Coimbatore : If you come across house sparrows somewhere in the busy Coimbatore City and wonder how did the little bird that was once a common dweller come back to the city again, you should probably thank the 46-year-old sparrow conservationist B. Pandiarajan, who has been striving for many years to bring back the chirp of the sparrow in Coimbatore.
Coimbatore : If you come across house sparrows somewhere in the busy Coimbatore City and wonder how did the little bird that was once a common dweller come back to the city again, you should probably thank the 46-year-old sparrow conservationist B. Pandiarajan, who has been striving for many years to bring back the chirp of the sparrow in Coimbatore.
Pandiarajan, who recently received the Kovai Gethu Hero Award 2019 from the hands of Tamil Nadu Governor Panwarilal Purohit, shares with the Simplicity, the driving force behind his passion to conserve the common house sparrow.
“Since my childhood I was always fascinated by the natural world. Be it the little insects or the flying birds or the mammals, nothing seemed to miss a hit in my heart. I started observing everything so closely and was never tired,” he says.
It was this curiosity that brought Pandiarajan close to bird conservation and he was initially dragged into the cause of dying vultures. “When I first entered the conservation arena as an amateur, the destruction of vultures by diclofenac was the talk of the town. Vulture conservation was discussed in detail and it interested me a lot. In my attempt to learn more about it, I landed upon the equally important problem at hand, the disappearance of sparrows from the city,” he adds.
Wanting to do something for the cause of sparrows, Pandiarajan began reading intensively on the topic. Despite being a daily labourer at a private company in Coimbatore, he did not fuss spending time in reading about the basics of sparrows. He was exposed to the idea of setting up boxes, an idea initially introduced in western countries and later taken into India.
“Many people say that sparrows are not in cities because of cell phone towers. This is not true. The reason for the eradication of sparrows from urban areas is not the growth of technology, but the disorganised development that has deleted these birds from our system,” he opines.
He points out the conversion of hut like houses to concrete buildings and change in lifestyle as major reasons. “We have removed plants like lemon, pomegranate and henna plants from our house garden. Sparrows used to nest in these plants and now they do not have space. Overall, we made the cities unliveable for sparrows. Hence, they have migrated in large numbers to cities,” he claims.
The fear of losing the sparrows urged Pandiarajan to propagate the idea of setting sparrow boxes in the cities. Initially, he was setting up cardboard boxes and in 2012, he started an organisation named Sparrow Conservation Foundation, through which he started distributing wooden sparrow boxes.
Boxes were placed in areas including Ukkadam bus stand, Singanallur bus stand, Madukkarai, Sundarapuram, Podanur, Aathupalam, Kuniyamuthur, Vellalore, Kovaipudhur, Chettipalayam, Kurumbapalayam, Ganapathy and Gandhipuram.
His team had numbered the boxes and mapped their locations so as to monitor and study sparrows. Much to his delight, sparrows are using almost all the boxes placed by his team and eggs were also laid. This encouraged Pandiarajan to offer boxes to whoever asks for free of cost. As many as 3000 boxes have been distributed in Coimbatore so far. He also organises awareness camps in schools, colleges and residential areas.
Honouring his efforts, the Times of India daily organised an event, to recognise Pandiarajan. An award was presented in the name, Kovai Gethu Hero, and it was presented to him by the Governor himself in the city.
“The award has given me a lot of encouragement to keep up the work I am doing right now. I dedicate the award to Agri Scientist late Nammazhvar and Economist J.C. Kumarappa,” he says.
Pandiarajan, who recently received the Kovai Gethu Hero Award 2019 from the hands of Tamil Nadu Governor Panwarilal Purohit, shares with the Simplicity, the driving force behind his passion to conserve the common house sparrow.
“Since my childhood I was always fascinated by the natural world. Be it the little insects or the flying birds or the mammals, nothing seemed to miss a hit in my heart. I started observing everything so closely and was never tired,” he says.
It was this curiosity that brought Pandiarajan close to bird conservation and he was initially dragged into the cause of dying vultures. “When I first entered the conservation arena as an amateur, the destruction of vultures by diclofenac was the talk of the town. Vulture conservation was discussed in detail and it interested me a lot. In my attempt to learn more about it, I landed upon the equally important problem at hand, the disappearance of sparrows from the city,” he adds.
Wanting to do something for the cause of sparrows, Pandiarajan began reading intensively on the topic. Despite being a daily labourer at a private company in Coimbatore, he did not fuss spending time in reading about the basics of sparrows. He was exposed to the idea of setting up boxes, an idea initially introduced in western countries and later taken into India.
“Many people say that sparrows are not in cities because of cell phone towers. This is not true. The reason for the eradication of sparrows from urban areas is not the growth of technology, but the disorganised development that has deleted these birds from our system,” he opines.
He points out the conversion of hut like houses to concrete buildings and change in lifestyle as major reasons. “We have removed plants like lemon, pomegranate and henna plants from our house garden. Sparrows used to nest in these plants and now they do not have space. Overall, we made the cities unliveable for sparrows. Hence, they have migrated in large numbers to cities,” he claims.
The fear of losing the sparrows urged Pandiarajan to propagate the idea of setting sparrow boxes in the cities. Initially, he was setting up cardboard boxes and in 2012, he started an organisation named Sparrow Conservation Foundation, through which he started distributing wooden sparrow boxes.
Boxes were placed in areas including Ukkadam bus stand, Singanallur bus stand, Madukkarai, Sundarapuram, Podanur, Aathupalam, Kuniyamuthur, Vellalore, Kovaipudhur, Chettipalayam, Kurumbapalayam, Ganapathy and Gandhipuram.
His team had numbered the boxes and mapped their locations so as to monitor and study sparrows. Much to his delight, sparrows are using almost all the boxes placed by his team and eggs were also laid. This encouraged Pandiarajan to offer boxes to whoever asks for free of cost. As many as 3000 boxes have been distributed in Coimbatore so far. He also organises awareness camps in schools, colleges and residential areas.
Honouring his efforts, the Times of India daily organised an event, to recognise Pandiarajan. An award was presented in the name, Kovai Gethu Hero, and it was presented to him by the Governor himself in the city.
“The award has given me a lot of encouragement to keep up the work I am doing right now. I dedicate the award to Agri Scientist late Nammazhvar and Economist J.C. Kumarappa,” he says.