City pockets still house sparrows

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Sparrows may not be easy to spot in the rest of the city but visit Triplicane, Foreshore Estate, Mylapore and Tambaram and you can still see them flitting around, busy and chirpy as always.

The houses that have retained their old world charm and the many bushes filling the vacant plots here, seem to provide the habitat the sparrows need to thrive in unlike in most other areas where they have given way to trendy flats with their closed windows and air-conditioning.

“My granny’s house on South Mada Street near the Triplicane Parthasarathy temple is still a nesting place for sparrows”, says S. Krishna, a law college student, who lives on Bells Road.

Software professional and avid bird watcher, N. Balaji, explains Tambaram and Pallikarnai continue to support a good population of sparrows because their landscape remains conducive for them.

“The prime reason for the disappearance of sparrows from most of Chennai is the absence of bushes and green patches, besides an acute shortage of nesting space”, he sadly observes.

K. V. R. K. Thirunaranan, founder of Nature Trust, blames the change in the pattern of building constructions and winnowing for the falling number of sparrows in the city.

“House sparrows ,once common in Chennai, are now vanishing. Something has to be done before they are completely wiped out,” he underlines.

Worryingly, a recent study by ornithologists and bird watchers for TN forest department revealed a steady decline in the number of other terrestrial birds too like the Large Grey Babbler, Ashy Crowned Sparrow Lark, Indian Courser, Sandgrouse, Yellow Wattled Lapwing and Grey Patridge due to extensive urbanisation across TN.

The group, which visited Satyamangalam in Erode, Koonthakulam in Tirunelveli, Sulur in Coimbatore and Pallikaranai and the Adyar estuary in Chennai, noted with alarm that almost all water bodies, even in reserve forest areas, were polluted and human presence was affecting both the ecosystem and the bird population.