- Lack of insects to feed their young due to pesticides and planting of exotic species of grass and trees
- Shortage of nesting sites thanks to modern architecture
- Electromagnetic waves from cellphone towers
- Paved gardens with no mud to bathe in
- Hedges being replaced by wrought iron fences
- Competition for food and shelter from pigeons and mynahs
- Shortage of shrubs to roost in
Nine of us clamber on to ornithologist Mohammed Dilawar's bed in his home in Nasik to watch a sight humans have taken for granted for over 10,000 years. A pair of house sparrows are on a gruelling relay race to fetch any grubs they can find in Nasik's exploding concrete jungle to feed three hungry mouths in the designer wooden nest Dilawar has fixed on his bedroom window. Dilawar's idol Salim Ali, who lived in a Bombay that was so thick with sparrows that he used to kill them for sport, would probably have laughed to see all this fuss over what he called "man's most familiar hanger-on", but ornithologists and bird enthusiasts across the country fear the only reason the house sparrow has not yet gone on the Red list of endangered birds is probably because no one has yet bothered to count how many are still around.
| Bird estate agent: Birdman Mohammed Dilawar with his wooden nesting boxes |
It's not as if the alarm bells haven't already begun to ring. Six years ago, soon after the once common sparrow had gone on UK's Red list, a Rajya Sabha MP raised the question in Parliament: is the sparrow population in India decreasing? And if so, what is the government doing about it? The government's answer was standard: there were reports of decline in "certain cities of the country". But it was not a matter of concern, it reassured the MP, because "there is no immediate threat to its extinction". A year later, however, an ornithological survey conducted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research confirmed birdwatchers' worst fears: the sparrow population in Andhra Pradesh alone had dropped by 80 per cent, and in other states like Kerala, Gujarat and Rajasthan, it had dipped by 20 per cent, while the decline in coastal areas was as sharp as 70 to 80 per cent. In the few urban pockets where bands of volunteers decided not to wait for the government to act and started a head count of sparrows, the findings were even more alarming. In parts of Thiruvananthapuram, for instance, where volunteers had noticed small flocks of six to eight sparrows till 1998, they had disappeared without a trace by 2003.
No one quite knows why a bird which evolved around the time when humans invented agriculture and adapted so superbly to city life should disappear so mysteriously—and rapidly—in the last 10 to 15 years. There are theories, of course, ranging from cellphone towers with their electromagnetic contamination that may be lethal for sparrows, to excessive use of pesticides and unleaded petrol, both of which kill the insects on which baby sparrows are raised. Six years ago, experts thought greening our cities would help bring them back. Instead, it only increased their more aggressive competitors for food and shelter: pigeons and mynahs.
It was witnessing a losing battle waged by a pair of sparrows against mynahs over a prime nest estate—a broken street lamp—that moved Dilawar to turn down an offer to work for tigers and instead do something about the sparrows' homeless—and starving—plight in our cities. "If you can't save the sparrow, how can you save the tiger?" reasons Dilawar, a former lecturer in environmental studies who joined the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) two-and-a-half years ago to research the decline of sparrows. Part of his job now is finding sponsors and raising funds for his sparrow studies. It's not easy, given the unglamorous nature of his subject. "Whenever I approach a sponsor abroad, they tell me: 'But the sparrow is not an endangered species in your country.' Do we have to wait until it becomes endangered before we do anything?"
Funds are even harder to find within the country. "Why should we save the sparrow?" is a question that Dilawar often fields, both from Mumbai's residential associations where he's trying to promote a sparrow-friendly environment, and government agencies. "Sparrows are to urban ecosystems what the canary was to mines," he explains. "If saving a tiger can save a forest, saving the sparrows can save our cities. When changes happen in our urban environment, it's too slow to tell. But in the long run they'll take their toll. It's not just sparrows that are disappearing from our cities but other forms of urban wildlife like butterflies and frogs as well." Above all, he says, we must prevent what happened in the case of vultures. "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't bring back an extinct species."
Dilawar, for one, is determined not to sit on his hands until the Common Birds Monitoring Programme, an ambitious project started in random pockets of the country three years ago and currently grounded due to lack of funds and policy guidelines, eventually confirms his suspicion that the sparrow is heading for the Red list. "For all we know, by the time we get down to the actual counting, there may be no more sparrows to count," he says. Instead, he feels, the time may have come for some old-fashioned human intervention.
The "intervention" he has in mind is a wooden nesting box he has specially designed to keep out mynahs and other larger rivals, that can be hung up on balconies and trees. For centuries, Dilawar explains, sparrows have built their nests in or around human habitation, using the crevices and holes in brick walls or in eaves and crannies. When buildings started straightening out and shooting up, it still wasn't a problem, because sparrows found other ingenious places to build their nests, like the cups of ceiling fans or behind picture frames or in lofts behind stowed suitcases. But the final inequity was when humans started sealing off their balconies with glass and aluminium, thereby denying sparrows all entry. "There's simply no place left for them to build their nests in cities now, unless it's in the cracks between the ceiling and shutters of shops, which is at best a risky place. The eggs are likely to crush when the shutters are pulled down," says Dilawar.
While orders for his nesting boxes have started trickling in via his website from sparrow-lovers across the country, Dilawar realises nesting boxes alone—or even his specially designed plastic feeders—can't do the trick. In Mumbai's Marine Drive, for instance, where the residents' association approached BNHS to help them bring back sparrows to their neighbourhood, Dilawar points out the problem why sparrows have disappeared from here while pigeons thrive in multitudes. "Pigeons feed their nestlings on regurgitated food called cropped milk, but sparrows need insects to raise their nestlings." Recent trends of cementing over yards for car parking, replacing hedges with wrought iron or bamboo fencing, and planting exotic trees and grass instead of native species have wiped out insect life, he says. And with it, new generations of sparrows.
Sparrows, according to Dilawar, may have lucked out in the gene lottery when they first evolved as man's hanger-on, but it's these very genes that are going against them in the current battle for survival among urban wildlife. Unlike most other birds in cities, sparrows hate to move in search of better nesting or feeding sites. "They don't migrate more than one to two kilometres, and will die out rather than move to a better environment. "
Not that there are many places they can go to, even if they were able to. In Dilawar's hometown Nasik, for instance, where its open grain market once attracted such large flocks of sparrows that shopkeepers kept a special cane handy just to chase them away, is now dismally silent of their chirrups. Small flocks of six or eight still scratch around in the mud, roosting in the scrub in the few empty plots that surround Dilawar's home in a newer residential area. "But then the realtor will burn down the scrub to attract customers, a steel and glass building will come up and that will be the end of this flock," he says pessimistically.
But there's still one place left: a vegetable market, of the kind that you see rarely nowadays—an open-air, brick-paved square where vegetable vendors sit under makeshift shacks, selling heaps of fresh vegetables in heaped hillocks. The first thing you notice here is the flocks of sparrows, by the scores. They hop about tamely among the mounds of vegetables, picking at the odd grub in a beanpod or plucking at a string in the gunnysack for their nests in the plentiful crevices of the shacks. A fledgling accompanying her sparrow parent is flapping its wings and opening its beak in an effort to look cute enough to be beak-fed by its mother. A vegetable vendor is scattering sev from a paper packet to keep "his" flock loyal. "I don't know how long it will take for the municipality to break down this traditional vegetable market and replace it with a modern mall," Dilawar muses. But until that happens, we are in what is surely Sparrow Paradise, perhaps one of the last remaining.
