Nature Dying In Your Own Back Yard
On my way to school a hundred years ago or so it seems, I would see thrushes bashing snail shells on the garden path when I stepped out of the house.
Song thrushes and Mistle thrushes. I didn’t see them every day, but often enough that I didn’t think it was remarkable.
And we lived in Leeds, a city of three quarters of a million people. An industrial city with a grime-covered sky. In other words, neither in nor near the countryside.
When we moved into that house it had just been built and there was a field a few hundred yards away. But that got built on with yet more houses. Now when I think back to the house I imagine a bird’s eye view of snaking, curvy streets. I picture endless streets. Everything built on.
Out to the end of our street, turn right, down the hill and the up and eventually you were at the park about a mile away. Or turn the other way and get on the bus into town.
I read somewhere that the reason that house sparrow numbers have crashed is because new houses have every cavity boxed off, wired in, closed off. There are no nooks and crannies for sparrows to nest in. They are called house sparrows - the name ‘house’ is in the name. Why didn’t someone think of the damage that denying them nesting sites might cause?
Now that we know, why aren’t builders required to leave nooks and crannies for house sparrows to nest?
Sparrows are red-listed - meaning they are particularly vulnerable. Red is the highest conservation priority, with species needing urgent action.
This is the Red List. If you’re a bird watcher you will know all of these names. If you are not a bird watcher, you will know some because birds are part of the culture, part of our language. Let’s enjoy reading through the list. It’s alphabetical, and the sparrow will be in there somewhere, depends on how long the list is.
Arctic skua
Balearic shearwater
Bewick's swan
Black grouse
Black-tailed godwit
Capercaillie
Cirl bunting
Common scoter
Corn bunting
Corncrake
Cuckoo
Curlew
Dotterel
Dunlin a
Fieldfare
Goldeneye
Grasshopper warbler
Greenfinch
Grey partridge
Hawfinch
Hen harrier
Herring gull
House martin
House sparrow
Kittiwake
Lapwing
Leach's storm-petrel
Lesser spotted woodpecker
Linnet
Long-tailed duck
Marsh tit
Marsh warbler
Merlin
Mistle thrush
Montagu’s harrier
Nightingale
Pochard
Ptarmigan
Puffin
Purple sandpiper a
Red-backed shrike
Red-necked grebe
Red-necked phalarope
Redpoll
Ring ouzel
Ringed plover
Roseate tern
Ruff
Savi's warbler
Scaup
Shag
Skylark
Slavonian grebe
Smew
Spotted flycatcher
Starling
Swift a
Tree pipit
Tree sparrow
Turtle dove
Twite
Velvet scoter
Whimbrel
Whinchat
White-fronted goose
Willow tit
Wood warbler
Woodcock
Yellow wagtail
Yellowhammer
Ah, there you are House sparrow, and you the Mistle thrush, on the Red List. Your close neighbour the Song thrush is on the Amber list.
Makes you want to spit.
Redemption
My observation is that we (those of the human race) believe in redemption, that things can be pulled back from the brink.