The melodious chirpings of house sparrows is slowly fading away. Not only in urban areas, villages, too, are deprived of their visits.
On World Sparrow Day, residents spoke about the social and generous bird, with whose chirps they used to rise every day.
World Sparrow Day is an initiative of the Nature Forever Society, which is a non-government organisation (NGO) run by Mohammed Dilawar, who’s an internationally acclaimed conservationist.
Although, it is widely speculated that increasing radiation because of mobile towers is responsible for the disappearance of house sparrows, experts say that the destruction of their habitats has led to their decline. Mobile phone radiation does affect, but the major cause of sparrows disappearing is a change in human lifestyle and architecture of our homes.
“I have seen hundreds of sparrows on vacant land near New Amritsar locality. There are beri trees, which provide shelter to sparrows for nesting and from large birds and animals. Earlier, the house sparrow used to stay in mud houses. There were several options of nesting. Due to urbanisation and development in rural areas, now the architecture of our houses has changed, which has affected their survival as it is not favourable for them. Now, the roofs and sheds have been cemented at villages and little space is left for them for nesting for sparrows. Moreover, the use of insecticide in fields led to a reduction in a number of insects and makes the survival of sparrows tough,” said Dr Sukhbir Singh Sandhu, an agriculture expert.
According to the survey conducted by the Punjab Agricultural University, experts in 250 villages of the state, on the basis of the percentage of the abundance of sparrows as compared to other species in five agro-climatic zones, a drastic fall was recorded. In the ’70s sparrows used to be considered as “pest” as their percentage was more than 60 per cent and considered harmful for crops in some areas. This percentage has drastically dropped in the last one-and-a-half decade.
Content retrieved from: https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/amritsar/missing-chirps-of-house-sparrows-a-cause-for-concern-379393.
