March 20 is World Sparrow Day. Here are some ideas to help you do your bit for the little bird.
The common house sparrow is one of the most ubiquitous birds around us and is one of the more familiar winged companions of human beings. It has, over a period of time, evolved with us.
At one time a very common sight, in the past few years, this bird has been on the decline over much of its natural range, both in the urban and rural habitats. The decline of the house sparrow is an indicator of the continuous degradation of the environment.
The house sparrow is, in a sense, an ambassador to the common bird species. The hope is that the conservation of the house sparrow and its habitat will in turn help save much of the common biodiversity, which shares the habitat of the house sparrows.
Conservation
World Sparrow Day is celebrated on March 20. The rationale for celebrating World Sparrow Day is not only to commemorate the event for a day, but also to use it as a platform to highlight the need to conserve sparrows as well as urban biodiversity. The event aims to bring together individuals, national and international groups. The aim is also to attract the attention of government agencies and the scientific community to take notice of the need for the conservation of the common bird species and urban biodiversity.
Scientists first started to notice a decline in the number of the house sparrow in the 1990s. Over the last few years several campaigns, outreach and awareness programmes, research surveys have been carried out to understand the decline of a species that had learned to exist in and around human habitations and was found in huge numbers in urban areas.
World wide, countries have participated in various activities to celebrate the World House Sparrow Day. Citizen Sparrow is an ongoing citizen science project in India in which members of the public are encouraged to contribute information on presence and absence of the house sparrow from different locations and for different time periods. This information is to be uploaded on their website (www.citizensparrow.in/). All the observational records are plotted on a map. This can be done by an individual or a school group or an NGO and even corporate companies as a part of their corporate social responsibility.
What others have done
Students from Women’s College, Patna, distributed handbills to the public and scattered millets for sparrows.
People in Bristol recorded house sparrow sightings and blogged about it.
In 2012, the Chief Minister, Ms. Sheila Dikshit, declared the house sparrow the state bird of Delhi. Addressing school children at her residence during a function organised to celebrate Wildlife Week, Ms. Dikshit said that the idea behind making the house sparrow the State bird was to protect it.
The Nature Forever Society in association with the Burhani Foundation (India) started ‘SOS’ (Save Our Sparrow), an initiative in which they distributed 52,000 bird feeders across the world on a non-profit basis.
The Indian Postal Department released a stamp of the house sparrow along with the rock pigeon on March 20, 2010.
What you can do
Put bird boxes and bird feeders outside your house or in your gardens.
Water-bowls or a bird-bath in the hot summer afternoon helps birds to re-hydrate.
Grow plants and hedges that are native to the place. This encourages some of the common birds to come back.
At Madras Crocodile Bank Trust
Outreach Programmes in schools and at the Croc Bank.
Common Bird Monitoring Programme: Nature Forever Society has initiated a common bird monitoring programme to conserve India’s common birds.
Talks will be done on weekends for the visitors that come to MCBT to create awareness about the sparrow.
A questionnaire survey that involves interviewing citizens about house sparrows to document the current population of this once common bird in their gardens and backyards.
Keywords: house sparrow, World Sparrow Day
I too have a pair of sparrows who reside in a pipehole along the wall.
We have mounted a bird house , the bird still hesitates to enter it,
We place some bird food like kang, and sprouted moong and matki only.
The whole day they feast on it. the saddest part is when the baby
sparrows peep out for the first fly, some evil crows pounce and feast
on those innocent creatures. As soon as we spot a crow lingering
around we shoo it away. This time again I see some hopes of newcomers
and they are about to take their first flight. Hope no evil crow
gobbles the up. It sees very cruel, although it is the rule of nature.
Decline of house sparrows is due to poisoning!Poisoning by chemical farming - fertilzers,pestisides,herbisides etc.Mobile phones may play a part in the decline . I am living in Kuwait.I came to Kuwait in 1983.Then there were not may trees and the house sparrow population was sparse.But over the years more and more trees came up.Though the climate of Kuwait is adverse the sparrow population has increased considerably.I keep a tray of grains near my window and sparrows come in scores throughout the day ,come summer or winter.Every tree is a nesting place and we can hear them chirping when you walk under them.Mobile tower concentration is high in Kuwait,climate is extreme.But still the sparrow population has incerased.Why? There is no pesticide poisoning in Kuwait!Unless we address this poisoning problem there is no hope for sparrows!The health of our feathered friends is an indicator of our health too!
I have heard from people that mobile towers were the culprit. I see a wide variety of birds in Europe. Some of these birds look like Sparrows, but may not be the same species. There are mobile phone towers here too. Has anyone had a chance to prove scientifically, that mobile towers are the culprit? But the irony, is its too late. Where are the 'house-sparrows' that you can use to test? In India-post stamp ?
I have read that cell phone receivers are mainly responsible for the decline of the house sparrow population. In our area we have a few trees and people in many houses feed crows regularly. As a matter of fact crows, mynas and koyals regularly eat the rice. There is absolutely no shortage of food for them here. Even the wild pigeons have also started eating cooked rice. But I have never seen house sparrows here. We have too many cellphone towers in ECR near our area (Kannappa nagar). It is time that the Govt considered this situation and took some remedial measures.
How we can save We all r using MOBILE PHONES,the mobile tower has high radiation so these birds vanished even in village side not only in Urban cities.What a sad story of development,in few more years we will have these in ZOO's its really bad news.During our school days we hear the morning sound of birds, now gone those days.in a matter of just 10 years lot of distruction happened all over the world,
I believe a lot of misconception exists about mobile phones being the
cause of Sparrow's number decline. I live in South Korea, the largest
wired country in the world and I see streets filled with sparrows! It is
the habitat destruction that is chasing the sparrows away from our
backyards and streets. Over the decades our people in India have
successfully vandalized the habitat of the sparrows. People, try to be a
bit sensitive while you create the concrete jungles!!
i like little birds like house sparrows to reside in our garden and as mentioned in this article we have bird feeder and bird bath bowls to attract littel birds. In our house we have bees and wasps having their nests and we have cheetta birds (very little kuruvi) around . kindly send me information regarding how to atract littel birds. I avoid mobile phones just because they are hinderence to these little birds.
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