Days have passed and during my general meanderings around the local vicinity, not a sparrow in sight. Trips to the newsagents, supermarkets, the garage for petrol and further visits to my garden have ended with a grand total of zilch. A visit to the trusty RSPB website informs me that sparrow numbers have dropped alarmingly and this is their official quote ; Monitoring suggests a severe decline in the UK house sparrow population, recently estimated as dropping by 71 per cent between 1977 and 2008 with substantial declines in both rural and urban populations.
Since this only takes into account a period to 2008, I have come to the conclusion that in my area and probably many others, our once abundant neighbours became virtually extinct in the following seven years. Living in a city would suggest that crop spraying is not the reason for the demise of the poor sparrow, so what is?
The thing that really intrigues me is that during my search for the lowly sparrow the only birds that proliferate in my area are a few wood pigeons and strangely enough an over abundance of the evil Magpies (Magpies being a protected species) and a few sparrow hawks, buzzards, peregrines etc. I refer back to my episode in the garden and the plight of the robin who was obviously being stalked by the sparrow hawk (and probably next door’s cat) now add in the magpie who was was likely to think nothing of busying itself devouring the robins eggs or young and I start to realise that the sparrow has not had a lot of chance of survival in recent years.
Every good experiment has to have a conclusion and the conclusion I am coming to is as follows; Our nation’s total fascination with the dreaded moggie and the RSPB’s determination to release a raptor of some kind into everyones back garden, along with protection of the Magpie spells doom for the sparrow and songbirds in general. On the bright side, it will surely come to pass that the Raptors, Magpies and Moggies will be soon vying for supremacy amongst themselves and those of us with a camera will be left to snap them eating each other.
