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Backyard tragedy




One of life's hard lessons, again...

Our neighbors installed a bluebird box and we were all thrilled that a
pair had nested and sometime later were obviously feeding little ones.
Finally our neighbor got a peep and said there were four or five babies in
the nest. Then we noticed one day that the bluebird pair were spending
almost all afternoon chasing what looked like a house sparrow back and
forth over the yards. This kept up until nightfall, with the sparrow not
giving up, but hanging around the box and trying to get in. The next
morning our neighbor found a nestling dead on the ground and the adults
nowhere to be found. When he looked inside the box, all the other
nestlings were dead in the nest. They had their heads pecked to bits. So
the neighbor cleaned out the box. Soon the sparrow was busy trying to
build a nest. My neighbor is really angry and sickened by this. It's hard
to accept the fact that this is what these birds are programmed to do. I
looked in my encyclopedia of birds (John Tenner sp? - what a great
resource!), and sure enough, it specifically says that sparrows will
behave aggressively towards other birds. The bluebirds haven't come back,
and my neighbor keeps tearing out the sparrows' work. Could it help if 
he put up more boxes, to keep competition down? 

Paula
Durham, NC