Out of the numerous joys as a kid growing up during the nineties, this one reserves a special place in my heart. And not just me. I am sure many would agree when I say that watching a flock of sparrows peck on grains had something fulfilling about it. I vividly remember my grandmother would spread wheat grains, which she had fetched from the neighbourhood fair-price shop, to dry in the sun, and I would sit and watch those little brown birds voraciously peck on them. My grandmother would get angry and shoo them away, but as soon as the birds returned, she would break into a smile.
Now it is 2022. And looking back, I cannot recall when I had last seen a sparrow. It seems that those little brown birds have just vanished from the face of the earth.
Sparrows have shared a mutual history with us, humans. In fact, our association dates back thousands of years, of a love-hate relationship. With the advent of agriculture, now not having to hunt for food, humans settled down, and sparrows, just like dogs, drifted away from their cousins in the wild to be amidst us. They even developed a new gene to cope with the complex starch-rich diet of grains. As humans migrated, sparrows went along and adapted to various conditions with ease.
In India, the sparrow population has been declining since the late 1990s. In many provinces, their numbers have alarmingly dipped by as much as 80%. And not just in India, this trend is playing out across the globe, especially in the urban centres.
So, what happened in the nineties?
Like other kids of that decade, I was probably busy playing, dreaming and “creating nuisance”. In the meantime, India opened itself to the world economy. Foreign investment sky-rocketed, and we, as a nation, grew prosperous. However, becoming rich comes at a cost.
As the money poured in, industries grew. People swarmed the urban centres, and the cities mushroomed. The land was in short supply, and thus the old houses disappeared to make space for dazzling new apartments. The need for land razed the natural green cover, and without trees and rising pollution levels, the average temperature of the cities went up, and we sought refuge in our air-conditioned homes.
Meanwhile, the sparrows who built their nests in eaves and ventilators of those old houses found them gone. The native trees and shrubs and bushes, where the sparrows foraged for food and roosted, had disappeared now, substituted by ornamental plants and trees in parks that may look pretty but don’t serve the same ecological role as the native plants had played for such a long time. The grains spilt from gunny sacks in front of neighbourhood grocery stores have now been replaced by supermarts where food is sold in plastic bags. Even the introduction of unleaded petrol during the mid-90s, which seemed to be a positive change for us, was not so much for the sparrows as the anti-knocking agent Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE) which replaced lead, might be killing off insects in tandem with the insecticides and pesticides we use for growing crops or in our few remaining home gardens. It may be noted here that the just-born sparrows don’t eat grains and instead depend on insects for nourishment. If one asks the common man, he often blames the introduction of mobile phones in the mid-90s as the cause for the disappearing sparrows. It may well be one of the reasons, but not the only one.
I am not sure how to end this article with hope, as I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that sparrows may soon completely disappear from the urban landscape, and the future generations may not know what a sparrow is. Not just sparrows, many other species have too disappeared, like the flock of vultures in the 90s that scavenged at the garbage dumps. A modern mind may term this ‘catastrophe’ as progress, natural evolution or just a trifling matter. But, to me, it is just short-sightedness. We are so busy in this rat race that we don’t care what we lose in the process, how much destruction and havoc we create. Maybe it is time to slow down and look around; take small steps instead of giant leaps. Our progress might be hampered, but our growth will be all-inclusive and not self-obsessed.
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a thought-provoking one, love the details, specially, ” grandmother’s laugh when the sparrow s came back.
Thank you so much 😀
Some of the facts behind the almost disappearance of this species was really unknown.
Thank you for such a lovely topic
Thank you 😀
I also used to play with the sparrows in the park when I was just a kid but now I hardly see them. “We are so busy in this rat race that we don’t care what we lose in the process” – this quoted line is something.. like everyone knows about it no one cares.
Thank you Mukul 😀