By IUCN CEM South Asia, on 21 March 2020.
World Sparrow Day falls on March 20, celebrated worldwide to create awareness on the need to conserve the tiny, human-friendly bird from extinction. Tribal Foundation celebrated it in Nagercoil city, distributing sparrow nests to people in urban localities.
House sparrows almost vanished due to human activities, and it is a unique, remarkable day celebrated annually to sensitize the common man on the bird, which is facing threats due to habitat modifications. Once it was a common bird in towns and villages and its disappearance was a result of human activities.
Conversion of tiled roof houses into storeyed concrete buildings, conversion of open water wells, lack of feeding ground in house gardens, an explosion in the number of vehicles and air pollution contributed to the decreasing population of the sparrow. Conversion of paddy fields for concrete house construction has resulted in a severe reduction of its foraging area, making its food scarce. The present concrete jungles never support the habitat of the sparrow, which lives in caves and small openings in tiled roofs. The modern agricultural techniques with heavy equipment scare away the birds from the fields due to sound pollution.
S. Davidson Sargunam, a member of the IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management and environmental educator, opined that the house sparrow lives in close association with human beings. It is a social bird that lives as a colony. The population of the sparrow is dwindling owing to many factors as reckless use of insecticides and pesticides and creation of concrete jungles in towns, cities and even in villages. These factors cause habitat destruction, lack of food supply or poisoned food that check the breeding pattern and pave the way for extinction. Yet the bird is spotted in a few villages in Kanyakumari district.
He said that the Tribal Foundation had multiplied its population by fixing cardboard boxes, bamboo nodes and wooden boxes and multiplied the population from just four pairs to 400 pairs over ten years. He said a survey of the sparrow in Kanyakumari district has revealed that it is seen in about 12 villages and the Tribal Foundation has planned to fix nest boxes to multiply its population.
Davidson has designed an eco-friendly wooden nest box considering the social behavioural pattern of the bird.
For effective urban ecosystem management and increasing the population of the house sparrow, an effective measure is sensitizing the mass community in towns and cities to learn about the behaviour of avifauna with a concentration on species-specific conservation.