Paphos Life

We have two swallows nests in our patio. Recently, the sparrows have been taking an interest in them, and the swallows have been naturally fighting them off. This morning, the two nests even had a bit of green in them, which presumably the sparrows had added.

Is there any way we can make the nests swallow only? I know it sounds daft, but I've never known sparrows to act like this before.

P'raps the sparrows have been rained out of their nests?? No idea of the merits of nest building between swallows and sparrows, but who knows??

Nothing that you can do in my opinion. It is nature at it's worst. I would of course be great if there is a way to stop the naughty sparrows.

You could try building a nest box or 2 for the Sparrows!

https://www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/ac ... rowstreet/


Shane

That happened to us last yr...sadly the swallows lost the battle

When I first saw this thread on the index I thought it must be about the tensions between home owners who regularly go back to the UK, like ourselves, and permanent residents.

The same thing has happened to my swallows. They worked hard to build a nest on my patio, only for the sparrows to chase them off and take it over (and leave a nice pile of greenery bits on my patio floor). The swallows are not hard at work building a 2nd nest, and I'm worried the sparrows will take it over too, but don't know how to prevent it.

It happened to my neighbours too, in fact this was before swallows began building on my patio, so I wondered if they had moved from next door, in which case I feel even more sorry for them.

Wish I knew how to prevent it. (And no, I don't the skills or the time to build a nest box for the sparrows).

I'm having a similar problems with House Martins, last year they built under the eaves of my house, they had young which fledged, but they all came back to the nest at night, early one morning I heard quite a commotion outside my window, and later found that the nest had been destroyed. I have a feeling that the culprit was a Magpie, as one does visit the area often.

This year the House Martins built again, but I think the nest has been abandoned, so sad if it has.

Jackie

I was sad this morning - the sparrows seem to have taken over the 2nd nest the swallows built, after losing their 1st one.

They've been hard at work on their 2nd nest for days. When I looked yesterday morning it looked almost finished and the swallows were still around, building it. This morning I noticed the pile of twigs under the 1st nest the sparrows stole was no longer there, and was now under the 2nd nest. And you could see bits of their green in the nest too - so the swallows have lost their 2nd nest.

I feel so sorry for the swallows, to do all that work for nothing, twice over, and they must be getting desperate to lay their eggs now.

It's even worse that the sparrows are not even using the 1st nest they took over, so it was for nothing, and I guess they won't use the 2nd one either.

Now I wish I had worked from home for a few days so I could keep chasing the sparrows away.