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Comment by bananapear | Hacker News Reader

Why would you want to deter them? What’s the problem with them vs other small birds?

House Sparrows are invasive in the United States and they are very aggressive. They destroy the nests of native birds to eliminate competition.

We have bluebird houses and can confirm. One box full of pecked-to-death bluebirds with house sparrow eggs on top of them is quite enough. I call the males "bearded bastards."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin

Reminds me of this guy, who thought it would be a good idea to introduce the birds in Shakespeare's plays to the US.

That’s because it’s the same guy who earlier sponsored the introduction of the house sparrow to the U. S.

Thanks for the context - with House Sparrows being resident in Eurasia, I didn't understand the motivation for this either

Many birds commonly seen in the US are non-native, and reduce native bird populations significantly.

https://abcbirds.org/blog20/invasive-birds/

Odd that this list considers Cattle Egrets as invasive, I have never heard that before. They came here naturally just fairly recently. Their range expanded due to human activity but, rather interestingly, it was because they had more available food sources rather than physically being moved by people. They eat parasites off cattle so as cattle farming expanded so did their range.

Herons are already capable of traversing entire continents, as can be seen with Night Herons. Cattle Egrets just didn’t really have a reason to expand until recently.

That is peculiar. Because in the Netherlands the native house sparrow population has declined significantly since the '90s.

Same is happening with Starlings. They are in decline in Europe but they thrive the North America

Honestly, they are cute, I like having them around, but we've got some feeders, and if there are house sparrows, there are no other birds. We've been tweaking the feed we use and the form factor of the feeders to keep them away. Since we switched to nyjer, they've generally left the feeder alone, and we get finches instead.

you're right but then some people also say burmese python are cute.

In the product description:

- Resist feeding non-native invasive HOSP to encourage native species

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