Where have thee sparrows gone? world sparrow day was on March 20 | Daily News

Where have thee sparrows gone? world sparrow day was on March 20

The World Sparrow Day fell on March 20. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the daily life of humans, many of them had enough compassion to spare a thought for one of the littlest creatures that share this planet with them – the chirpy house sparrow, on World Sparrow Day, March 20. Sadly though, many humans were unconcerned and let that day pass. I say sadly, because the house sparrow or "ge kurulla" (Passer domesticus), which all Sri Lankans enjoyed seeing in our homes and gardens in our childhood years is flying into oblivion.

Let us examine why we see so few of the chirpy little birds these days. If we can understand the reasons for a once all too common bird to be so rare these days, then perhaps we can drag them from the edge of extinction.

I grew up in the verdant village of Kosgama in the Kelani Valley. My grandma used to hang on the outside wall of aunt Litty’s bedroom facing the broad compound, a small pot with a hole in the center for these birds to enter it and make nests, usually with straw. Indeed, these birds’ nests were a common sight throughout rural Sri Lanka. For, house sparrows were considered a symbol of good luck, plentiful harvests, bringing cheer and happiness to the household. I also remember, the bolder birds, hopping along the open verandah with their heads cocked to a side, looking for fallen grain or insects such as ants.

After the harvest in late March or early April, when sacks of paddy would be carted in from the rice fields, a host of in-house servants and village women would boil the grain with the husk intact and spread them on long wide reed mats on the compound for sun drying. It looked like an open invitation to a multitude of birds – sparrows, mynas, magpies, babblers and parakeets to descend on the mats to feed on the tempting feast spread thereon. My three playmates, Ran Menika, Karuna and Simon were placed at strategic positions to shoo the birds away, while I took aim at them, the birds, not the playmates, with a catapult. (For details, please read Flickering Fortunes in Changing Ceylon of mid-20th Century).

Such scenes are rare, if not non-existent in modern Sri Lanka as it is evolving from the old village based agrarian economy into an urbanized service based industrial economy. And, therein lies the cause of the vanishing sparrow – loss of habitat and food supply due to the spreading bane of urbanization.

Whereas in earlier times the birds would fly off in the morning to nearby feeding grounds such as grass fields, today they do not have even the extensive lawns of houses to forage for grass seed and insects.

Even the architecture of the houses is different today, many of them being sleek with straight walls and no curves or corners for the birds to anchor their nests.

Urbanization with no thought for the natural environment, has resulted, methinks, in the loss of the milk of human kindness for our avian friends, or in other words the human protection that ensured them food, shelter and housing, much the same as we humans need for our survival.

What can we do to help bring back these little creatures from the precipice? Maybe, just maybe, commemorate World Sparrow Day by hanging a wooden bird house from the rafters, inviting them to nest there and keeping a supply of grain and water for their consumption. I remember the late Cyril Gardiner, then Chairman of the iconic Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, used to harbor a family of chattering sparrows building an ever-growing nest of straw on the huge wooden beams near the entrance to the grand ballroom. One day, after an early morning dip in the hotel swimming pool, I was rushing to my room upstairs, when I noticed a hotel worker cleaning the marble floor of what appeared to be bird droppings. When I paused to enquire, he pointed his finger upward and on looking up, I noticed the very happy family of sparrows that had taken residence in the legendary heritage hotel. At breakfast, I asked Cyril, why he was allowing wild birds to use his polished floor as a toilet. His answer revealed a very compassionate man worthy of emulation by us all. Said Cyril,"Lakshman, they are also God’s little creatures and have every right to be in my hotel"!! (From the book Soaring Spirits and Shooting Stars)

On the other hand, I was also witness to the massive "anti-sparrow campaign" in Maoist China in the late 1950s, when millions of the birds were destroyed as they were considered to be pests eating thousands of pounds of grain in the fields. The campaign ended in disaster as with the elimination of sparrows, the grain feeding insects increased, causing near famine in the farmlands.

Sparrows have lived with humans for thousands of years and are indigenous to Asia, Africa and Europe and introduced to America and Australia by settlers. They are among the few species of birds that engage in dust baths.

Sparrows were associated by the ancient Greeks with Aphrodite, the goddess of love, due to their perceived lustfulness, an association echoed by writers as Chaucer and Shakespeare in Hamlet. Jesus' use of "sparrows" as an example of divine providence in the Gospel of Matthew also inspired later references, such as that in the Gospel hymn His Eye Is on the Sparrow. Sparrows are represented in ancient Egyptian art rarely, but an Egyptian hieroglyph is based on the house sparrow: The symbol had no phonetic value and was used as a determinative in words to indicate small, narrow, or bad.


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