The once ubiquitous house sparrow has suffered a drastic decline. It’s time to step in and lend our small and charming neighbours a helping hand.
Michaela Strachan presents the story and sound of the house sparrow on Tweet of the Day
THE CLATTER OF TRAFFIC IS PIERCED MOMENTARILY by the sound of my drill screaming into the brickwork. I’m halfway up a ladder clinging to the chimney of my local pub, the Red Lion (which is ironically painted green), surrounded by an expansive landscape of concrete, interspersed by the occasional fluffy green bush.
My assistant, Matthew, relays screws to me with an outstretched arm. He has offered his assistance in return for a supermarket meal deal.
It’s August 2021 and we’re installing birdboxes around Portsmouth in the warmth of a golden sun. This is the seventh of the day. Four are already in place on the pub’s exterior and, earlier this morning, two went up on the walls of an antique furniture shop. Bar the boisterous gangs of gulls, there’s only one bird around, and it’s the very species we’re trying to create a home for: the humble house sparrow.
House sparrows, you see, need our help. They may be regarded as common brown birds, yet these characterful little passerines are struggling. We still don’t know exactly why, but in urban areas, it’s likely the result of air pollution attacking their delicate lungs; a catastrophic decline in their invertebrate prey; disease, including avian malaria; and the loss of the older buildings – complete with loose tiles, crooked eaves and other nooks and crannies – in which they nest.
“The scenes of urban hedges fat with chestnut bodies are now a distant memory”
Between 1966 and 2016, we lost a staggering 21.7 million of them, almost one per minute. The scenes of urban hedges fat with chestnut bodies and parks loud with evocative squabbles are now a distant memory. Hyde Park was once thronged with hundreds of sparrows but, like many other parts of the capital, has fallen silent.
Nor has the house sparrow – along with its rural cousin, the tree sparrow – managed to hold on in the countryside. Thriving on a sympathetic agricultural system, which saw field margins, hedgerows and land left fallow between harvests, the bird’s fortunes nosedived as farming started to intensify during and after World War II. Livestock was now kept inside, along with the feed, flies and midges that formed part of the house sparrow diet; grain was in sealed silos, away from hungry beaks; and pesticides and fertilisers were applied with gusto, killing off insect prey.
Wartime change was compounded by the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign, which encouraged people to grow their own food during a time of shortage. Vital though it was to the war effort, such intense cultivation came at the cost of house sparrow habitat. A growing guide issued by the Ministry of Agriculture even warned people to beware of the bird, branding it “a nuisance when green things are coming through”.
As food production ramped up in the post-war years, farmers were subsidised for intensively cultivating more land. Hedgerows were ripped out and large-scale machines developed to work the now large-scale fields – another house sparrow lifeline was lost. Other changes, such as switching from autumn to spring harvesting, thus removing the food source of winter stubble, also contributed to the decline.
The game’s not over yet, though. The fortunes of the house sparrow are, finally, starting to reverse. According to the RSPB, the species has “stabilised and is bouncing back”. But if these birds are going to make a proper recovery, they need our support.
I first fell in love with wild birds at the age of 12. I was walking on my local nature reserve of Portsdown Hill, clad in black from top to toe. I must have looked like an abnormally large crow, because I was energetically mobbed by a male kestrel. The encounter fascinated me so much that I immediately took up birdwatching. And it wasn’t long after that I learned of the demise of the house sparrow.
Protecting this bird sounded so tantalisingly simple – Iwas astonished that nobody seemed to be doing very much. So what was stopping me from giving it a go?
That’s why today, my spare time is spent rummaging through skips and collecting discarded wood to make nestboxes, and then installing them anywhere willing to take them. In summer 2021, I put nestboxes on the walls of the local dental practice, two schools and, of course, the pub, and on the trees around the local golf course and in several woods. In January of the same year, I also launched Save the House Sparrows – aproject aiming to raise awareness of this important little bird. The problem is that house sparrows are criminally under-appreciated. They are a fantastic species with all sorts of littleknown quirks, from making sure a paler (and so freshly laid) egg sits atop the clutch to communicate to nest-raiders that the nest is active and defended, to boasting a myriad of chirps some might consider a language. They are capable of raising several broods in a year, meaning populations can grow rapidly, and have managed to colonise most of the world.
Saving house sparrows – and many other bird species too – requires us to overcome three challenges: we need to clean our air, reinvigorate insect populations and create more nest sites.
Cleaner, quieter cities would benefit all urban songbirds. Studies have shown that warblers and finches are particularly vulnerable to air pollution, leading to reduced egg production and size. And despite the black redstart – once a bird of cliffside crags – adapting to industrial sites, its new urban quarters come with the difficulty of making itself heard above the drone and bellow of vehicles and machinery.
To address the second job on the list, reviving our insects, we must rid ourselves of ‘Ecological Tidiness Disorder’ – the distinctively British fixation of mowing verges into stunted monocultures and parks to bland turfs. We just need a tweaked mindset. We need to relax with our green spaces and allow some chaos here and there. Multiplied across Britain, our gardens cover more than 10 million acres, so a covering of ivy and a woodpile in each could make all the difference to insect recoveries.
Birds, after all, need insects – and plenty of them. A swift can swipe 10,000 in a single day. A drift of 20 pairs, each raising a brood of two chicks, could consume an eye-popping 80 million in six weeks. Like sparrows, swifts have declined. Yet a city intersected with wildflower-rich roadsides, parks heaving grasshoppers, and dynamic, wildlife-friendly gardens would build solid foundations for their recovery.
The third task of creating more nest sites brings me neatly back to my favourite pastime. House sparrows cannot rear their young if they have no homes to go to – but a safe space is easy to provide. I spend a disproportionate amount of time clambering over roofs and into trees; birdboxes and drill in tow. It’s fun – an excuse to get outside and do my bit for conservation. It’s rewarding, too – there’s nothing like watching a troop of downy, wide-eyed chicks entering this world from a nestbox you’ve put up (see below).
House sparrows are worth conserving in their own right, but their return could potentially be a springboard for other urban birds to come out of decline, reinventing our towns and cities as avian havens. We are already seeing evidence of this. Watching a city skyline over the past few years, you may have noticed one or two more raptors than before, lording the thermals. All are supported by house sparrow prey. Sparrowhawks, concealed behind hedges and around building corners, will suddenly appear metres away from their quarry, killing them at breakneck speed in a flash of russet and grey. Kestrels, once tied to vole-rich grasslands, are now adapting to specifically target sparrow-sized birds in urban environments, with 400 breeding pairs now settled in central London.
Hobbies, likewise, have diversified. Formerly birds of southern moorland, they are colonising new urban haunts. Three pairs were breeding in central London by 1990 and there are now 30 in Bedford, six in Nottingham and 20 in Leicester. They’ve rapidly adapted, often taking over empty corvid nests, a change from their traditional heather stands.
Red kites, extinct in England 30 years ago following years of persecution, have undergone an even more monumental comeback, flooding their former range following reintroductions. Though they’re associated with open woodland, they’re actually rather fond of urban areas (as noted by Shakespeare) and are often seen scavenging from rubbish tips in Europe. By 2017, nearly one in 20 gardens in Reading, a city packed with more than 340,000 people, were blessed with red kites as guests.
“I spend a disproportionate amount of time clambering over roofs and into trees; birdboxes and drill in tow”
Prior to 2019, I’d only ever seen a red kite once, drifting high above a tranquil, rural forest. Now I often see them in Portsmouth, scanning for roadkill, kitchen scraps, and house sparrow or feral pigeon chicks.
The rewilding movement is gathering huge momentum across the country, and for those that worry about living alongside predators and larger mammals, starting small could help with the transition into new, wilder surroundings. Acclimatising to live harmoniously with sparrows – who will remove your garden pests – is surely the first step to a future shared with powerful ecosystem engineers such as beavers and bison.
This prospect is too exciting to ignore, and unlike the demise of the corncrake or hen harrier, where we can feel powerless, this is an extinction in our own gardens that we can all step in to prevent. Perhaps, within a decade, we could walk down a road to the sight of sparrowhawks zigzagging down fence lines after juvenile blue tits, bombs of star-speckled starlings erupting from buzzing garden meadows, and ballerina-esque house martins leaking from our house eaves.
Putting up a nestbox
A suitable nestbox for house sparrows has about 15cm2 floorspace, walls no thinner than 15mm, an entrance hole of 32mm or more, and should be installed at least 2m high, facing north or east to avoid becoming too hot. House sparrows are social and nest in loose colonies, so it’s a good idea to install clusters of boxes, or choose a multi-chambered colony nestbox. Avoid placing them in direct sunlight or over a doorway or well-used path. Autumn is the best time to put up a nestbox, to allow birds to locate it over winter and so it’s ready to be used in February, when nesting starts in earnest. Sparrows and other birds also use nestboxes as roost-sites in winter.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harry Munt is a birdwatcher, conservationist and writer with a passion for urban species. You can visit his conservation project at savethehousesparrow.com or @save_the_house_ sparrows.
HOW TO HELP SPARROWS
Offer supplementary food sources
You can put out mealworms during the spring/summer breeding season (consider soaking them in water first to add moisture), then switch to seeds during autumn and winter. Sunflower hearts and red or white millet are favourites and are packed with nutrients.
Create habitat
With berries and seeds to eat and insulating leaves for shelter and cover from predators, a scruffy hedge or island of scrub has it all. Privet and evergreens are favourites, offering sparrows good protection.
Control cats
Cats’ natural behaviour comprises pouncing on garden birds, including house sparrows. Bells Fitting your cat with warn a quick-release collar birds with a bell may reduce fatalities. It might also be worth bringing your cat inside overnight, when birds are roosting and vulnerable.
Go organic
Avoid using pesticides and herbicides. House sparrows adore eating aphids, cabbage white caterpillars and other plant pests, with so welcome them with open arms.