I’m not a twitcher, that is, someone who rushes all over the country in search of some rare bird that happens to have been blown to our shores on an unusually strong wind, but I do like to sit and watch them going about their business. Earlier this year we happened to be in the north of Norfolk, wintering ground for the thousand upon thousands of wild geese and shore birds taking refuge from the Arctic weather further north.  As it happened, the Arctic had come to Norfolk as well, and added to that, a ferocious Atlantic gale a few days earlier had brought one of these rarities, a American White-crowned Sparrow, to the very village where we were staying.   Cue the twitchers, in their hundreds when it first arrived - only the fourth ever to grace our shores.   By the end of the month the crowds had dwindled to a dozen or so hardy souls, all hoping for a glimpse of this grey little bird with unusual markings on its head.

 Of course, we never saw it, though a few clicks on Google show that plenty did.   But it set me thinking about our own Sparrow, and how rare that is nowadays, in my garden at any rate.   When I first came to Petersfield, forty years ago, sparrows were abundant and something of a pest, nesting under any gap in the tiles and under the eaves.   Today the roof is in good order and the eaves have been blocked, just the same as most other houses, so where does the poor sparrow breed?  

Much the same can be said about our other squabbling friend, the starling. And it is not only in built up areas that the sparrow has declined.  In fact in rural parts of eastern England it has virtually disappeared.   The flocks that used to feed on stubble in winter have gone, as the stubble is quickly ploughed in before winter barley is sown, and  the stackyards of olden days are long gone.  So if I have no sparrows or starlings in my garden today, what do I have?   Pigeons, magpies and crows of course, and their screeching and cooing has almost completely replaced the sound of songbirds, save for a robin and a few blackbirds.   We’ve had a pair of blue-tits in our nest box every year since 1975, though last year’s wet May spelt disaster for them.   But most of the chaffinches, the greenfinches, the wrens, the song thrushes and the dunnocks have gone, more’s the pity.

No two people can agree as to why.   Yes, our cat has a few ground feeding birds like robins, but in our garden in is magpies and squirrels that are primarily responsible for taking young birds.   Whatever the RSPB may say in their defence, in the early morning I have regularly watched magpies robbing nests in our hedge during spring, once pulling the beautiful domed nest of a pair of long-tailed tits to pieces in their search for the eggs or young.  And just this morning a woodpecker was trying to get at the young blue-tits.   It is often heart-breaking to listen to the distress calls of the adults.

In recent years there has been another element in the equation - our neighbourhood sparrow hawk.   Now much as I admire this dashing little predator, but its attacks on the bird table are frequently lethal.  A few years ago I saw one bring havoc to the pied wagtail roost in the Square, as it delicately plucked one out of a tree at top speed and disappeared away over the church.  Thirty years ago it was so scarce that one which flew into our French window was mounted and exhibited in the long vanished Museum of Birds in Flight at Bognor.  But it’s not all gloom and doom, for although there are nowhere near as many birds as there were, nor so much variety - I haven’t seen a tree-creeper or a nuthatch, nor heard a cuckoo for years - there are still a few birds around.

This winter we’ve often had a green woodpecker digging for ants on the lawn, and sometimes its great spotted cousin, the one who fancied the baby blue-tits, visits the bird-table.   We get an occasional redstart in autumn and regularly over-wintering blackcaps gorge themselves on asparagus berries, whilst lovely little siskins sometimes join groups of wandering tits.   We hear an owl in the cemetery and sometimes a lordly buzzard sails overhead.  But the greatest loss is the noisy, squabbling, house sparrow.   Will it ever return? Tom Muckley, February 2008

This article was originally published by the Petersfield Post

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