| Searching for Sparrows |
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Page 1 of 6 by Jean Lawman  Last year on their Christmas card, my ex-patriot friends listed the birds seen regularly in their garden; at the end they wrote – ‘we almost forgot the House Sparrows’. There was nothing unusual in this except that the card was from the other side of the world, New Zealand actually, where there had been several introductions of the sparrow from 1866 onwards, mainly by agriculturalists who believed they would control insect pests, but also by sentimental colonizers, missing the homeland. I sent them a card of an English Robin to remind them of this much loved bird. They’ve got their own robin which is cute, but doesn’t have that splendid red breast, in fact is it mostly grey. They tried to introduce our Robin, but they didn’t take to life in the southern hemisphere like our House Sparrows did. It was the same in North and South America, Australia, and many other parts of the world; our sparrows arrived for one or other reason, although, as they often achieved pest status, and there were many regrets. A few travelled by their own means. A small flock is said to have boarded a vessel at Bremerhaven, Germany, and disembarked at Melbourne, Australia. Having arrived in these countries, sparrows spread rapidly from town to town along roads and railways, often in the carriages themselves. Described as noisy, quarrelsome, greedy, cheeky, and goodness knows what else, there’s still something we like, if not love, about them. They’re not especially attractive, they don’t sing beautifully and they are not associated with anywhere romantic, except that on a dull winter’s day their vibrant chirping can transport you to the intense heat of a Mediterranean village, where bright red geraniums mock the pastel limestone walls and sparrows live among the pale terracotta pantiles, loudly ignoring the otherwise peaceful siesta. |
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