House Sparrows

Yesterday, 20th March’15 was the World House Sparrow day. Spotted this bird at Model School Road, Off Mount Road.

World Sparrow Day is an initiative of the Nature Forever Society to celebrate March 20, every year as World Sparrow Day. In less than four years, the World Sparrow Day has become immensely popular and is celebrated in more than 40 countries across the globe and is gaining popularity in Europe and parts of south Asia.
Many reasons are attributed for their apparent “disappearance”: The introduction of unleaded petrol is one, as the combustion of which produces compounds methyl nitrite, which is highly toxic for small insects that forms a part of a chick’s diet.
Old houses had eaves and tiles that were comfortable perches to build nests on. External wirings and framed pictures too were “habitats”. But sleek modern concrete structures no longer have these and so “feathered neighbours” lost their habitats.
Mushrooming supermarket culture in urban areas, replaced the old fashioned grain shops which offered their spills as feeds. Urbanisation has done away with home gardens, which had worms and insects for the young sparrows. Besides extensive use of pesticides have proved lethal for their survival. The most recent reason for their disappearance is the mobile phone towers, the waves from the tower, it is said, are capable of destroying the life in the eggs. (Info Courtesy : Prof Chandrasekaran)

1 comments on “House Sparrows”

  1. 22 Mar 2015 at 1:23 am LuiZ FernandoS
    reply

    I didn’t know these facts. When I was a child, sparrows were the most seen birds around. Later, we noticed they have almost disappeared, but as a compensation, other kinds of birds grew in number. I imagined urbanization was the cause but didn’t knew all these problems affected them.

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