Greater London residents love nature

Last modified: 25 March 2009

Male house sparrow on guttering — Fast becoming a rare sight in London, the house sparrow.

Image: Steve Round

Greater London's garden birds are doing well, but numbers of house sparrows continue to fall.

The results from January’s Big Garden Birdwatch for Greater London show little movement in the Top Ten most common garden birds. Looking at the long term trends show numbers of house sparrows and starlings are continuing to drop.

In Greater London, the top three birds are: starling, with an average of 2.78 per garden, and they’re found in 48.39 per cent of the gardens surveyed. In second place was the woodpigeon with 2.77 per garden. In third place, 42.94 per cent of the gardens surveyed reported house sparrow sightings, with an average of 2.41 per garden.

RSPB London spokesman Tim Webb said: “Greater London residents have helped make this year’s Big Garden Birdwatch the best ever. The results they send us help tell how the Capital’s environment is faring. It’s OK, but it could be much better, especially for sparrows. We’ve got researchers working on the problem in twenty public spaces across the Capital, but Greater London's gardens and open spaces are part of the answer too. Gardens make up 22.37 per cent of Greater London’s area. Imagine what a difference it could make to wildlife if all that was managed to support wildlife and to ease the impact of climate change. Birds are great indicators of the state of the world around us, so if they’re suffering, we should take notice.”

Homes for Wildlife is the RSPB’s FREE advice service offering ideas and tips on using gardens to support wildlife, and lessen the impact of climate change.

This year saw the thirtieth anniversary of the Big Garden Birdwatch, and across Greater London an additional four thousand people took part to help us towards a UK total of more than half a million participants, making it the world’s biggest bird survey.