| Q11. Would you like to share a story about House Sparrows from this time period? | I am running 70. From my childhood, I have always been fascinated by house-sparrows though I am not an avid bird watcher. Time and again, I find diverse opinions appearing in the media about the slow disappearance of these sparrows. In this connection, I want to share some of my views with the bird conservationists with regard to its slow disappearance. Read on.
In places where I stayed for a long period, say 10 years or so, initially, I used to find these birds in abundance - only to slowly disappear as the years went by. I could also observe that this happens, even though there is little or no change in the building-structure or other environmental factors but for the growth of trees around the house.
The growth of the trees around the house, slowly welcomed a new mammal species – the squirrel – to dwell around us. The food habits and the nestling habits of both sparrows and squirrels appear to be almost similar. Once the squirrels set in, they are found to steal the building materials from the ‘debris-like’ sparrow nests, as they too need the same material for building their home to raise their offspring. As such, due to the intrusion of squirrels, the sparrows get disturbed and thereby appear to leave their place of dwellings in a phased manner. The sparrows are helpless in bringing up their chicks and this phenomenon of inability is probably another major reason for the dwindling away of the sparrow population.
Sparrows dwelled initially and were later displaced by squirrels during my stay in multi-storeyed buildings, all through. I had fed the same ‘non-organic or pesticide-ridden’ grains to squirrels and found no ill effects on them. Also, the disappearance of the house-sparrows is a much earlier phenomenon than the emergence of communication towers. Therefore, in my view, multi-storeyed buildings, pesticide residues and communication towers are not the only reasons for the dwindling away of the sparrow population.
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