House sparrow

A quick blip tonight after catching up on my backblips from the last few days' trip to the Cairngorms. Here is the humble male house sparrow in the garden outside our kitchen window. This is one of the favoured spots for house sparrows in the garden, it's more sheltered and south facing and is perhaps a bit warmer than elsewhere. This male is part of a pair nesting behind the barge boards above the room in which I was working today.

House sparrows have been in decline for some years. Their small colonies appear to keep closely to a small geographical area. We are lucky to have a colony centred around our house and those of our neighbours, and their numbers are bearing up well. Strangely in the last two years, they have been joined by a few tree sparrows that have been with us through both the breeding season and the winter.

At work we had our last get together of the management group who have worked together in the North West over the last four years. From Friday 1st April everyone will disperse across new teams nationally, and we will be working in a wholly new structure with new colleagues and new roles. A sad day in some ways, but there are a lot of achievements to look back on in those four years.

The Cairngorm backblips are:

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday