How do you lose 30 million house sparrows? That is the number that have vanished from Britain’s hedgerows, fields and gardens during my lifetime.
I can recall clouds of sparrows rising up in the fields behind my suburban childhood home on the edge of London. But by the late 1990s they had simply vanished from many of their former haunts.
London was the worst hit: during a survey of Kensington Gardens in 1925, the ornithologist Max Nicholson counted more than 2,600 sparrows, but when he repeated the count at the turn of the millennium he found just eight. Even in the late 1960s, sparrows were so common in the city’s parks that I have a photo of the birds perched on my outstretched hand to feed. Now, you are lucky to see them anywhere in the capital.
The reasons for the decline are complex: a combination of habitat loss, food shortages, air pollution and disease. Yet there are signs that the species may be making a comeback. British Trust for Ornithology surveys show that populations are stabilising, while on my daily bike ride around the Somerset Levels I have recently noticed more and more little flocks, and heard that distinctive chirping call.
There is still much to be done to reverse the house sparrow’s decline, not least a wholesale change to regenerative, wildlife-friendly farming across our lowland countryside. But for now there is a glimmer of hope for this little bird, which has lived alongside us for so long and whose fate is so bound up with ours.
