The World Sparrow Day - March 20

The abase house sparrow has fans outside the rarefied world of birdwatchers. “It's because successive generations arose up with this passerine bird. It's little surprise that they feel its absence,” says Madras Naturalists' Society (MNS) and adds that this love for the sparrow bird is adequte to script its comeback.

MNS is creating a “Sparrow Map of Chennai” and it relies mostly on residents to achieve this task. To involve the community in this conservation effort, MNS has called an event for World Sparrow Day for the every year “March 20” that requires people to write in about places where they have seen sparrows.

Participants are awaited to look for these birds in their neighbourhood on March 20 and note down the location, time, weather, number of sparrows, activities they were engaged in, location of nests (if any), other birds or animals found in the vicinity and other relevant information. If participants have managed to click photographs of these sparrows, they may send them in.

MNS will work on this data, visiting these sites and looking for ways to improve sparrow populations there. “Areas where sparrows even flock may offer clues to understanding factors that confirm these birds. Various theories have been forwarded to brief the dwindling numbers of sparrows and collecting data about these birds from areas where they are still found may help get at conclusions about these theories.