All of a twitter
See Round Hill Reporter December 2016
Male House Sparrow
Female House Sparrow
They are back! The chirpy sparrows that share our streets have been on holiday. All has been quiet (especially as those squawky sea gulls are going through their annual quiet patch too).
Late summer, strangely, our flocks of sparrows fly off for a few weeks – not far – the Race Hill perhaps or Falmer, looking for a glut of fallen seeds in the fields around.
Then back to their favourite shrubs in Richmond Road or Crescent Road or your garden perhaps, where the colony have in all likelihood hung out for years. If not immersed in your own kind of twitter, you have probably heard their twittering as you walk along the road. It is loud and cheery. What are they saying to each other? It all sounds very social, friendly, comforting even. Then suddenly without any warning, with one accord the twitter stops abruptly, there is no slow twit, one out of step with the others, just an immediate and disconcerting silence. A few minutes (or less) of eerie quietness, and they begin again – all of a twitter.
Bird numbers continue to fall and in a city like ours where so many small, local pockets of green spaces are being concreted over and built on, birds need all the help we can give as winter creeps up. Lots of people in cities feed the birds all the year round but if you are not one of them, how about now? Biscuit, and cake crumbs, bought seeds, apple, suet will bring birds into your garden or even your window ledge. Don’t put out too much, it should all be eaten by dusk and given fresh next day. It is also helpful to have two or three small feeding stations, rather than one big bird table, where the small birds might not get a look in.
Bird feeding and bird watching are not just for dotty old ladies like me, I know from experience, that children can easily get hooked. A pair of binoculars, a book of bird food recipes (yes, there are such things!), an eye catching, informative but easy to read book such as “The Secret Lives of Garden Birds” by Dominic Couzens, illustrated beautifully by Peter Partington, will in many cases instill an interest that may last a lifetime. Tweet, tweet.
This page was last updated by Ted on 29-Sep-2026