March 20 is World Sparrow Day. Here are some ideas to help you do your bit for the little bird.

This little brown, grey and black bird is sufferring from a near global decline and needs human help to prosper once again.

 World Sparrow Day on 20th March is everyone’s chance to rise to the challenge of saving them. Known colloquially as the Cockney sparrow, the house sparrow was once the UK Capital’s  most common bird, but it has seen a dramatic drop in numbers with more than two thirds of the species vanishing. Londoners are being urged to join the global day of action.

 Although there are twenty-six distinct species of sparrow, it’s the European house sparrow that colonised the world as global trade spread. They’re now found on almost every continent.

 This year, for World Sparrow Day, people are being urged to help highlight the plight of the house sparrow. More importantly, we want you to share details via a dedicated website, adding photos, stories and ideas to inspire others and show the breadth of effort underway to help sparrows survive.

Scientists first started to notice a decline in the number of the house sparrow in the 1990s. Over the last few years several campaigns, outreach and awareness programmes, research surveys have been carried out to understand the decline of a species that had learned to exist in and around human habitations and was found in huge numbers in urban areas.

 World wide, countries have participated in various activities to celebrate the World House Sparrow Day. Citizen Sparrow is an ongoing citizen science project in India in which members of the public are encouraged to contribute information on presence and absence of the house sparrow from different locations and for different time periods. This information is to be uploaded on their website (www.citizensparrow.in/). All the observational records are plotted on a map. This can be done by an individual or a school group or an NGO and even corporate companies as a part of their corporate social responsibility.