Sparrow's Battle for Surviving from the Humans!

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“Look at the sparrows; they do not know what they will do in the next moment. Let us literally live from moment to moment” … Mahatma Gandhi

“I am not worried about the things which humans are unable to do but I am worried about the things which humans are able to do’... Confucius.

Two quotes about the same subject & the reason is, of-late I have realized there is so much knowledge in the words of great people like above two names that using or say summing up the topic in just one quote is getting more difficult for me, that much options are available for any subject I chose to share my views on! So, I started using two or even more quotes & this time the subject is dear to every one of us i.e., the Sparrow as mostly all of us have grown up listening to stories of Kau-Chiu (Crow & Sparrow), unfortunately crows are still here in our concrete jungles we call growth & development but the poor sparrow (weak she has always shown, even in the folk stories) has been driven away from the cities & towns which are our homes! So much is the genocide (a in thing or terminology at present) with the sparrows we have done that finally we are required to celebrate World Sparrow Day & that’s why the topic as recently on 20^th March which is celebrated as World Sparrow Day, I have been invited as one of the chief guests. The event has been organized by Umesh Waghela who is my friend & a trekker as well as a wildlife conservationist via his organization “Alive”!

There were many events organized involving mainly the kids (a very good thing) along with grown-ups also around the theme Sparrow!  Right from poems to short stories to painting competitions to tag-lines, anything you can think of for conservation of the sparrows was there & I was chief guest for the prize distribution of these competitions!

Along with me was Dr Pujari & Dr Anil Mahabal as chief guests & Dr Pujari who is a Physicist by academics gave an eye-opening presentation about the sparrows & their journey from last nearly twenty thousand years till now & the evolution this great species has sustained or seen! A bird once so common sight for all of us but today in our own Pune city tell me how many of you have last seen a flock of the sparrows or even a pair of the sparrows nesting around your home or work space! I will be happy even if fifty percent of the readers answer positively but I know the defeat already is for the sparrows as most of us will have to scratch our head to remember to answer “yes, we have seen the sparrows” as it is not that common sight now! I was listening to the prize-winning poems & observing the paintings as well tag lines & all of them were targeting one common thing & that was, we are cutting the trees, building the concrete structures & taking away the space which a sparrow needs for her living! Yes, there was one more aspect in many presentations (creatives) that one reason of birds like sparrow are getting away from the cities is mobile transmission towers, about which I will comment in the end but let’s focus on reason of sparrows or any such birds getting obsolete from our cities which was my speech’s core as a chief guest!

At the start only I thanked Umesh & his team for showing the courage to call me as chief guest as how I can forget that I am a civil engg. as we are builders by my profession & after going through all the presentations most kids have named these two fraternities as the main enemy of the sparrows! Well, I told to the audience that indeed I am an engineer & a builder too but every person sitting in this auditorium including the participant kids are my (or some builder’s) clients as a civil engg. or as a builder & that makes all of us part of the crime of driving the sparrow out of the city, right? The need of today to conserve the sparrows (read as need of the sparrows) is not blaming each other but making the sparrow's needs part of our lifestyle, may it be a home or a road or industry or a mall! As just the way we need our home, a sparrow also needs her home & it's not about the homes or human’s development which has driven the sparrow away from our cities but our attitude towards our own homes as well other structures which we call development, has done it! Because for ages the sparrows were happily living along with humans becoming an inherent part of their settlements & that’s why the name of the most common species of the sparrows is, “House Sparrow”!

And for that we need to understand basic living needs of sparrows (and other such birds) & trust me they are very minimal needs & requires no additional cost for any developments of ours. All it needs is a green mind as well as being able to curtail our greed of keeping every possible piece of the land with us only! All that a sparrow needs is, regular supply of grains as her food, some insects, some dry grass, leaf, little open land with soil exposed on it & some quietness i.e., lesser noise as well air pollution! Because unlike Baya Weaver sparrows can’t build their nests hanging or out of nothing with leaf & grass but they need a secured space for supporting their nests with all above things around to breed & grow their chicks & exactly we are not giving them these very basic things! If you don’t believe me, then take a look at any of our buildings & what you see? All concrete or galls elevations giving no space to sparrow to build their nests, we don’t keep smallest piece of the land with soil but use for our car’s parking or swimming pools or our so-called landscaped gardens & on top of that we have every type of sound pollution right from honking cars to DJ’s & fire Crackers & the air we breathe isn’t good enough even for strongest of the humans, so how we expect a sparrow like delicate specie to breath it & yet survive! So, each of us should ask his or her builder or industrialist as well to the govt (builder of roads, railway stations & air-ports), what are they doing to accommodate a sparrow while constructing any of the above structure they builds & unfortunately no client or user of such structures asks this question, is a fact!

Coming back to the mobile tower aspect on the sparrow front, my own experience or logic is that birds all around the world have survived these towers & I have seen many birds making these towers as well the structures around them as safe places for nesting. And to my knowledge till now there is no scientific linking of mobile towers being a threat or harming any bird!

It’s all our developments where we forget to accommodate needs of the sparrows is the main reason the sparrows have left with only one option & that is leave the humans & find a new home & trust me with increasing urbanization its not an easy job & barring one sub-specie, the sparrows have not been evolved fit for migration; so, what happens to the sparrows? Simple, they die or say stop breeding & vanish from our life! Yet there is hope as we can restore this cute species with a little bit of consideration as sparrows are tough species & have survived for so long along with the humans but it's not the job of one person or a fraternity but of the entire society. In his presentation, Umesh has mentioned one of his team’s initiatives, i.e., giving a day for nature. I appealed to the audience, if we want to call the sparrows back in our cities & homes, then just giving one day in a calendar year won’t be enough, instead each of us should give ten minutes of every day to the sparrows as there only lies some hope for the sparrow or all we will be left with is, celebrating World Sparrow Day but without the sparrows in that world!

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Sanjay Deshpande 

Sanjeevani Dev.

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