Signs of a house sparrow comeback in the UK after decades of decline

A female house sparrow (Passer domesticus). The species were common across the country, including London, up until the late 1960s. Photograph: Douglas Carr/Alamy

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.