I’m going to bend my somewhat informal rules, to describe something that happened yesterday. I had forgotten the incident until I saw the sparrows clustered on the fat ball feeder. I loaded it up with two fresh fat balls this morning and within the hour, four enterprising sparrows had begun to reshape them. They appeared to be one male and three females, possibly the group who were in the garden yesterday, and they are committed acrobats. The male will hang by one foot if necessary and at least one of the females is upside down more often than not.
By early afternoon, with the occasional assistance of a starling, they have reduced the fat balls to a solitary marble-sized little ball rattling around in the bottom of the cage. A male sparrow is the sole remaining feeder and he struggles to get a grip on it. He could have done with a partner in crime. Yesterday, I saw two female sparrows who seemed to have thought through the problem and were batting the little fat ball between them, from one side of the wire cage to the other so that they could both feed. I smiled.
thekitchensinkbirdwatcher 