An endearing piece of work

Almost all of us use Twitter and revel in ‘tweeting’, sending short messages to the world with the fond hope that the messages we post are useful and interesting to someone.

“Sadly, house sparrows are the actual tweeters we all chose to forget. Precious little is done to save the vanishing tribe,” says G. Srinivasa Rao of city-based Spoorthy Creative Art School.

To commemorate the day, Mr. Srinivas carved on a piece of chalk an endearing image of a mother sparrow feeding its hatchlings in the next. It is imperative to educate people, especially young children on the need to save the sparrow, our enchanting winged friend, which is on the verge of extinction.

The Art School, which celebrated the day on a grand-scale last year by creating a platform for 3,500 students from Krishna and Guntur district to participate in a painting contest with an objective to highlight the significance of the occasion, is low key this year.

“I have not been able to do much this year due to ill health, but my students are committed to the cause,” he says, pointing to the fact that some of them intend to have bird tattoos painted in bright hues on their body.

It is easy to inculcate sparrow-friendly habits, especially among kids, he contends, adding: “Help the children make colourful posters and paintings on sparrows and other common birds to be put in your neighbourhood which will help raise awareness about birds in your community.”