Sparrows Need Hedges

My Attendance at the Defra House Sparrow Conference

On Friday 20th February 2004, a national conference, chaired by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, was held in London's Living Room at City Hall to discuss the decline in the nation's house sparrow population. It was also the launch venue for Defra's new leaflet 'House Sparrows in Great Britain.' It was attended by the UK's top scientists and experts in all aspects associated with the sparrow's plight. So you might ask, what was I, a painter working for Barnet Council in London doing at the conference?

My job is decorating the homes of Barnet's pensioners, but I'm also an avid conservationist, amateur naturalist and bird watcher. Concerned at the rapid decline of London's house sparrow population, two years ago I set about trying to discover the cause and came up with a disturbing answer that's been generally overlooked.

It's the destruction of the house sparrows' natural habitat that has driven the bird from our homes. Too many people have destroyed their front gardens, removing their privet hedges and lawns so they can park their cars off-road.

Although other factors, including modern roofing design preventing sparrows nesting under the eaves, are important; hedge removal is the greater problem concerning its habitat destruction. House sparrows need hedges to sit in, to rest, digest, preen and socialise. All the nest boxes in the world put up to replace the lost roof spaces they prefer, are useless if the bird does not have readily available cover to fly into and ground to feed from - and they will nest in dense hedges if there is nowhere else. Ivy clad walls are also great places for sparrows to build nests.

My attendance at the conference was a blend of determination and sheer fluke. I only knew of the conference when I got a phone call from the GLA at 5:30 pm the night before! I was invited at the request of London Mayor, Ken Livingstone who recently read the article I'd sent to many organisations and the media, on my reasons for the house sparrow's decline.

I was the only one attending the conference with a hand written ID nametag and not belonging to an organisation, and I felt awkward in a suit with a briefcase rather than my usual garb of overalls and holding a paintbrush! I was probably the only one not being paid to be there, and in fact had to take a hastily arranged unpaid day off work to do so, but it was well worth it.

I listened to speakers from Defra, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the British Trust for Ornithology and various experts explaining on-going university research studies. It was explained that due to its rapid decline, the house sparrow was placed on the Red List, a list of birds of high conservation concern. For the same reason the starling has also been put on this list.

Apart from the speeches accompanied by graphs, tables and photographs, the best part was being able to talk directly to those who can make a difference. I particularly enjoyed speaking to Dr. J Denis Summers-Smith, the world's leading expert and author on sparrows who started studying them in 1946. It was great to finally meet someone who's work I had admired and who agreed with me on the importance of actually getting out and about and watching house sparrows rather than just theorising about them with dry statistics.

London's City Hall, apart from a few trees, it has nothing around it for birds to feed on or nest in.

The prestigious London's Living Room at the GLA has spectacular views across London, especially Tower Bridge and the Thames, and I was thankful for the superb catering laid on with croissants and Danish pastries at 11 am, a sumptuous varied hot and cold buffet at 1:20pm and biscuits and cakes at 3:20pm. Even the teas and coffee were fair traded brands. I took the opportunity during the lunch hour to visit my local Assembly Member Noel Lynch of the Green Party and explored City Hall, marvelling at the impressive glass and steel structure - but no good for sparrows though!

The afternoon session started with a talk on bird diseases and ended with the formal launch of the sparrow guidance leaflet, funded by Defra and produced in partnership with the RSPB and BTO. The leaflet covers many subjects on helping to retain sparrows, like keeping parts of your garden untidy for weed seeds and insects to grow, and not blocking holes in the roof of your house, but I was dismayed that although it has a list of suitable bushes and shrubs to plant to attract sparrows, it does not specifically mention the virtues of privet. This was a serious omission. Hedges take time to grow and existing ones must not be removed.

Privet is the one hedge most gardens had. It's an evergreen and excellent plant for property boundaries, more secure and difficult to climb over that a wall or a fence, it's why it was universally used for decades as a border. Left to grow it will produce berries that birds will eat, but even a trimmed hedge offers protection. It shelters sparrows from the wind and rain in winter, gives shade from the sun in summer, is a ready made larder of insects and spiders and it has bare earth underneath that house sparrows relish in taking dust baths.

Most hedges are and were in people's front gardens. The suburban front garden is a unique habitat that suited sparrows, even down to the fact that usually only the fronts of houses are pebble dashed, giving the house sparrow something to cling onto as it searched out any suitable entry points into the roof space. The connecting patchwork of hedges, lawns, flower beds and adjacent pavements for easily picking off insects, providing the sparrow with a varied food source with close cover.

Although house sparrows are associated with living close to humans, they like all wild finches are a lot less tolerant of humans than robins, blackbirds or tits. Cover is an important factor of their needs, especially as they are mostly ground feeders and need a quick place to hide from their natural predators.

Thankfully, I was able to talk to Keith Nobel from the RSPB earlier in the day about the hedge issue, and I was very pleased during his talk towards the end of the conference when he looked in my direction and extolled the virtues of privet. At last I'd made a difference! Now if only Defra will alter their leaflet....

The message coming across from the speakers, was that we must keep parts of our gardens untidy and put up nest boxes. This sentiment was put forward earlier by the Environment Minister Ben Bradshaw, speaking on Radio 4's The Today programme in the morning. This just will not work. Having adequate cover available and enough area for sparrows to feed is also essential.

Others spoke of how sparrows were prevalent on council housing estates and less so in the affluent suburbs, and put this down to the estate residents being less house proud about their gardens! This is a wrong conclusion. Working for Barnet council I see the overgrown rubbish tips some council tenants turn their gardens into, with refrigerators and supermarket trolleys amongst matted long grass and brambles, but it's the fact they aren't allowed to remove their hedges and front gardens that has kept the sparrows on these estates, plus there are many gaps under the eaves and broken roof tiles for nest sites.

Homeowners have a vested interest in keeping their roofs in good repair. They also presume they'll increase the value of their property by having a neat low-maintenance sterile block or crazy paved front 'garden' without hedges, to park the cars on. Up goes the market value and out go the sparrows! Ask any estate agent what house or area has sparrows living in it and none would know the answer - or care too. Sadly it's not seen as important.

The sparrow experts have yet to make the crucial connection between urban and suburban hedgerow loss and the well being of the sparrow. These birds will not spontaneously appear if a nest box is put up. The other facets of its habitat needs must be available for it to move in, and they can only 'migrate' from one area to another if there is continuity of habitat to enable it to travel. It was not by accident that Chairman Mao's disastrous policy of killing millions of sparrows in China in 1958 was able to work so effectively.

It was well observed that sparrows do not fly long distances. Getting the population to make continuous noise and forcing the birds to fly till they dropped exhausted from the sky was a clever but ill thought out plan. We are carrying out a slower but similar policy in this country, but not with shouting and drums, but with property developers, architects and well meaning homeowners removing house sparrow cover and nest sites.

The last part of the conference was a question and answer session, with anyone being able to put questions and ideas to everyone else. Never having taken part in anything like this before, I found it nerve racking yet privileged when I was handed the microphone and addressed the fifty-odd gathered specialist.

I told them to come to Barnet if they wanted to further study house sparrows, and how we still have several areas with healthy colonies like the Garden Suburb and the Burnt Oak housing estate. I mentioned how privet hedges were removed by those who bought their homes from the council to enable them to park their cars in front of their houses, and how the sparrow was in noticeable decline there and almost gone from Finchley where front garden loss is endemic.

I emphasised the importance of privet hedges as a network for birds to travel and how colonies were becoming trapped and isolated. I also specified how the destruction of rows of typical semi-detached houses with gardens by developers, and replaced by a dozen luxury flats, was still happening across the borough, specifically removing the type of house and habitat house sparrows prefer as stated in the new Defra leaflet.

After exchanging e-mail addresses with several of the delegates it was time for me to go home. It had been an exceptional day and left me with hope that a greater understanding of the problem will result. Everybody was a little wiser with a lot of current knowledge passing between those who really care. Everyone seemed to be taking notes, myself included and along with the handouts, I will refine my research and continue to play my part in highlighting the decline of the house sparrow.

There is no unknown reason for their loss, it's a case of people not realising their actions are having a detrimental effect on one of our cheekiest and most useful neighbours. 'The Independent' newspaper's offer of £5000 for the sparrow problem to be resolved was mentioned briefly only once during the formal speeches, however among the many conversations I had, it was agreed that the offer did nothing to help the house sparrow, as a single 'scientific' reason was not going to be found responsible for the house sparrows' decline.

As I have always said, it's the destruction of its habitat that is to blame, and thankfully the rest of the sparrow world is finally agreeing with me.