Sparrows in Paradise

Regular readers, please excuse my bad case of AWOL-ishness as I disappeared for two weeks. Yes, I went away sunning myself, and here I am freshly tanned thanks to the sun, wind and rain of what for me counts as the tropics - the Isles of Scilly.

Have you been? The place is simply glorious. Here for example are the Eastern Isles last week - I might as well have been in the Caribbean!

The islands are famed for their mild climate, where snows and frost are almost unheard of. It allows plants to grow in gardens that you can only dream of elsewhere in the UK, and the subtropical gardens on Tresco are a treasure-trove of flowers from across the globe.

There's something about Scilly that also seems to work wonders for House Sparrows. You see them everywhere: in gardens, in fields and farms, out on the maritime heaths, on the beaches.

This was a flock of 28 waiting on a porch roof to come down to some seed on the ground. Well, it's a long time since I've seen a flock that large where I live, and there were some flocks I saw on Scilly that I think were closer to 100.

You're probably well aware that the House Sparrow is one of those cause celebres, a species that we once took for granted but whose numbers plummeted. We lost an estimated 68% of our sparrows between 1977 and 2011; in other words, for every three sparrows there were, just one remains.

We still don't know the reasons for sure, although changes in agriculture practice in rural areas and shortages of insects in urban areas are implicated. The good news is that the decline seems to have bottomed out, with signs of an increase in the west and north although it is still not translating into a nationwide bounceback.

Big Garden Birdwatch in January will give us another massive snapshot of how well they are doing, to add to the figures collated in the BTO's Breeding Bird Survey.

How are your sparrows doing? Can you beat a photo of 28?