Help the tree sparrows in Carmarthenshire
People are being asked to help provide a vital winter food source for one of Carmarthenshire’s rarest breeding birds. Volunteers are needed to feed the tree sparrows to help them through the winter season when food is scarce. The tree sparrow may be mistaken for its more common cousin the house sparrow (tree sparrows have a distinctive brown cap and black spot on their cheeks). The birds are rare, but the Tywi Valley is now host to the largest population in Wales of this ‘red-listed’ species. Funding from the Countryside Council for Wales is helping volunteers, via the Carmarthenshire Biodiversity Partnership, to provide food. Volunteers in the Tywi Valley have been helping out by feeding the birds each winter – vitally important to help the birds through this hard season. The tree sparrows do not wander far from the valley floodplain. In the still or slow-flowing water found on the floodplain they can find the preferred insects that adults feed to the young during the summer. Nest box...