Garden Wildlife UK

Good afternoon all,

Here is a shot from today. Is this a sprarrow?

Reed1 by JohnBW83, on Flickr

Looks a bit like the dunnock I had the other day.

Sparrow is a fair bit smaller and has black and white patches on the head.

I also saw a black swan for the first time.

Definitely a Dunnock.

johnd83 wrote:Good afternoon all,

Here is a shot from today. Is this a sprarrow?

Reed1 by JohnBW83, on Flickr

There are three types of Sparrows.

House Sparrow
Tree Sparrow
Hedge Sparrow or Dunnock

I'd never heard of a dunnock before reading the forum - always known them as hedge sparrows.

So you are right, johnd in thinking it was a sparrow

I suppose the dunnock police will be along in a minute

Nice to see a black swan, exciting, if anything

Picking up on Peregrine's post. The Dunnock has long been referred to as a Hedge Sparrow including by my good self but it is in fact not related in any way to the other Sparrows I have learnt since I took a deeper interest in birds. It is merely a sparrow look-alike and from a completely different smaller family of birds.

.... and the 'hedge sparrow' term is now defunct, as is 'hedge accentor'. 'Dunnock' is now THE name.

(Actually I always thought Hedge Accentor was deeply impressive )

Jacksparrow wrote:Picking up on Peregrine's post. The Dunnock has long been referred to as a Hedge Sparrow including by my good self but it is in fact not related in any way to the other Sparrows I have learnt since I took a deeper interest in birds. It is merely a sparrow look-alike and from a completely different smaller family of birds.

Goes without saying. I did not mean to imply that all three were 'Sparrows'. Only that they had 'Sparrow' in their name other than Sparrowhawk which I didn't mention for obvious reasons. My apologies if my post was misleading. Unfortunately I am not perfect.

I like the name Hedge Sparrow