I have seen the Ribbon-tailed Astrapia, a bird-of-paradise, perform a dazzling pirouette for me in Papua New Guinea. I have watched the Yellow-eyed penguin glare at me from a burrow in New Zealand’s South Island when I peered into its home. On a trip to the Arctic, I have seen puffins with their ketchup and mustard beaks dive and come up with a dozen fish all at once. In Africa, the Bateleur eagle has snatched a snake within hands reach as I rested in a hide. Birds of a feather have flocked together and alone and entertained me in these 30 years of my ramblings in the wild. And yet, I long, sitting in New Delhi, to see a stocky, humpty-dumpty bird that used to be oh-so-common, but now seems to have fallen off the wall. What I am waiting for is that great companion bird of man, the sparrow.
Longing for home
The sparrow is cosmopolitan, gregarious, loves to be near humankind and has the most stimulating chirrup that goes just perfectly with the morning coffee as a wake-up call. Its incessant strains are a natural alarm clock that I have used unfailingly in so many time-zones at so many times. But now, the state bird of Delhi is silent in the state. It is the mynah that wakes me up, a harsher, screechier, more insistent grating on my ears than that of my companion bird, the sparrow. It is not just me that the sparrow has influenced. That fabulous bird man of India, Salim Ali turned to his vocation by the fall of a yellow-throated sparrow. The name may have been changed by taxonomists to chestnut-shouldered petronia now, and no doubt the chestnut shoulder is an easier thing to see than the yellow throat, but petronias are sparrows. In fact, the ancestor of all sparrows may have been a petronia — a rock sparrow.
So, what is a sparrow and why does it fascinate me? A sparrow is a dumpy, grey and brown seed-eater — pale dust brown in a female and with varying amounts of black on the male’s bib. And a tongue that has one bone more than a finch has. This bone separates all sparrows from finches, for otherwise the two seed-eaters with their thick bills, short tails and cosmopolitan range can well be thought to be related. The bone stiffens the tongue and allows it to eat tougher seeds than the finch. And not just seed, but bread and rice, garbage and leftovers, an insect or two and a worm or three. A more catholic diet be difficult to find in any bird.
And thus it is, that this bone-tongued chirruper frequents gardens and homes of the villager and the aristocrat across the whole wide world, be it in Europe or Asia, Africa or the Americas. Its sheer range of habitat and its constant company of humans fascinates me. Equally, its cataclysmic decline (68 per cent in the UK, 90 per cent in some parts of India) causes dismay. How can such a common bird that has such a wide distribution and such a non-fussy diet get uncommon? Is it pesticides that we are liberally spraying our food with?
Or is it the lack of nesting space? Have our buildings taken away their niches and crevices? I remember sparrows valiantly building nest after nest on our ceiling fans and young ones falling out regularly and being nursed back to health by my grandmother. Has the sparrow lost the plot with the air conditioners?
To counter this we could use sparrow boxes. Put them out in your garden or balcony and sparrows might get in and find food and water.
In a famous film song in Kerala, the hero laments of a small piece of earth in which the narayanakilli has built its nest. For it is there that one can find peace. Long, restful sleep. And being woken up, by a friendly chirrup.
Be a sparrow pal!
Here’s what you can do to lend a helping to the sparrows.
Keep a bird feeder (with seeds and rice) under the shade of a tree so that sparrows and other birds as well can rest and find food easily.
You can also put out a birdbath full of clean water for them to drink from and bathe in.
Use organic fertilizer and natural means of pest control for your plants and vegetable patch instead of pesticides.
Plant flowering plants that would attract butterflies, which will lay eggs and form caterpillars for the birds to eat.
Talk to your friends, classmates, neighbours and local groups on saving our sparrows. Create awareness about its conservation and spread the word.
Sparrow’s sorrow
To paraphrase Rachel Carson, (Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist and conservationist who wrote Silent Spring) if an endangered species like the tiger or elephant goes extinct, it is a matter of great shame. But, it is when something as common as the sparrow goes extinct that we ourselves are threatened. For a bird like the sparrow, eats what we eat. It is entirely possible that if poison finds its way into its food, our children too will be poisoned by what they eat.
World Sparrow Day
World Sparrow Day is around the corner. Celebrate it with gusto for there may not be a day that is as important for birds as this one. It celebrates our companion, the chiriya of the north, the sorai of the east, the narayanakilli of the Malabar.
