Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The House Sparrow in Gorilla Kingdom

The humble House Sparrow (a bird I might add with buckets of character and is greatly underappreciated) is struggling in London. However a colony of them can be found with three Lowland Gorillas in Regents Park Zoo. Some prisoners at Spring Hill Prison near Aylesbury are making 10 nest boxes for the birds which will be ready in time for Spring.

Jonathan Baillie, head of field conservation at the Zoological Society of London hopes that the new boxes will enocurage the Sparrows to remain and breed in "Gorilla Kingdon".

Apparently Gorillas and Sparrows go back a long way at the zoo. Guy the Gorilla was known for his habit of picking up sparrows, inspecting them and then putting them back down gently.

In the past 25 years the number has crashed by 62 per cent.

3 comments:

Andi Wolfe said...

I wish we could send all of ours back across the pond to you. They've had a huge impact on native species over here.

The Quacks of Life said...

you can have our squirrels!!

I wish man would stop interfering

Robbiegirl said...

Someone should tell the sparrows in my garden that they've had a population crash! Ours have done well this year. It's unusual to look outside and not be able to see maybe 10 of them - over 30 at times.

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