Last week the RSPB announced its findings from the Big Garden Bird Watch 2020 and once again house sparrows took the top spot for the 17th year running. However, don’t let this seemingly positive result deceive you. Although house sparrow numbers have started to recover in the last few years, since 1979 the population of this once common bird has dropped by 53%.
Bird Spot HQ is in London so the house sparrow is a bird close to our heart.
At one time wherever you were in the capital you would almost always be guaranteed to see flocks of house sparrows squabbling and chirping on pavements, fences, trees, park benches, or in urban back gardens. The Cockney sparrow was as much a fixture of London as pie and mash and pearly kings and queens.
In fact, sparrows were so ubiquitous in London that in the East End, “Hello me old cock sparrow” is still used as a form of cockney greeting. These gregarious birds didn’t seem to be bothered by the noise, traffic, or crowds of people in London, but unfortunately the chances of seeing those large flocks of sparrows now is greatly diminished with the city losing 70% of its sparrows between 1994 and 2001.
And it’s not just in London that sparrows are disappearing. Along with many other common British birds, sparrows have declined in numbers so much that they have been added to the IUCN Red List of threatened species.
In the 1950s the UK sparrow population was estimated to stand at about 9.5 million pairs which increased to 12 million pairs in the 1970s. But in the 1980s the numbers started to fall and the current population is estimated to be just 5.3 million pairs.
It is not fully understood why the number has decreased so drastically but some of the explanations given include increased urbanisation leading to a lack of food and suitable nesting sites, and an increase in the number of predators such as magpies and squirrels. Despite their name, sparrowhawks are not thought to have had any impact on urban sparrow populations.
In 2000 the Independent newspaper offered a prize of £5,000 to the first scientific peer-reviewed paper which could explain the disappearance of the house sparrow from London and other urban areas. By 2014 only 3 entries had been submitted and as far as we know the prize has still not been awarded.
Although today we may have a lot of affection for house sparrows this has not always been the case.
In the 18th century sparrows were so prolific that parishes in Britain set up Sparrow Clubs with the aim of destroying as many of them as possible. The Preservation of Grain Act from 1532 had permitted the destruction of a large number of species of wildlife because of the supposed damage they caused to crops. Bounties were paid to sparrow catchers until the 19th century and the practice of culling sparrows continued until the start of the Second World War.
For example, in Buckinghamshire, the Tring and District Sparrow Club founded in 1891 set a record of destroying 5,345 sparrows in the first 5 months of 1892.
A year later the Bucks Herald reported:
Tring and District Sparrow Club have killed 8,000 since last October. The effort of the members are now being directed to their nestlings with a view to extermination. Should the efforts of club members be as successful this year the farmers in the locality will be freed from 11,000 of these impudent destructive little pests. Since the clubs formation in October 1891 16,000 sparrows have been destroyed by members or their employees. Prizes have been awarded to Messrs J. Fulks of Hastoe, J. Pratt of Marsworth, T. Mead of Aldbury and W. Mead of Gamnel.
And in 1917 in West Farleigh, near Maidstone in Kent The Rat And Sparrow Club, known colloquially as The Loyal Tickle Back, Jack Sparrow and Mole Club, drew up a set of rules outlining how subscriptions would be allocated at the end of each season based on the numbers of points members received for the despatch of not only sparrows and rats but also bullfinches, greenfinches, and stoats.
Amongst the details of how to present your cull to the parish one rule also bizarrely forbade smoking:
“Members found smoking in Stackyards or on any premises whilst catching sparrows or rats, or loading shot guns with ordinary paper instead of stout wads shall be disqualified from all prizes.”
In continental Europe sparrows and other small songbirds are still prized as delicacies but historically sparrows have also been eaten in the UK.
In Elizabeth Raffald’s 1769 cookery book The Experienced English Housekeeper (or to give it its full title The Experienced English Housekeeper, For the Use and Ease of Ladies, Housekeepers, Cooks, &c. Wrote purely from Practice, and dedicated to the Hon. Lady Elizabeth Warburton, Whom the Author lately served as Housekeeper: Consisting of near Nine Hundred Original Receipts, most of which never appeared in Print you can find a recipe for sparrow dumplings:
Mix half a pint of good milk, with three eggs, a little salt, and as much flour as will make it a thick batter, put a lump of butter, rolled in pepper and salt, in every sparrow, mix them in the batter, and tie them in a cloth, boil them one hour and a half, pour melted butter over them, and serve them up.
Sounds delicious yes?
Sparrow pie was another popular dish eaten in both rural and urban Britain until the 1950s although one pub, The Peldon Rose Inn near Colchester, was still serving up sparrow pie many years later. Mrs Ollivant, the landlady, was renowned for her culinary specialities and annually baked a sparrow pie. Once such pie baked on the 16th January 1967 reportedly contained 100 sparrows perhaps meant for the remaining members of the local Sparrow Club.
Archaeologists have found the remains of sparrow pots that were hung up outside houses to encourage birds to nest in them dating back as far as the 1500s. The nest boxes also included a ‘robbery hole’ in the back so the householders could remove the eggs and fledglings for the cooking pot. Wealthier households also erected sparrow pots and took the adult sparrows for use in falconry.
Luckily our tastes have changed and our concern for house sparrows has increased.
There are many ways you can help reverse the decline of house sparrows such as providing food in your garden such as sunflower hearts and mealworms, or by leaving a section of lawn to grow wild to encourage the insects that make up the house sparrow’s diet.
You could also provide them with a nesting site. House sparrows will nest in creepers such as ivy but they prefer holes in buildings, or nest boxes designed for colonial species such as sparrow flats or terraces.
15 Responses
I have a 10 foot rather dense hedge here on the Suffolk coast that houses at least 150 house sparrows. It’s a well protected garden and it is amazing to see the young fluffy sparrows emerge in the summer. We have a couple of friendly pigeons, some teenage starlings, Robins, two black crows, sometimes ducks and our pet rabbit, who is allowed to run free in the garden during the day! They all get on so well together! I love my wildlife garden
Basingstoke, a flock of 20 sparrows, lots of young ones. We have an old old hedge, 15 foot high and 8 foot wide that acts as a nursery, food source and safe zone for multiple species of birds, hedgehogs and insects. All of the neighbours have cut down their hedges leaving a sterile environment.
I have seen quite a few House Sparrows along the Sussex coast including my home town “Worthing”. They are commonest in and around gardens and in trees near the seafront. I think they are sweet little birds and I like their chirps. Hopefully they will increase in number in the future. I am a life member to the RSPB.
Not seen house sparrows in Herts since 2000. Used to get noisy bundles of birds all chirping in the hedges and back garden. Miss these cheeky little birds. Hope they do make a comeback soon.
South coast nr Chichester harbour. Hundreds of sparrows around. They love broad leaf hedges in my garden. Mistle thrush sings last thing at night. Blackbirds, wren, gold finches all doing well.
We are in Northampton where minkjack deer, red foxes and owls, herons pass through and mate. Several nests here for decades including a bat track to our roof from nearby cherry trees. Presently we have several young tree and house sparrows chirruping away having created families in the roof. Previously, had too many squirrels nesting thatbhave demolished the attic and made the wall wet. They run amock and run the garden, despite the dane, local cats gathering, they have kept on coming. They keep turning my flpwers and plants over to bring in and bury their monkey nuts and even stole my pineapple off my tree. The young finches and sparrows are busy busy busy and knocking and fluttering like bilio!!!
Lots of house sparrows at my bird table, always chasing the other birds away. I live in rural North Northumberland, right on the Scottish Border, surrounded by arable fields. Although the house sparrows are doing well, the flocks of lapwings have gone, so have the yellowhammers. Thankfully, we have lots of skylarks still, and plenty of English partridge.
Don’t see sparrows much in Wiltshire now are barns we’re full of them squabbling an fighting an they would all start chirping when lights went on in mornings during winter now nothing silent.
I read all the other comments with a mixture of relief and sadness. I had thought that my ‘Sparrows Tower’ had emptied for some local reason. As others have commented the feeders needed refilling often, and at feeding time there might be queues of them quarrelling about whose turn it was. I miss them, and so do the birds who fed from the bits the sparrows dropped on the floor.
I had a very healthy group of sparrows living in my garden. They would demolish all the food I put out for them. They would fly from my roof, down to our hedgerows. I would see plenty of starlings too. It has been 6-7 days now that I have not seen one! I only see two pigeons that have resided on the neighbouring roof. Where are the sparrows and the starlings?? They are always busy flying in my garden. There is an eerie silence out there now and the bird feeders have gone untouched.
We too have many sparrows. This year Jackdaws,Starlings, Pidgeons, Collared Doves, Blackbirds, Magpies and occasionally Blue Tits and Wrens.
Continually feeding.
Bought a new bird bath. My husband has made a Dovecote too. My heinous is not happy though!
Shame?
North Yorkshire Moors we have thirty or forty sparrows all the time, several blackbirds, a song thrush, robins, a large bunch of chaffinches, wood pigeons, doves, Pheasants usually four, tree creeper, woodpeckers, blue tits, coal tits, great tits visiting long tail tits, and up to recently a pair of willow tits, greenfinch one pair, along with jackdaws, and of course the odd sparrowhawk that killed our nesting flycatcher, we do have a few starlings, siskins at times, and nuthatch occasionally, we have logged about forty different species coming to the feeders, then of course we have this year less swallows but still around a dozen pair, up to last year an harris hawk used to circle overhead, my wife and I saw it take an adder one day from a distance of around forty yards, it dropped on the snake and then carried it of in one claw, amazing.
To be fair the hedge outside my kitchen window is like a tower block of sparrows. We still have a healthy population here in SE Cornwall
I’d have more sympathy for house sparrows if they didn’t terrorise house martins so much.
From a flock of 20/30 sparrows feeding noisily and very very regularly, could almost tell the time by them, bathing, drinking, squabbling, nesting in the roof and colonising bits of the garden, to absolutely none. Not one. Don’t even hear them at dawn. I’m left with 3 blackbirds , 2 robins, now and then a bluetit and not even a starling. I used to have to replace food everyday and twice a day at this time of the year. Now just the suet pellets for the blackbirds. The feeding stations are hanging from tree branches, alongside hedges and sheltered safe routes.