Spare a thought for dwindling sparrow population

As part of my daily routine, I have been feeding the little house sparrows and pigeons every morning. Around 9am, I would spread bajra (millet) in my balcony and fill water in a big container alongside.

It has always been a delightful and soul-satisfying experience, watching the little sparrows descend from nowhere, at 9’o clock sharp. Chirping loudly all the time, each bird would try to pick up as much feed as possible and then fly out, maybe to some other host.

Occasionally, in their struggle for survival, the ‘big brother’ pigeons would drive away the little sparrows. Even though I liked the little chirpy creature more, there was little I could do in the matter. That is the law of nature.

Bird-feeding, that attracted so many birds to our balcony, became a source of enjoyment for my family and gave us a feeling of having done a good deed. The chirping of the little beings and the guturgu (the sound made by these birds) of the pigeons became music to our ears.

It was all going on smoothly until one day when I noticed a sharp decline in the number of our morning guests. And then I discovered that no sparrow was coming at all. Even the number of pigeons had dwindled. Most of the feed I had been throwing had remained unconsumed. It had been swept away by the wind into the corners.

Surely, something was wrong somewhere. My curiosity took me to nearby colonies where people living in multi- storey apartments were also surprised by the absence of those little sparrows. The pigeon population had also come down.

As a matter of fact, until recently, the huge population of pigeons was giving jitters to the residents. Uprooted from their natural habitat, they were invading flats and had to be shooed away with bursting of crackers. Yet, they made their nests in every available space — over window air conditioners, room coolers, between two cartons and the like. Eggs turned into chicks which grew into adults at the same place.

Nevertheless, the near-total absence of sparrows and the fast declining population of grey pigeons became a cause of concern to environmentalists and bird lovers. It is a well-known fact that deforestation and changes in land usage were the key factors responsible for the widespread phenomenon.

Mercifully, things are still better in the rural areas where trees are available for the sparrows and other birds to build their nests. People in the countryside are far more conscious vis-a-vis the urbanites about the environment.

Some studies have attributed the large-scale mortality of sparrows to the indiscriminate use of pesticides on crops and grains, which appears to be a plausible reason. Sparrow chicks need a high-protein diet, which they meet by consuming insects. But the adult ones require carb-rich diet for which they eat grains. And the infected grains kill them.

It has also been found that the habit of people spitting out chewed up chewing gum has been taking its toll on sparrows. The birds would nibble at it and the little pieces would choke them to death. This amply shows how a little carelessness on our part and thoughtless actions can have disastrous consequences.

A redeeming feature is that many environmentalists and bird lovers have devised a novel method to raise the sparrow population. They cut out an opening in a 20-litre plastic water bottle to serve as a feeding centre for the little birds.

Feed is spilled inside while water is kept in a container outside. The bottle home provides to the sparrows what they don’t get elsewhere in the deforested jungle of concrete.

It is gratifying that this effort is slowly taking the shape of a movement. In the process, it is creating greater awareness among people about the need to save sparrows and bring them back to chirp in our courtyards like before.

Lalit Raizada is a journalist based in India.