By Bob Hastie.

House Sparrow (Passer domesticus)

I keep my Sparrows on a colony system. I have three such colonies. Each colony comprises six or seven hens and five or six cocks.

It is important not to have more cocks than hens--they will fight to the death! Each colony is housed in an aviary approximately 15x7x4 feet wide. A 6x3 flight would easily house two pairs. I have yet to try them in a cage but I think I could get them to breed, with settled birds, in a 4x2x2 feet cage with outside nest box. Make sure aviaries for Sparrows are secure. They will find the smallest hole in the unlikeliest of places and escape.

Basic diet is a budgie mixture supplemented with millet sprays and peanuts from a feeder at all times. Interestingly enough, one colony, although they are all related, eats very few peanuts, while the others devour them. Softfood is fed two or three times a week outwith the breeding season and mealworms and frozen maggots are given occasionally. Greenfood is eaten avidly. I use lettuce.

They are easy birds to cater for. I use budgie nestboxes with a top lid that opens for access. It is important to have more boxes than hens on a colony system as cocks will sometimes take over a box for their own use. I number each box for identification purposes. I fill the box with hay and let them build their own nest with this and other materials such as feathers (white is preferred) and coconut fibres etc. Boxes are left in all year round, cleaned out after the breeding season and again before it starts. They are used for roosting.

I have had eggs laid as early as March and as late as September, but find here that May, June and July are the main months. Increase the livefood from March onwards.

My softfood is made from Badminton Horse Meal mixed with wholemeal bread which I dry in the oven and make into breadcrumbs. It lasts a long time like this. I mix two parts Badminton to one part breadcrumb and add a small quantity of seed, say niger, blue maw or white perilla, for variety, and moisten the mix with water. Leading up to and during the breeding season I add catfood to this mix. The cheapest tinned catfood whether it is meat, fish or lamb etc. will do, and I blend it into the softfood to a crumbly moist consistency. The birds love it, and the extra protein means a saving on expensive livefood.

A clutch of eggs is usually four to six but occasionally more. Never disturb a nest until all the eggs have been laid and the hen brooding. For some reason, I find some nests will have the eggs discarded, physically thrown out, if inspected before a full clutch is laid. The eggs are brooded by the hen alone which does not sit tight. They always want to see what is going on and it amazes me that they hatch at all. Incubation is 12-14 days.

It is easy to tell when they hatch, the young are very noisy. Ringing, if required, must be done on the fourth day as they are very fast growing. They leave the box at approximately 16 days old with a very small tail, but a wide yellow gape. Both parents continue to feed them. Some breeders remove the young after three days out of the box but I leave mine with the adults unless they get harrassed, which can sometimes happen.

I Treat them with Intradine or similar as sparrows are prone to Coccidiosis.

House sparrows are now bred in a range of colours, some sex linked some autosomal recessive and are reasonably easy to acquire.

They are sociable little birds and it is great to see the interactions in the colony, the fake fights, the squabbling and the noise. They are well worth a try.