The time has come

We'll be getting one of these:

It's a House Sparrow trap.

House Sparrows are not native to the U.S.  Many people call them European Sparrows because that's where they came from.  The problem with House Sparrows is that they compete with our native species.  They damage eggs from other birds like Bluebirds and Tree Swallows, sometimes even killing the adults of those species.

Here is a House Sparrow (male):

image from allaboutbirds.org

We have 500-600 of these birds frequenting our feeders.  It's a nuisance almost beyond belief.

The bad part about trapping is that you also have to kill.  House Sparrows and Starlings are the only birds that people are allowed to do anything with.  With native species, people aren't allowed to have nests, feathers, eggs, or (obviously) birds.  It's against the law to pick up a feather and bring it into your house, for instance.  This law comes from the time when people were actively killing large numbers of birds for ladies hats.  Several species were on the brink of extinction by the time the problem was corrected.

I have a friend who would never trap and kill sparrows even though they are a nuisance.  I think many people fall in this category.  However, after watching how crazy it was in our yard yesterday, and seeing that the sparrows are actually affecting how much food the native birds are able to eat, I decided that I will trap.

Nathan and I both spent numerous hours this summer pulling invasive plants out of the grounds of our local nature center.  By doing this, we give the native plants a chance.  While pulling invasives, we found native plants struggling to get enough sun.  I will look at this sparrow problem in the same way.  I hope that removing many of these sparrows will have a positive impact on the native species both during the winter for feeding and again in the spring and summer nesting season.