Joni and the house sparrow

ABOUT 10 years ago something went missing from my garden. The small flocks of cheeky, noisy house sparrows disappeared. 

In the words of the Joni Mitchell song ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”. Up until then I’d taken sparrows for granted, even looked down on them as birds that were rather dowdy and chased prettier species off the bird feeders and were everywhere. It was only after they went that I realised they were attractive, particularly the males, and that their social interactions were interesting.

A check on the internet revealed the loss was not confined to my garden. House sparrows were amber-listed in Ireland, meaning numbers were declining and they were of conservation concern. The situation was even worse in Britain where they were red-listed. But the house sparrow is probably the most widespread wild bird in the world and still one of the commonest so the International Union for Conservation of Nature reckoned their status was of “least concern”.

The British take bird conservation very seriously and the decline in their sparrow population led to an immediate flurry of research projects and scientific papers that attempted to find the cause of the crash. It has to be said that the results were a bit inconclusive, though some consensus is emerging. Sparrows are largely vegetarian but a supply of small insects and spiders is vital for them for two or three weeks when they are feeding their young. A shortage of this type of food was blamed for the population crash.

This, of course, begs the question of what caused the shortage of insects and, in particular, spiders. The most popular theory is that it was an increased use of insecticides in parks, gardens and agricultural land combined with a decline in native plants in urban areas.

But in the last couple of years the sparrows have returned to my garden. At first they came in very small numbers and seemed uncharacteristically shy. But, as their numbers have increased the bashfulness has disappeared and now things are pretty much as they were before. The conservation bodies are reluctant to make rash statements but are cautiously admitting numbers are stable.

So does this mean that the invertebrates they require to feed their young are also making a comeback? This is not impossible. Public attitudes towards chemical sprays are changing and so is the regulatory framework that licences their use.

Most people nowadays have not only got an increased interest in the wildlife in their garden they also have increased knowledge about what to do to foster it. All this may be having an impact. The return of the sparrows to my garden could signal good news for the environment in general.