I’ve gone to get fish and chips, and a bush has started chirping at me. Not just one chirp, either. A barrage. I’ve never met such a chatty bush.
Swanage is hot, sandy, lazy. A seaside minibreak, wringing the last drops of summer from the year. A squabble of herring gulls argue over a chip. Crows loiter with intent to scavenge. A pied wagtail bounces overhead, lands on a patch of sandy grass, and struts its wind-up toy walk, on the lookout for scraps. British seasiders play fast and loose with the foodstuffs, and there are easy pickings to be had. So the chatty bush is no surprise.
They are house sparrows, the ultimate LBJ (little brown job) and as enthusiastic a devourer of our leftovers as you’ll find. Thirty of them, give or take, babbling and chattering and falling over each other to say hello. Spadger, spug, squidgie, sparky, sprog – the wealth of folk names is a reflection of their former ubiquity.
This encounter lifts the heart in strange and unfathomable ways. Back in the day they were so commonplace that 30 in a bush would barely have merited a glance. But times change, and now, on the comparatively rare occasions I do see them on my south London patch, I greet them with the exuberance reserved for old friends. The population decline has been sharp – up to 70% between 1977 and 2018, with signs of a slight increase since then. The usual reasons are suspected – habitat loss, lack of suitable food, closing up of the little spaces where they like to nest.
But sparrows are hardy and adaptable, and they like being around us. Recent research shows that the relationship goes back 11,000 years, to the development of agriculture. Their worldwide dispersal only actually came in the last two centuries, coinciding with Victorian expansion of empire, and enabled by genes that allow them to digest starchy grains – an ability lacking in their ancestors.
Further along the beach, a Punch and Judy show – another declining species – blares out a tale of cartoon violence and sausages to an appreciative crowd. The gulls and crows – Jets and Sharks – bicker over a discarded sandwich. A lone sparrow pops up to the fringe of the bush and gives an enquiring chirp. Cocking its head, it clearly realises I’m a dead loss and disappears back into the depths.
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