Were mobile towers primarily responsible for the dwindling number of house sparrows across India? INN studies the findings of a recent survey to explore the more likely reasons behind this wane of the species.
One of the famous quotations from “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare is “There is Providence in the fall of a sparrow.” The import of which is that God has a hand in everything that goes on, even the death of a pretty little bird. No matter how small or insignificant something seems, God cares about it and has control over it.
But in recent times, one has had occasion to muse on the fall of the sparrows, or, to be specific, of the House Sparrow, whether or not there is Providence in it.
The House Sparrow (scientific name, Passer domesticus) is so named because it has always been associated with human habitation. The Wiki entry for the bird says, “it occurs naturally in most of Europe, the Mediterranean region, and much of Asia. Its intentional or accidentalintroductions to many regions, including parts of Australia, Africa, and the Americas, make it the most widely distributed wild bird.” The IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) list has the bird’s conservation status at “least concern”. However, the scenario in India belies this rating.
In the fifties and sixties, urban Indians grew up in a world where these perky birds were abundant in the cities. I remember that my mother used to put out rice and grains along the edge of our apartment balcony; it had railings that prevented bigger birds from coming in, and a House Sparrow mother, who’d built her nest in the ventilator of our neighbour’s home, would come regularly to peck at the grains and regurgitate them to her nestlings. She often brought along the refuse-sac of the nestlings, and my mother would joke that she was getting paid for setting out the rice!
From this comfortable scene, to today....the House Sparrow’s populations in India seem to be in decline. From being a very commonly seen bird a few decades ago, amateur bird watchers as well as learned ornithologists have found the species getting rarer, and various theories have been advanced to explain this decline in the House Sparrow numbers.
One theory, of course, was the loss of habitat for the birds. Older houses had ventilators, lofts, holes between the walls, spaces in the eaves of the roof, and between roof tiles, for these little birds to nest and breed, free from disturbance. The winnowing of grain resulted in the free availability of food for the birds, from the grains, as well as from various small insects found along with them. With the changing of urban lifestyles, lower ceilings and apartments meant no nooks and corners for the birds to nest.
Non-availability of plentiful grain, with the old custom of winnowing grain in the open courtyards of houses disappearing with the new styles of architecture, and the decrease of such food processing in people’s homes also contributed to their gradual fall in numbers...
Another theory advanced to explain their decline was that of predatory attacks by the Eurasian Sparrowhawk, a raptor that often swoops down on unwary sparrows and kills and eats them. The construction of mobile phone towers, as also the electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones, was also thought to be a factor in the decline in the bird’s numbers in both rural and urban areas in India. Disease, too, has been cited as a factor, even though it has generally been held that the House Sparrow is a robust, hardy bird.
Tracking the fall
How is the fate of the House Sparrow being tracked? There are, of course, the expert ornithologists’ observations and reports, in journals such as Indian Birds and also the website ofCommon Bird Monitoring of India (CBMI), a Citizen Science Programme of Nature Forever Society. Many organisations and individuals are part of the programme. The aim of the programme is to collect data on common Indian birds. It is a pioneer project, certainly a first of its kind in the country to monitor the common birds, and it depends on the participation of as many laypersons and interested birdwatchers to be successful. CBMI includes the House Sparrow in its list of common birds.
Though not as long-standing a monitoring exercise as that of CBMI, a recent survey done between April and July, 2012, by Citizen Sparrow has been an intense exercise in monitoring the species, with 10,666 records, from 5655 pariticipants across 8425 locations in India. This was a big initiative involving every citizen possible; the oldest participant was 91, and the youngest, 7. The findings do indicate a fall in the numbers of House Sparrows. Data continues to come in, and is still being logged.
A world without sparrows?
However, there is a lesser-liked side to the House Sparrow, too. It’s commonly regarded as a pest, since it consumes agricultural products and spreads disease to humans and their domestic animals. Even birdwatchers sometimes hold it in little regard because of its molestation of other birds; it is a very aggressive bird. In most of the world, the House Sparrow is not protected by law.
Attempts to control House Sparrows include the trapping, poisoning, or shooting of adults; the destruction of their nests and eggs; or less directly, blocking nest holes and scaring off sparrows with noise, glue, or porcupine wire. However, attempts at the large-scale control of the House Sparrow have failed. The most notorious campaign against sparrows was in China, where under the perceived notion that Eurasian Tree Sparrows were eating too much grain, hundreds of millions of sparrows were killed in 1958. By 1960, the catastrophe happened...without the sparrows to keep it in check, the insect population exploded, and this contributed to the Great Chinese Famine between 1958 and 1961, where three million people died of starvation due to lack of foodgrain, especially rice. I have personally seen a sign in the city of St.Louis, asking everyone to kill House Sparrows, and destroy their nests, as they are an “invasive species”.
To many people across the world, however, the House Sparrow is the most familiar wild bird, and because of its association with humans and familiarity, it is quite popular. But for most of us, the value of the House Sparrow is only apparent when its numbers start falling, and we are no longer able to see the feisty, perky little birds that hop around so cheerfully around human habitation.
Let’s hope that this little bird, which has been immortalized in song and verse in many cultures, holds its own in our country in the years to come.
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