of name right now, but should find it through Google.) Sounds like you have a good chance to get bluebirds to nest this year. Lastly, they may be looking for a place to roost at night if it's really cold where you are right now. Good luck!
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It is just tragic that these birds were introduced into this country. I have always had to trap a few in early spring with in-box traps, but this year has been horrible. I've never had success with a repeating ground trap in previous years, and I would only seem to catch native species (like Song Sparrows)so I would put it away. I don't have any other native sparrows this winter, and am being over run with HOSP. So the ground trap is set up daily and so far I've caught five of them, with many more to go. I do wish commercial establishments and people would stop giving them places to nest and breed. I'm sure most people do not understand how devastating they are to our native cavity nesters.
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Great news! Hope the swallows get down to nesting in the other box now! I don't have all my bluebird boxes facing the same direction either, I have two that face north, two that face east and three that face northeast, however the height of all of them are pretty much the same. Five of them face open land/yard and two of them have open land on one side of them and the yard on the other. It really is amazing how much you can learn here though even when you have been doing it for awhile, this will only be my third year hosting bluebird, if they nest that is. LOL! Donna
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I had such a disturbing experience over the past two years with English house sparrows that I plugged up the holes on my birdhouse. This birdhouse on a sawed off utility pole in our meadow has been home to many families of Eastern bluebirds in the past, and in some years to tree swallows. Then the house sparrows showed up, en masse. I bought a repeating sparrow trap from this place: http://www.sparrowtraps.net/ and I trapped and killed off most of the population. (The first year I made the mistake of relocating the sparrows to an area some 20 miles away in an effort to be humane. BIG mistake!! They have the homing abilities of pigeons.) Anyways I significantly diminished the sparrow population but the one or two that escaped my trapping efforts still successfully drove the bluebirds from the bird house. I was so disgusted and exhausted from the unpleasant task of trying to contain the squatters that I retired from the "bird landlord" business, and my plugged up birdhouse is purely decorative now. I wish you luck with your bird houses, but advise you to prepare for a long sustained (maybe unwinnable) war.
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First off, let me commend you on wanting to help out our native birds. Nuthatches do not often use nest boxes, but an appropriate sized box with a 1 1/8 inch entrance hole is large enough for chickadees and wrens to nest in, but small enough to exclude house sparrows. Also, keep in mind that perches are not only uneccessary, but can do more harm than good as they make it easier for hungry predators to reach into a nestbox and make a snack out of eggs and nestlings. Oh yeah...a few woodpecker species such as flickers and red-bellies will use large nestboxes. If you put one up and fill the entire interior with wood shavings, you'll entice woodpeckers to "excavate" the cavity while preventing house sparrows from claiming it by blocking the cavity.
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CaWill
9 years ago
We have had 70+ weather here where I live in Mid-Mo for about a week and my blues are really scouting. You definitely have to keep on those sparrows with the Van Ert inbox trap and ground trap if possible. That website that has great info is www.sialis.org - bible for bluebirding.

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