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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nMichaela Strachan presents the story and sound of the house sparrow on Tweet of the Day<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n THE CLATTER OF TRAFFIC IS PIERCED MOMENTARILY by the sound of my drill screaming into the brickwork. I\u2019m 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. <\/span><\/p>\n\n My assistant, Matthew, relays screws to me with an outstretched arm. He has offered his assistance in return for a supermarket meal deal. <\/p>\n\n It\u2019s August 2021 and we\u2019re 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\u2019s exterior and, earlier this morning, two went up on the walls of an antique furniture shop. Bar the boisterous gangs of gulls, there\u2019s only one bird around, and it\u2019s the very species we\u2019re trying to create a home for: the humble house sparrow. <\/p>\n\n 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\u2019t know exactly why, but in urban areas, it\u2019s 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 \u2013 complete with loose tiles, crooked eaves and other nooks and crannies \u2013 in which they nest. <\/p>\n\n \u201cThe scenes of urban hedges fat with chestnut bodies are now a distant memory\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n Nor has the house sparrow \u2013 along with its rural cousin, the tree sparrow \u2013 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\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n\n Wartime change was compounded by the \u2018Dig for Victory\u2019 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 \u201ca nuisance when green things are coming through\u201d. <\/p>\n\n 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 \u2013 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. <\/p>\n\n The game\u2019s not over yet, though. The fortunes of the house sparrow are, finally, starting to reverse. According to the RSPB, the species has \u201cstabilised and is bouncing back\u201d. But if these birds are going to make a proper recovery, they need our support. <\/p>\n\n 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\u2019t long after that I learned of the demise of the house sparrow.<\/span><\/p>\n\n Protecting this bird sounded so tantalisingly simple \u2013 Iwas astonished that nobody seemed to be doing very much. So what was stopping me from giving it a go? <\/p>\n\n That\u2019s 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 \u2013 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.<\/span><\/p>\n\n Saving house sparrows – and many other bird species too \u2013 requires us to overcome three challenges: we need to clean our air, reinvigorate insect populations and create more nest sites. <\/p>\n\n 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 \u2013 once a bird of cliffside crags \u2013 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. <\/p>\n\n To address the second job on the list, reviving our insects, we must rid ourselves of \u2018Ecological Tidiness Disorder\u2019 \u2013 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.<\/span><\/p>\n\n Birds, after all, need insects \u2013 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.<\/span><\/p>\n\n 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 \u2013 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\u2019s fun \u2013 an excuse to get outside and do my bit for conservation. It\u2019s rewarding, too \u2013 there\u2019s nothing like watching a troop of downy, wide-eyed chicks entering this world from a nestbox you\u2019ve put up (see <\/em>below). <\/em><\/p>\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n 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\u2019ve rapidly adapted, often taking over empty corvid nests, a change from their traditional heather stands. <\/p>\n\n 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\u2019re associated with open woodland, they\u2019re 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.<\/span><\/p>\n\n \u201cI spend a disproportionate amount of time clambering over roofs and into trees; birdboxes and drill in tow\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n Prior to 2019, I\u2019d 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. <\/p>\n\n 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 \u2013 who will remove your garden pests \u2013 is surely the first step to a future shared with powerful ecosystem engineers such as beavers and bison. <\/p>\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n A suitable nestbox for house sparrows has about 15cm2<\/sup><\/sub> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s ready to be used in February, when nesting starts in earnest. Sparrows and other birds also use nestboxes as roost-sites in winter. <\/p>\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dj9jqhxgw9833.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2022\/09\/IMG_20210910_212948_913_cmyk-781x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
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\n\nPutting up a nestbox <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n
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