Noise may deal blow to sparrows

HOUSE sparrows have lived with us since the dawn of civilisation.

They are even mentioned in the Bible. Twenty-five years ago, however, things began to go wrong for the little brown birds. More intensive farming led to a decline in their numbers.

It was still business as usual in urban areas but then, quite suddenly, the city populations collapsed. We have no figures for Irish cities, but numbers in Britain fell by 60% to 99% and scientists have been at a loss to explain why.