Wyedean Wildlife

Wyedean Wildlife House Sparrow Project.

The house sparrow is a common garden bird that most people will be familiar with. Unfortunately though, although there are something like 7 million house sparrows in Britain, this number hides an alarming trend.
Over the last 25 years, more than 60% of our house sparrows have disappeared. That's worrying enough in itself, but when you realise that this means we have "lost" more than 7 million birds the scale of the problem becomes clearer. Unfortunately, this downward trend is still continuing in many parts of the UK and Western Europe and we face the very real possibility that in future years, this once most common of birds could become a rarity that few people ever see.

What's causing the problem?

The honest answer is that we are not completely sure. What can be said though is that it is likely that there is more than one reason.
To begin to understand what these problems might be, we need to understand a little about the lifestyle of the bird. Adult house sparrows mainly eat seeds from both wild and agricultural plants. They are opportunistic feeders and frequently visit garden bird feeders.
In the past, the birds would also feed on arable stubbles and clean up seed spilt during agricultural operations but with today's modern farming methods, these feeding sources are no longer available across most of the UK.

House sparrow chicks in the nest however need a higher protein, more easily digestible diet which takes the form of insects and, alas, insect abundance has fallen considerably. By way of an example, anyone over the age of perhaps 40 who remembers late spring car journeys as children will remember windscreens covered in insects after even a relatively short trip. This is certainly not the case today and the result is that many sparrow chicks starve to death in the nest. Another major problem for house sparrows is also to do with breeding. They are mainly hole nesters and holes these days are a lot harder to find than they used to be.
If this sounds far fetched, just think about how we build and maintain our houses now. 30 years ago, is was easy for birds to get into roof spaces and outbuildings to make their nests but now, our houses are usually sealed with uPVC and many old barns have been converted into accommodation.

Before humans appeared on the scene, house sparrows (and a lot of other birds) would have nested in holes in rotten trees but alas today, rotten trees are regarded as health and safety risks and forestry managers often remove them. So, a lack of places to nest and a reduction in the amount of food available for both adults and nestlings, together with a host of other potential problems such as predation by domestic cats and poisoning due to airborne pollutants, have resulted in the situation we have today with a much loved and once very common bird now listed as a species of conservation concern.

How can I help?

	Wyedean Wildlife is taking part in a national project to investigate possible changes in the number of adult house sparrows surviving from one year to the next. To do this, our team of licensed bird rings have been capturing house sparrows in the area and fitting them with a number of metal and coloured leg rings which enable us to identify individual birds. Each bird ringed as part of this project carries four rings. On the right leg, there is a silver-coloured metal ring which carries a unique number but it is not usually possible to read this number without re-capturing the bird (please do’t try to do this – it is illegal without a government license). Above the metal ring is a coloured ring and there are also two coloured rings on the left leg. These coloured rings are easy to see with a pair of low powered binoculars and a combination of their colours together with their positions on each leg is what we need to make a positive identification. We need YOU to help us find these ringed birds. We are asking local people and visiting bird watchers to keep an eye out for house sparrows with coloured rings and report their sightings Here In return, you will receive an email with details of the birds you have seen, where they were ringed and any other information we might have about them. Most of all though, you will be making a real contribution to the effort to reduce the decline of this charismatic little bird an ensuring that it is around for your children and grandchildren to enjoy. If you would like to learn more about bird ringing and the information it can give us, click here

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