Sparrows Need Hedges

What Should Be Done To Reverse House Sparrow Decline?

So what can be done to reverse house sparrow decline? Personally, I would start with passing some local planning laws and offering financial incentives to homeowners. There should be stipulations on all new developments for evergreen and fruiting hedges to be used as borders whenever possible - privet being the prime example. Useful berry producing trees, like hawthorn, holly, yew and rowan, ought to be planted instead of purely ornamental ones.

Having house sparrows nesting on your property and in your garden should be seen as a desirable thing - something socially important - even a fashionable objective if that will help the sparrows! For myself, why do I feel morally superior just because I have pairs of nuthatches and coal tits feeding regularly from my birdfeeder and my neighbours don’t? Why do I feel jealous of those who have house sparrows? If only this inane emotion could be engendered in other people, then more food and habitat would be provided for more birds.

Sparrows are a biological barometer, letting us know how green our cities are. Less greenery, less hedges, less insects, less birds equates to more concrete, more noise, more heat, and more pollution. Many of the residential roads in my part of London are wildlife deserts. There are more paved frontages than normal gardens. Any protest has been too late and too little. I personally can’t ever see our roads getting back to how they were - not without positive action to alter the current situation.

The provision for nesting places on buildings, that wouldn’t inconvenience residents, should be made mandatory. What would be so wrong with adding into the roofline, access to cavities for sparrows, hawks, owls and bats? These would be separate chambers that do not lead into the roof, allowing these creatures a home. Any low garden walls should also have gaps every few metres to allow hedgehogs access. This wouldn’t encourage rats, as they can easily climb over anyway. Where possible, borders between properties and the road should have hedges.

Planning permission should to be applied for if homeowners want to change front gardens for parking, and authorities only allow this if just a couple of strips of hard-standing are used for vehicles, while keeping grass, flowerbeds and as much hedging as possible. This could be linked to an increase in Council Tax, or extra levy charged for percentage of front garden covered up, as this also affects water run-off into the drainage system. A reduction in Council Tax should be given for home-owners restoring greenery to a front garden.

The removal of established hedges anywhere should not be allowed without planning consent from the local authority after consideration. The haphazard use of pest-killers and herbicides should also be stopped. It’s wrong that even supermarkets are selling these dangerous products, used indiscriminately by people who don’t give it much thought, not realising the knock-on effects these chemicals cause wildlife and biodiversity. Slug and snail products have had a terrible effect on hedgehog and thrush populations in suburbia and should also be banned; especially as environmentally kinder methods are available, like physically removing the creatures on a wet evening!

Homeowners who currently have house sparrows nesting should be given a grant to maintain what they currently have in the way of nest sites, hedging and feeding areas, and their neighbours encouraged to apply for funding to assist with growing suitable plants and installing appropriate nest sites/boxes. An allowance should be paid to allow people to provide suitable food for sparrows. Practical assistance like this would enable the house sparrows we still have to spread.

An education/awareness programme must be started to inform builders, planners, estate agents and local authority housing services and housing associations to be ‘Sparrow Aware.’ I’m pretty damn certain my own local Council and estate agents have absolutely no idea where sparrows live across my London borough. I am currently compiling a map, seeing if sparrows are still living in all the 21 Wards that make up my authority. So far, in March 2005, I know of 58 colonies across 17 wards, and there is still much of the borough I haven’t been to. More worryingly, there are streets of houses in some areas where no sparrows are evident, all well maintained properties and countless driveways…. Need I say more? You bet I will!

Two years on since I started writing about this problem and there is still no organisation making enough fuss about this dilemma by keeping the awareness of house sparrow decline uppermost in the Nation’s conscience. The DEFRA leaflet, ‘House Sparrows In Great Britain’ used wishy-washy language rather than informing the reader in clear statements what they should and should not do to help sparrow survival. Being asked to keep a ‘weedy patch’ in the garden is not the same as being told unequivocally: DO NOT REMOVE YOUR HEDGES IF YOU HAVE ANY, if you really want to retain sparrows.

This is not surprising when misconceptions on what sparrows require, what they like and what they prefer is not fully appreciated or understood. I’ve read some daft supposed facts and crazy notions regarding house sparrows during the last two years that have astounded me. I can only comment on sparrows by what I’ve observed and witnessed myself over the past forty years. I daresay when in large numbers, their behaviour is quite different from when there is just a small flock. Do not expect the few that are left to behave so boldly as when they were many.

Indifference and ignorance is as much to blame for house sparrow decline as physically evicting them or destroying their habitat. A sparrow that does not need to spend all of its daylight hours looking for food to survive, will be able to spend spare time doing other activities, like exploring other possible food sources and prospective nest sites. By holding on to the myth that sparrows can live anywhere, society can assume it does not have to care particularly to what extreme it pushes them to.

Thoughtlessness can also be blamed. It seems that every hedge, every bush, every tree is used by birds wherever I go. The fewer of these there are in an area, the more vital they become to the local bird inhabitants. Removing any of these anywhere will have a direct effect on the neighbouring insect and bird population. My local council sends its park grounds keepers out to ‘tidy’ up the shrubs etc. around the council estates in the wintertime.

I was apoplectic this January seeing the chainsaw wielding crews mercilessly trimming back the cotoneaster, pyrocanthus holly etc to bundles of bare twigs on some of our bleakest housing estates - all in the name of neatness. The thrushes, blackbirds and woodpigeons were stressed by the loss of the berries and the wrens, dunnocks and robins were distraught by the drastic loss of cover.

The destruction was unnecessary and cruel, and shows that those in charge had no idea what they were doing and the long-term effect this action has caused. They should have waited until the spring a least, not that this tidying needed to be done anyway, it’s just made those living on the ground floor more open to burglary now there is easy access to their windows….

On one estate, the house sparrows that occasionally flew to the nut feeders the thoughtful residents hung from their windows, made perilously long journeys to the feeders without the cover they previously used. When food fell to the ground and other birds followed it down, the effect of the lost cover was all to plain to see as the cats on the estate gave chase. It was heart stopping stuff and very upsetting.

Some form of national Sparrow Awareness Programme would force councils and homeowners to think before they remove any cover, especially in the winter. The house sparrow is on the RSPB’s Red List because of concern at its rapid decline, and has been taken off the General licence list of birds that can be readily exterminated as vermin. What is the point of all this attention if those who are inadvertently causing the sparrow’s demise - ordinary homeowners - are not being told that they are unwittingly to blame?

Come on Britain, we should be collectively ashamed that we are allowing yet another species to die out in our towns and cities before our eyes. It is not too late to reverse this decline, but positive action must be taken. Doing nothing will make the situation worse. For goodness sake, will those with real influence in this matter, please pull your fingers out, realise that you’ve made no difference during the past few years of pointless waffle, and try a new approach. Look around you. It’s habitat loss stupid, entirely habitat loss!