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Where have all the sparrows gone?
Avon Wildlife Trust is getting ready to launch its 10th – and final – annual Bird Watch on Thursday 1 October by asking for more volunteers to join in and help it to solve a mystery: why the once-familiar house sparrow no longer appears in the area’s top 10 of feathered garden visitors.
Sparrows have fallen out of top 10 birds seen most often (Photo by John Haslam - Flickr.com/Foxypar4
Ever since the survey began in 1999, the sparrow has always been among the birds seen most often by the 1,500-plus local households who sign up each year to be part of what is believed to be the UK’s biggest and most detailed study of how garden birds are faring.
But, after falling to ninth place in the winter of 2007/08, the newly-released findings from last winter show that sparrows have fallen out of top 10 entirely, to be replaced by long-tailed tits.
Bird watch co-ordinator, Matt Hamilton, says: “Long-tailed tits are very pretty and sociable birds so we are pleased to see them prospering but the house sparrow is such a familiar part of English life it is a worry they are declining. As a result, we’re hoping to recruit more volunteers to Bird Watch this year, to see if we can find out more about the situation before we wrap up our surveying work and hand the findings – including on other puzzles, such as yet more sightings of parakeets - to the Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre for future research and comparison”.
Getting involved with Bird Watch is simple. Just contact Avon Wildlife Trust on 0117 917 7270 to ask for a free Bird Watch pack or email a request to Matt Hamilton: matthamilton@avonwildlifetrust.org.uk or download the pack from www.avonwildlifetrust.org.uk . The website also provides a garden birds ID gallery and the option to submit survey reports online.
Volunteers are welcome from any part of Avon but the team is especially keen to hear from people who live in homes with gardens in previously under-represented areas: central Bath (postcodes BA1 and BA2), central Bristol (BS1 and BS2), in and around Weston-super-Mare and Bristol Airport, especially BS23, BS24, BS25 and BS29.
