World House Sparrow Day: House sparrow number registers a drastic fall

People fed them like pets, providing with free space to breed, and it, in turn, maintained the markets from getting dirty.

By :  T Sudheesh
Update: 2019-03-19 20:00 GMT
Many shopkeepers now put up pots on their shop walls to enable sparrows to nest there.

ALAPPUZHA: A decade ago the chirpy little house sparrows were common sighting in rural markets in Kerala.

Considered one of the most ‘human-friendly’ birds in the world, they were seen walking around cackling, staying in the self-made nests in nooks and corners of the dusty shops in busy markets.

People fed them like pets, providing with free space to breed, and it, in turn, maintained the markets from getting dirty.

So they called the passer domesticus with love as Angadi Kuruvi or sparrow of the market.

With urbanisation, their habitat started vanishing. The tile-roofed retail shops gave way to glitzy concrete-and-glass structures driving them away.

So, since 2010, the Nature Forever Society founded by environmentalist Mohammed Dilawar began celebrating World House Sparrow Day on March 20.

Their conservation is need of the hour as surveys show it's fast becoming endangered species.

Birdwatchers say their count has dropped across the state. The only place it was spotted in the district is Edathua.

Harikumar Mannar of Alappuzha Nature History Society attributes the reason to indiscriminate human intervention to nature.

‘These birds used to survive by eating grains fall in markers. With the rice and other grains coming well-packaged now, they lost food. The radiation from mobile towers is hindering their hatching," he says.

‘Their sightings shrank to a few places like Kanjirappally, Vagamon, Kottayam, Ranni, Konni and Kozhencherry. The declining will result in not only the destruction of environmental sustenance but also the survival of humans."

A survey by the Tropical Institute of Ecological Sciences, Kottayam, in ten spots in the district last year found merely 64 while the number was 740 in 2012.

Another report says the sparrow count in Kochi dropped from 481 in 2016 to 332 in 2018.

He suggests the creation of general awareness about the dwindling sparrow population.

Many shopkeepers now put up pots on their shop walls to enable sparrows to nest there.

"We’ve launched a campaign Kuruvikku Oru Koodu (a nest for sparrow)," he said.

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