RAGOO RAO writes: My ajji‘s (grandmother) folk stories would all begin the same way on our jaguli (patio): “Ondu ooralli, ondu Gubakka mattu ondu Kagakka vaasa maadtittante (A sparrow and a crow lived in a city).”
For us, kids, these Kagakka-Gubakka stories were fun. Gubakka was the naive do-gooder; Kagakka the conniving villain. Many a story was woven around these ubiquitous birds that helped convey morals and cultural nuances.
As the story went on, we would look out for an appearance by our main protagonist—Gubakka.
When their ilk paid a visit, we would ensure we threw out some nucchu (grain leftovers). The story-telling continued while the sparrows hopped around the yard, chirping.
Now, these birds that were a commonplace in my hometown of Mysore, is no longer so common.
Kagakka and Gubakka are going the way of the dodo as far as urban areas are concerned.
The house sparrow has been a confirmed hanger-on to man ever since humans started cultivating. Till not so long ago, sparrows were common all over the country whether it was a bustling metropolis or a small hamlet. Not only were they welcome in houses in parts of south India, it was considered a good omen if the sparrow built a nest inside the house.
It was not uncommon to find these nests under the rafters, behind an old picture frame, an electric meter box, an attic or a niche in the wall.
People would let these birds thrive and shoo away predatory cats or crows from these nests. A lot of these birds roamed inside houses—especially the solitary males and the juveniles. Such is the bond between man and the sparrow that sparrows came to be classified as a domestic species—Passer domesticus.
Till two decades ago, many trees with close foliage and small branches in our area would be filled with flocks of birds. These birds, mainly sparrows, created a din with their constant chirping and nesting preparations. Having toiled through the day, one would find these birds perched in a neat line on power lines on cooler evenings.
Once dark, they would settle down peacefully until the next dawn when the first rays of sunlight would get them going again. Though roosters are credited with heralding the morning, it’s the chirping of sparrows that ushered in many of ours.
By 1990, this everyday feature of the sparrows roosting in our trees and their all-too-familiar chirping started getting less and less frequent. The nests inside the houses were fading away and the birds, which would fill our gardens for foraging on insects, were going missing.
By 1992, there were hardly any in our area.
This sea-change in a five-year period puzzled me. Many wondered where the sparrows went. Some had their own diagnosis of the problem. Their guesses ranged from the obvious to the outlandish.
Some faulted the loss of food; some the sound waves of the mobile phone; others, the radiation from outer space.
As a plantation consultant and a wildlife photographer, I spend quite a bit of time in the farms, fields and forests. Add to that I pass through a lot of villages, both big and small en route to my destinations.
Curiously, I noticed sparrows in a lot of villages.
These birds merrily foraged and thrived unaffected by the fate of their urban cousins. This was not an isolated incident and I observed this for a good period of time since the birds became rarer in 1992. I started compiling notes to contrast the urban-rural demographic divide in the sparrow population.
In comparing the two regions, the reasons for the dwindling number of sparrows in urban areas and their steady numbers in the non-urban demographic got more and more obvious by the day.
First: Sparrows were dependent on the leftover grains thrown to them after people cleaned their grains. I distinctly remember a flock of sparrows at my mother’s feet while she cleaned the rice on our patio. This practice has ceased in urban areas, thanks to everyone buying pre-cleaned grains from the super stores. However, in rural Karnataka, this practice still thrives; not just the rural areas, but in “undeveloped” localities inside cities where the less privileged do the cleaning of grains themselves, sparrows still make their appearances. This clearly highlights the shortage of food impacting the dwindling numbers.
Second: Sparrows typically built nests in tiled houses—under the rafters and niches in the gables. As a matter of fact, in some old houses, intentional holes were made near the roofing to accommodate sparrow nests. Now the urban scene has changed. There are no tiled houses with rafters; we just have concrete structures with absolutely no place for the sparrows to build nests. Nonetheless in rural and “undeveloped” areas, there still are tiled houses with bamboo rafters, intentionally made niches in walls for nesting sparrows. This is the same demographic where the sparrows are still thriving. This clearly indicates that the sparrows were deprived of nesting places adding to their decline in the urban areas while they still prosper in the rural/rural like demographic.
Third: House sparrows are omnivorous, they live mainly on grains, but they also relish insects. They bring up the young exclusively on insects. Until recent times, home gardens did not use chemical insecticides in their gardens. The lawns raised in big compounds were also the native variety of grass, which was a little tall swayed in the wind and needed constant mowing. This native grass was hardy and did not need chemical pampering except a good spray of water. These lawns harboured a wealth of insect life—most harmless to humans, but a wealth of sustenance to our winged friends. Sparrows busily foraged for insect larvae in these lawns for feeding their young. Not anymore.
Now in urban areas, the scene has changed, and changed for the worse as far as our feathered friends are concerned. Many gardens are liberally sprayed with insecticides and fungicides. The native lawn grass has been replaced by the short non-moving Mexican grass, which needs a lot of support with fertilizers and protectant sprays. Thanks to these and the fact that they are not native, these new lawns do not support much insect life in them. As a contrast to this urban landscape, the organic and green methods in villages not just help humans, it helps fellow inhabitatants as well. In the villages and “undeveloped” localities, pesticides are not used for domestic use. Whatever little kitchen gardening they practice uses farmyard manure, encouraging insect life, which ultimately the sparrows feed the young with.
In conclusion, it is quite apparent that the rapid urbanization has led to ‘Loss of foraging sites‘, ‘Loss of nesting sites‘, ‘Loss of insect population to bring up a brood‘, ‘Loss of roosting shrubs‘.
Apart from these major factors, there could well be many other contributing factors to the declining sparrow numbers in cities. High automobile pollution with a lot of lead has known to cause the eggs of birds in some countries to be too thin and unsustainable; the same could be afflicting our sparrows. Higher noise pollution might have caused a disturbance they could not cope with.
A total loss of habitat in urban areas has spelt the doom for these beautiful creatures. The sole encouraging thing though is, one can still find these much loved birds in rural hamlets and pockets of urban areas, thanks to a congenial atmosphere still prevailing there.
Now, we hear the same about the dwindling numbers of the villain of our Kagakka-Gubakka duo: the crow.
I sure hope we do not have to start a story to our grandkids with, “Ondanondu kaaladalli ondu Kagakka mattu ondu Gubakka anno pakshigalu ittante (Once upon time there lived 2 birds…).”
If that happens, we know who the villain of that tale will be: you and me.
Photograph: VT Peacenik via Flicker
Visit the author: http://www.ragoorao.com
Also read: Save the vanishing sparrows
That is a beautiful post. I have seen sparrows dwindling in Indian cities too. I remember a lot more of them in childhood than you see now.
First of all , I loved the picture!
Sparrow population is declining around the world. Its a global phenomenon, Majorly believed to be cause of Pollution and also some theory on Radio waves and I even have read mobile signals being cause of this. I really dont think that using pre processed rice is killin sparrows in India. You can refer this :http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/first-they-disappeared-from-britain-now-europes-house-sparrows-have-vanished-474743.html and Just Google and you will find many theories on the global decline of sparrows. Nothing has been confirmed so far with concrete proof.
Well.. Another theory, Light pollution. Use of too many Artificial Lighting during night time is killing them. Details, Refer :
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:YdhQYHqcBFoJ:www.lightpollution.org.uk/dwnLoads/Atropos_letter-light%2520pollution_MT3.doc+sparrow+pollution&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=in
Beautiful observational narration. In Bangalore too even in the area -high grounds where I live, where dense foliage is available like in taj west end we dont see sparrows
But when I went to Bantval in SK rrecently I saw plenty of them
Gubbachii uru bittu kadige hogide!
Beautiful writeup. Sad story.
Princeton ethicist Peter Singer, father of the animal rights movement, writes, “All the arguments to prove man’s superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.”
Another of his famous quotes: “The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.”
Philosophers such as Singer argue that human progress can only be real when in a holistic sense it recognizes equal value in all life — a message brought out even more beautifully in our ancient Upanishads and in the Jaina doctrines.
I too did notice their decline. In fact, they used to fly inside our house at times. In the night, if a cat got to a tree where they rest, we would hear a big whoosh – sparrows flying en masse. I was told that with the excessive usage of pesticides, the egg shells of these birds thinned and thus the number of newborns has progressively reduced. By 1996, when I left Mysore, I dont remember seeing any sparrows. The Ragoo Rao’s insightful article has a lot more causes. Thanks a lot.
Long live kagakka and gubakka!
Awesome picture!
Gubbachhi has flown out of urban areas, i suspect radio waves but of course that is my unscientific observation.
I think It’s waves emmitted by mobile towers which is causing the decline of sparrows.. I come from a village in north coastal karnataka and there lot of sparrows used to live till the arrival of mobile towers in the countryside.after mobile towers came their population started declining. My father used to say that during their childhood days animals and humans used to coexist in a house in that region. In our house snakes used to reside in the first for a whole month or so while the humans slept in the ground floor. While a frog used to stay in the pooja room next to idols and was aptly named “devara kappe” by my grandmother. And calfs used to sleep in holli(Modern days hall) during monsoon when rain coupled with lightning and thunder used to be severe in coastal areas and this used to frighten the little ones.And as usual sparrows were there with their nest. Thus in the olden days it was a perfect coexistence between humans and animals
I have seen lots of sparrow near KSRTC bus stand, there are 100s of them,
Recently, I saw lots of sparrows in Mysore after a very long time!
That was early in the morning, opposite to Kukkarahalli Kere next to Hunsur road and Valmiki Road, there is a araLi kaTTe… I saw lots of sparrows pecking kaaLu in front of the kaTTe! :-)
A welcome respite from the usual anti-Yeddi blogging. I belong to Namo’s (Narendra Modi’s) Gujarat, and usually drop in to go through the familiar (so-called) secularist vs the rest exchanges taking place here. Sometimes it sounds serious, sometimes fun, but it never made me speak before. This article does compel me, however, to say a few words.
Incidentally, I had last helped the offspring of a sparrow grow up by building a nest in my Ahmedabad house in 1991. It was only years later that the truth of their disappearance finally started surfacing up. I could still spot a sparrow as late as only a couple of years ago, it never came back though. So impressive was the mushrooming up real estate around my courtyard, that nothing seemed to bother my urban conscience. But, it now hurts to find not only sparrows but even a species like Peacock getting annihilated. And there is an odd group of Langoors too, which is stranded in my area these days; the explosion of high-rises have left them cut-off from the greener belts off the city limits. Trees around my residence are part of their last habitat; they frantically keep moving in and out as people continue to shoo them away.
It only adds to the disappointment, to find more and more automobiles and human bodies adding up to the traffic chaos each year; more and more trees being felled mercilessly and the green-house gases growing so dangerously, that one could listen them walk in through the strange weather changes taking place these days.
Sakkath Photo and a touching post ! thanks…
There is only space for man and his domestic animals in the bigger Indian cities now. And the pests we bring along like rats and cockroaches.
This week is the Week of the Nestbox in the Netherlands. Bird protection group Vogelbescherming Nederland calls on everyone to hang birdhouses on their property in time for the breeding season, and to take note of nesting activity on their property. The group wants to make gardens and parks more attractive for bird nests while at the same time to get more people interested in birds and their protection. In the Netherlands today, is fashionable to have a completely paved garden. More often wood fences are used to delineate property, replacing the hedges of yore. These changes have a negative impact on the songbirds that would typically nest in the hedges and search for food on grassy lawns.