Understanding the House Sparrow’s Return to Delhi: Conservation Efforts and Ongoing Challenges

The conservation organisation has also grown native grasses like jowar, bajra and munj as well as shrubs like jungli karonda and others that grow small wild berries for the sparrows to feed on. “A lot of locals have taken up the project, basically adopting the area. Earlier there were no sparrows, but now there are a lot of them. There hasn’t been any formal counting so far. 

“It is a pilot project for now. If it does well, we will be replicating it in other forest areas,” Madan said. Similar initiatives by people have also started bearing fruit. Nearly eight months after she installed a feeder and a nest box in the balcony of her New Friends Colony house, Nin Taneja was visited by a house sparrow. “It is a long process and there is no looking back. It requires a lot of patience and dedication.

“But once they start coming in, it is a joy to see them,” said the bird enthusiast-cum-painter. “I organise art classes and I meet children who have never seen sparrows. So they become aware of this important part of our ecosystem through my artworks,” she said.

Sparrows, which frequently feature in Taneja’s paintings, are now also frequent visitors to her residential colony in south Delhi, inspiring others to install feeders and nest boxes in their balconies.