The Common House Sparrow -
Passer domesticus

Rose arch in autumn
with hanging bird feeder

Our feathered friend, the common house sparrow (Passer domesticus), visits our natural cottage garden every day - and he's very welcome too! However, the sparrow family is suffering badly and they "needs a little help from their friends" - guess that's us. So let's find out how we can help our sparrows survive and prosper.

House Sparrow Facts

• Sparrows are 14-16 cm long, weigh 27-39 and are very chirpy, with grey and brown as the predominate colours. They fly at a speed of 38,5 km per hour - they can even reach speeds of more than 50 km per hour, though not for too long.
• A follower of mankind, they have always prospered wherever we have appeared, especially in our villages, towns and cities. They are, in effect, "townies" as country folk would say.
• Our man-made environment has always been the primary source of food and shelter for the house sparrow.
• They nest under the eaves of our homes, in holes in the masonry of our walls and buildings or in the climbing plants or creepers we grow up the walls of our houses.
• We provide them with a rich and varied diet - the seeds of our garden plants, the insect pests that would otherwise destroy many of our flowers and plants, and anything else that catches their fancy.
• Sparrows are very sociable - you nearly always see them in large groups, chirping and twittering away, nineteen to the dozen.
• They feed together in groups too - both on the ground (seeds, berries etc.) and in the vegetation of our gardens and fields (insect pests e.g. greenfly etc.).
• The house sparrow raises three nests - 3-5 eggs per nest - of chicks a year. Both male and female help to incubate the eggs for 12-14 days, with the little ones - syn. fledglings - flying out - syn. fledge - after 15 days.

© LMNH, used with permission

Why does the Sparrow Need Help?

Though there are still plenty of sparrows, there numbers have been rapidly reduced by more than 50% in Europe in the last 25 years. The rate of decline, as any natural gardener will confirm, has been increasing too - they're disappearing faster as time goes by.

In the Netherlands, they were placed on the Dutch Red List of Threatened Birds in 2004 as, although still plentiful, their numbers had declined by more than 50% since the publication of the previous list in 1994.

Sparrows love messy gardens with lots of seeds, insects and berries and, since less and less people garden the natural way, there's less and less food available for them.

As usual, where there's a problem, there's a lot of disagreement about the causes of the decline in numbers of the common sparrow.

© LMNH, used with permission

What's the Cause of the Problem?

The rise of "modern gardening" = the decline in natural gardens. Too many gardens provide very little, if any, food for birds as they are:

• "Stony deserts", covered in paving stones and covered with stones and gravel - easy upkeep, no time and effort required and very few plants;
• Neat and tidy - nothing wild in the form of seeds or insects welcome here - for appearances sake, what would the neighbours think if our garden didn't look like a boring still-life painting with solitary plants surrounded by a neatly raked wide circle of bare soil;
• A showcase for garden furniture and currently fashionable flowering plants which are usually sterile and don't provide nectar or pollen for birds and insects;
• Devoid of insect life due to the over-use of chemical pesticides - "insect killers" - and herbicides - "weed killers" - in gardens where the range of plants - "bio-diversity" is too narrow;
• We build insulated houses nowadays - reduces the heating bills but the air inside isn't very healthy - so there are no more eaves, nooks and crannies available for the sparrow to nest in or around our homes.

What can we do to Help the Sparrow?

• Give them a natural garden in the cottage garden style and many different bird species will hunt insects and gather seeds to their heart's content throughout the year - and you'll save money too as you won't ever need to use pesticides and herbicides;
• Build a pond so all your feathered friends, not just the sparrows, have fresh drinking and bathing water available at all times;
• Hang or place a bird feeder - we supply nuts all year round on our bird feeder and we add fatty seed balls to the menu from late autumn to early spring;
• Build a sparrow hotel - a nest box for three families! Yes, I know it's not a term you've come across before but you really can build a hotel with three rooms with a view for the sparrows and it's great fun too.