Bringing Back The Tree Sparrow

The story of how one man helped establish a Tree Sparrow colony around his Suffolk home.

- David Tomlinson

WHEN I MOVED to rural Suffolk from Kent in 2004, I was expecting to see a markedly different variety of birds in my garden: I wasn’t disappointed. I missed the Nuthatches – no Beech trees nearby – but was delighted with the Yellowhammers. I was thrilled when courting Grey Partridges appeared in February, while, in the spring, Sky Larks sang all day from dawn to dusk.

However, one bird was missing and that was the humble sparrow. I’d lived with House Sparrows all my life, so I missed their cheerful presence.

Curiously, I discovered that all the neighbouring villages have strong House Sparrow populations but the nearest was more than a mile away, while few birds are as sedentary as Passer domesticus.

I had been living in Suffolk for exactly a year and a week before the very first sparrow appeared in the garden, on 20 October, 2005. Much to my surprise it wasn’t a House Sparrow, but a Tree Sparrow; it was on a feeder filled with husk-free black sunflowers.

It stayed for 10 minutes, allowing me to grab my camera and get two pleasing shots before it flew away, never to be seen again. There were no more sparrow sightings of any sort until 2008. The next bird was seen on 5 October, and once again was never seen again.

So, after four years in Suffolk, I had only recorded these elusive sparrows twice, and they seemed destined to be nothing other than rare visitors to the garden.

Intrigued to find out more, I delved into the county avifaunas. Claud Ticehurst writes at length about the bird in his History of the Birds of Suffolk, published in 1932.