House Sparrows and Local Birds

House Sparrows and Local Birds

It is more than 3 years of my casual observation of extinction of house sparrows in Ceylon and visit to Singapore bird’s Park to investigate it.

It is our local farmers and importers of poison in the name of fertilizers that poison the birds and majestic elephants. The poisons get deposited in the ovaries and cause permanent damage.

That is not the point, I am driving at. 

With the recent convincing, majority win, the culture vultures are back in the game displacing our parrots from Gampola Umboluwawa to Thumpane forest reserve. 

In Gampola it is a former PM’s son (who mortally injured opposing supporters in the backdrop of Sidipada forest reserve on the Balangoda side, when I was working in Ratnapura) who is supervising the forest destruction.

The damage these guys done in Ratnapura in the name of gem pits is enormous. 

At Thumpane side I do not know who it is, but I certainly will do not think, the descendants of Chandrasiri but those who did damage to Muslim properties recently, who are active again.

It was a pleasant surprise to see a pair of house sparrows trying to make use of a nest made by bull bul under the roof of our veranda. 

My observation is that helping them to domesticate warrants more danger to their next of kins.

The cats are domestic pests but more successful are the snakes who will spare no bones or eggs.

It is more surprising a pair of Kingfisher is building a nest in the neighborhood on the wall of a slipped earth (mini) mountain.

So my insidious attempts to encourage the bird friendly environment is working at slow pace but not to the level when woodpeckers bored nests on jack trees in the 80s, when I was working in UK.

Under the Ma Ha Ra Ja Regime 8 jack trees were felled in 10 days of my observation and protest in 2005.

Only one, a daughter tree survives.

It is strange coincidence that Ma Ha Ra Ja’s Gola Balayas have to plant jack seeds and wait for them to bear fruits.

I have a few Bonzai Jack plants and one is the sweet Waraka type in our roof top garden with mini fruits pending not in my life time. 

 

Unfortunately, their grandchildren won’t enjoy them since their dream inside the womb is to go to Korea.