When we moved here 11 years ago, the village was full of House Sparrows, half way up the hill there were pairs nesting, but we had none. We both think they are lovely little birds that can be found in every continent around the world, so we wanted our own colony of them. Now we couldn’t just go down to the village & net a load & bring them up here, no, we needed to encourage them. These Sparrows are community birds & live & nest together, so I built them a Sparrow hotel. Just like a Tit box, bigger with three separate apartments in the same box, one with a front facing hole & the other two on the sides (see enclosed photo). It took a couple of years but eventually a reservation was made by one honeymoon couple who duly gave us two babes. Word must have got round that this was an ideal hotel & that accommodation & food cost you nothing as a few more arrived. Now as you can see from the photo I have had to add an annexe to accommodate all our guest.
This year has been a bumper year for babies & it is so good to see them following Mum & Dad around begging for food, I reckon we have at least 12 babes, maybe from 3 separate parents & I still see them taking food up to the hotel, so maybe some more will be about later.
My point is anyone can encourage loads of birds into whatever type of garden you have, just by providing the right environment. So that is your task when you have nothing to do, Sparrow, Tit , Robin, owl or starling boxes all so easy to make.
One complaint about the Sparrows, not content with the hotels I provide, they took over my two artificial House Martin nests last year & the Martins never came back.