Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Help London’s house sparrows - 18th June to 12 July!
The RSPB Cockney Sparrow Count is here!
The house sparrow population in the UK has shown a severe decline, in both rural and urban populations. In London, we lost 68 per cent of them between 1994 and 2000. The reasons are complex and RSPB research is focusing on ways to halt and reverse that decline.
In the summer of 2002 the RSPB and London Biodiversity Partnership launched the ‘Where have all the sparrows gone’ survey, which asked residents of London to tell us if they had house sparrows in their gardens or local green spaces. Over 10,000 people responded, giving us valuable information about where sparrows were still to be found, as well as highlighting the plight of this once prolific bird. The results painted a sad picture, with a stark absence of sparrows in the centre of London.
Ten years on we’re repeating this survey to see how the sparrow is faring today and this time we’re hoping to get even more people involved. We’re asking the public to submit records of house sparrows seen in Greater London between 18 June and 12 July by using our simple online recording form. It doesn’t have to be done in a garden, it can be done anywhere in Greater London. The information you give us will help inform our conservation efforts to save this iconic London bird.
Join our event! Why not spread the word to anyone else in Greater London who may be interested? The more people that get involved, the better the information! Tweet to your friends using #sparrowcount!
For further information and to submit your results – www.rspb.org.uk/sparrowcount
The project is being run in partnership with the London Wildlife Trust and Greenspace information for Greater London (GiGL) as part of the London Biodiversity Partnership.
Re post from Project Dirt. Original blog by Eleanor Reast
Tags for Forum Posts: birdwatching, sparrows
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by tulips on
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Will do. We have lots of sparrows in our garden. We feed them sunflower hearts and they also love canadian canary seed!
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Permalink Reply by DrWhams on
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Done. We have two or three visiting regularly, and they're quite keen on the fat ball feeder. Recently the birds have been getting through about one fat ball per day (not helped by a squirrel demolishing half of it)
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Permalink Reply by Ms on
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This is a great project - I was shocked when I first heard sparrows were in decline as I remember them being so numerous when I was young (and also as that is my surname - "Sparrow" being a traditional London name!) We have several sparrow families nesting in our garden - we feed them with wild bird seed and fat balls in winter and have some berry-fruiting bushes (pyracanta, fatsia japonica and others) which I think they eat in the autumn and winter and we also have a rather overgrown garden with lots of ivy on the trellis and evergreen shrubs which seem to provide good nesting grounds. It's also a great excuse not to do too much in the garden as we have now named it a "wild bird sanctuary" which gets us off the hook .... They are cheerful and noisy birds and I was very entertained last summer watching them swoop around in gangs like teenage hoodies and encourage the young birds to fly - all lined up on the roof gutter shouting the equivalent of "jump! jump".
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