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Tim Webb

Interest's high and the question on everyone's lips is: "will the final statement be in the redThe Urban Birder, David Lindo, lifts his shades in tribute to the giant sparra he found on the Southbank, or the black?"

I refer not to the banking crisis, not to the world economy, but to our Cockney Sparrow Count. It closes on Thursday 12 July, with a few days grace to submit results. Ten years ago the first London sparrow census revealed a black hole of sparrows in central London. Alarmingly this once common bird had quietly died-out in the heart of the Capital.

The more reports we get, the better, so please do add your sparrow experiences to our online database. It only takes a few minutes of your time but the info you supply, even if you have NO sparows in your life, is important. We need to know where there aren't any sparrows as well as where there are sparrows. So log-on and chirp-up. Please.

It's at this point that I expect some Jeremy Paxman wannabe to chip-in with a knife sharp comment demanding to know... why?

There are lots of reasons.

  1. London has lost seven out of every ten sparrows
  2. We have a moral responsibility for other living things sharing our planet
  3. Sparrows form part of the natural cycle of things and losing bits of that natural cycle disrupts its smooth running
  4. Sparrows and people are like apple pie and custard - it's traditional
  5. Sparrow chirping is part of the soundtrack of our days
  6. Sparrows are one of the world's most widely spread bird species (so adaptable)
  7. We have no idea .. yet ... what's truly behind their sudden population crash
  8. They are so much a part of our lives that we no longer really register their presence
  9. If we let sparrows die-out, what's next
  10. Sparrows are inter-galactic warriors, the only thing standing between us and the hell-trogs of Magblore

OK, that last one was made up, but the rest are factual.

I discovered this week that your average adult house sparrow weighs the equivalent of three pound coins. If we added up the number of lost sparrows using that comparison as our guide, we'd find the answer somewhere in the high millions.

We're also losing starlings, swifts, bees, butterflies and the fight against flab. Strangely, one way to address all of these things lies in our countryside. Our rivers, woodlands, gardens and parks are part of the answer. Managing these spaces sustainably to produce food and to encourage walking, discovery and enjoyment of the great outdoors is a winner.

Have you explored the Thames estuary? There are really wild, really beautiful, really cultured and really wild places along both banks of the river. I know the Romans had some bad experiences with the natives, but there are some really nice people living there now. You can visit the Kent marshes that inspired Dickens. Follow in the footsteps of invading Vikings in Essex. You can stare in wonder at the milk chocolate brown waters of the Thames which carried so may people into and out of the UK. The Thames estuary is a landscape which helped shape the world we live in today. How sad it would be if that landscape were to lose some of its defining features, such as the cocky, though somewhat tatty and plain, house sparrow.