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In search of - Ten Million House Sparrows
Over 25 years the population has declined by 62%. Because of this decline in numbers, the house sparrow is now red listed as a species of high conservation concern. Once you've lost house sparrows it's not easy to encourage them back as we know they tend to stay within a mile or so of where they hatched. However, they are thought to have three basic requirements to keep populations healthy:
If you do have house sparrows we urge you to look after them. Whatever has happened to the “cheeky cockney sparrow”, the sparra, spuggy or the spadger. Throughout the country, the BTO Garden Bird Watchers have observed the disappearance of this our most familiar of garden birds, and the estimate is that there are ten million fewer House Sparrows in the UK than there were twenty-five years ago! And it's not just in our gardens, there have been declines in farmland birds which started earlier than their more urban cousins. On a more positive note in some areas Sparrow populations appear to be rising, see table below, and there are thought to be between six and seven million pairs of House Sparrow in Britain. . Regional Differences There are regional differences in the recent fate of House Sparrows. The latest Breeding Bird Survey figures for House Sparrows (1994-2002) are as follows.
Possible reasons for House Sparrow decline in urban areas
1. Reduction in the availability of favoured food The trend towards paving /concreting of front gardens and laying decking in the back. Ripping out lawns and the trend towards ornamental plants instead of more traditional, native or wild flowers limits the availability of insects that birds need to rear their young, ie essential baby food: aphids, weevils, grasshoppers and caterpillars . 'Each pair of house sparrows must rear at least five chicks every year to stop their numbers falling. But in our study, too many chicks were starving in their nests, Others were fledging but were too weak to live for much longer than that. (RSPB's Dr Will Peach) 2. Loss of suitable nesting sites House sparrows prefer nesting in holes in houses, they normally enter the roof-space through a gap between the roof tiles and the gutter. They will also use thick ivy to build their nest in and have been known to use all sorts of nooks and crannies, and even dense bushes. Hedges/Privets don't dig them out! Plant one. (Go to your local supermarket where there are hedges in the car park and you may hear them - Sparrows!)
3. Changes in the use and type of loft insulation With special attention given to insulation and weatherproofing, modern roofs are designed to keep the warmth in and everything else out; namely insects, birds, bats and the cold. 4. Increased prevalence of disease
5. Increased levels of pollution in urban and suburban habitats. Increased use of pesticides in the garden speaks for itself. Wiping out so called garden pests reduces insects and feeding opportunities. The RSPB is often asked for information about pollution and how it affects birds. This is a difficult question to answer, because many of the effects of pollution do not show in an obvious way or kill birds outright. They build up slowly, so that we only notice gradually that the numbers of particular bird species are decreasing. It is almost impossible to say - except in a major incident like an oil spill - that an individual bird has died as a result of pollution. However, pollution can affect birds through the food-chains. 6. Increased levels of predation
A study by the RSPB and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) found that, since the 1960s, trends in songbird numbers at intensively surveyed sites in farmland were not linked to numbers of magpies or sparrowhawks occupying them. This suggests that magpies and sparrowhawks are not a serious cause of songbird decline. There are studies, for example at Wytham Wood in Oxfordshire, which show that predation of blue tits and great tits by sparrowhawks varied annually, but the tit populations showed little change from one year to the next. Remember as a predator the number of sparrowhawks in an area is restricted by food availability, if songbird numbers increase, sparrowhawk numbers increase, if songbird numbers go down, so do sparrowhawk numbers.
The RSPB has issued a simple
three-point plan
to help you
help your house sparrows.
1. Put up nest boxes. Many new houses and home improvements have restricted the number of suitable nooks and crannies for house sparrows to nest in. DO NOT REMOVE YOUR HEDGES if you have any. Roosting sites are important too. Birds often gather for the night or during the day in thick evergreen bushes or in climbing plants, such as honeysuckle or ivy, on the walls of houses.
2. Feed sparrows throughout the year and supply clean water. They feed mainly on seeds, especially cereal grain, but also seeds of grasses, polygoniums, mouse-ear and chickweed. Young house sparrows need insects rather than seeds, peanuts or bread to survive.' 3. Be a little bit scruffy! Leave wild, weedy or shrubby areas in the garden that provide a natural seed source and supply of small insects. 'Honeysuckle, wild roses, hawthorn or fruit trees are perfect for insects and therefore house sparrows.
The RSPB has launched a new scheme, Homes for Wildlife, to give free, tailored advice on wildlife-friendly gardening. Options include patches of wildflowers or long grass in summer, native shrubs and a small pond, all of which would harbour many insects. Many of the things we can do to help just mean being lazy, doing nothing and allowing the garden to be a little bit scruffy.' (So, now you have an excuse for doing nothing in the garden - you're helping one of Britain's best loved, and rapidly disappearing, birds!)
And remember it's not just the sparrows that are missing, remember the food chain , we need to help our insects. There are more extinctions among invertebrates than in any other groups, and a greater proportion of the species are in decline, and the decline is steeper, than in plants, birds, and mammals wherever there is data," says Matt Shardlow, director of Buglife, the Invertebrate Conservation Trust.
Seven in 10 of Britain's 58 butterfly species have declined in the past 30 years. The high brown fritillary, Britain's most endangered butterfly, is down by 79 per cent.
Britain's 46 species of ladybirds may now be widely at risk from an Asian invader, the harlequin ladybird, which arrived in Britain in 2004, it out competes and actually eats other ladybirds. Mayflies appear to have dropped in abundance by about two-thirds in the past 50 years.
Some useful plants:
Check our webpage Gardening for wildlife : and the RSPB's Garden A to Z
You can help further by joining the BTO's gardenbird watch, better records of the birds in our gardens give us a better understanding of the success and declines of all our birds: http://www.rspbliverpool.org.uk/BTO%20Garden%20Birdwatch%201.htm Thanks to the Scientists from Natural England, De Montfort University, Defra, Buglife, the BTO and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds .
RSPB Regd charity no 207076 |
Since summer
2005, a parasitic disease called Trichomoniasis
has been reported in gardens.
The parasite lives in the upper digestive tract of
the bird, progressively blocking the bird’s
throat making it unable to swallow food, thus killing it by
starvation. Birds with the
disease show signs of general illness, for example lethargy and
fluffed-up plumage, but affected birds may also drool saliva,
regurgitate food, have difficulty in swallowing or show laboured
breathing. Finches are frequently seen to have matted wet
plumage around the face and beak. Infection spreads between birds
when they feed one another with
regurgitated food during the breeding season and through
food or drinking water contaminated with recently regurgitated
saliva, or possibly from droppings of an infected bird. Good
hygiene practice, specifically the regular cleaning of all
feeders, bird baths and feeding surfaces, is an essential part
of looking after garden birds. 
Two-thirds of
Britain's moth species have declined in the past 40 years. Species once well-known and
abundant were tumbling: the magpie moth had declined by 69 per
cent, garden tiger moth by no less than 89 per cent.
Of the 25 species of
bumblebee traditionally native to Britain, three have gone
extinct, four more are designated as in a precarious situation.
At least 250 of
Britain's 4,000+ species of beetle have not been seen since 1970.
