Do HOSP Prefer Houses?

[Hanover Bill]

Like everyone else I am doing constant battle with house sparrows.

What I am curious about is that they seem to prefer my S&K house with crescent entrances, while virtually ignoring the four gourds I have hanging beneath it, two with crescent entrances, and two with round.

Is this the norm or is my site an anomaly? Is it simply because they have a choice, and given only gourds they would choose those? If this is the norm it seems like gourds would eliminate a lot of headaches in the war against the sparrows.

Please let me know if others have experienced this or is it just me?

Hanover Bill.

[Mary Dawnsong]

Hi Bill,

HOSP will nest in just about any cavity, including gourds.
They don't even need cavities. I grew up on a grain farm where dozens of HOSP crammed their nests into the open steel beams of our metal equipment sheds.

However, in my area HOSP prefer to nest in metal martin houses. I use that to my advantage. All my martin and tree swallow housing is gourds. I erect an 8-unit Trio martin house just for HOSP. Each compartment of the house has a Spare-O-Door trap installed. I trap around 100 HOSP a year that way and rarely does one show any interest in any other housing. After years of fighting HOSP who were trying to nest in martin gourds, the control is almost effortless now.

For more info about my trapping method, see:
http://purplemartin.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38

Note that the above technique doesn't seem to work at all sites. It really depends on the housing preference of your HOSP. I've had landlords tell me it worked great for them, but for others not so great. Sounds like it might work for you, though.

My best, Mary

[John Miller]

Sometimes..."some"times... given a choice, they prefer a house. But don't put up a gourd rack expecting sparrows to not build in it. They will.

I was recently asked at a field day event whether martins will not nest in gourds. I responded that sometimes people think they won't -- until they do. Kinda like my beagle. He's housebroken -- until he's not. But sparrows will build in gourds. At one site I manage, they did not show up the first year and second year nearly overan it...so..they won't go to gourds, until they do.

John M

[GeneP]

This trap will work in an S&K house

http://purplemartin.org/shop/product_in ... 0803007b06

They make it with a crescent but I've used this when I was using the S&K house. Make the opening smaller to keep out martins.

[Thurman Seber~TN]

From what I have seen...yes given the choice sparrows, and starlings as well, will tend to choose the houses. BUT don't let that cause anyone to think they will not use gouds also... because they will use a gourd.

[SoIndyDon]

To chime in from another state, my experience is the same here in southern Indiana. The HOSP seem to only go for my T-14. In fact I didn't have HOSP for years until I put up my T-14.

My neighbor that I've mentored closed up his S&K house and strictly went to gourds due to HOSP problems. Neither he nor I have seen HOSP go for our gourds.

BUT... my friend in the next city over has HOSP nesting in his gourds. Like was said, HOSP prefer houses if they are not nesting in a gourd.

[~Ray~Gingerich]

I made a nest box trap using the trio Spare-o-door and hung it on a utility pole, caught 6 sparrows since last week. It's just a small wooden box with a little 2"overhang at the top and bottom, sized to fit the door and using a stiff coat hanger for the hinge. Was using a larger box before but found it works better with the smaller size and placed near the martin housing. I have an acess port on the side for easy removal.

[Emil Pampell-Tx]

A good method to trap sparrows is to hang a trap about 1 or 2ft under the housing, the sparrows usually go to the lowest cavity, so they see that single house under the rest of the housing, and they quickly go to it. It works pretty good, but sparrows are sometimes hard to fool, and will not go into a trap.

Sometimes you can close the cavity that the sparrows want to use, and then they will go into the traps.

[rrmartins]

I killed quite a few this year. The new ones showing up have started builing inbetween the roof and the top of the house. The martins keep them out of the house itself. So now I have to put some screen inbetween the roof and the house where I left a gap there for venting. I plan on setting a V-trap this winter and cleaning alot of them out. Good luck.