April 2nd 2010

We have been having common house sparrows nest in our home, ever since we moved in 2 years ago. We are not, what you would call “sparrow activists”. We just don’t mind them having a home in our home. They nest in our bedroom ventilator and our living room ventilator. They dirty the house during their mating season and their kids are all over our house 2-3 months later. Its natural to have dried grass, broken eggs, sparrow droppings and adventurous infant sparrows decorate our floor during the nesting season. This is the first mating season of this year and we had the first sparrow baby of the year drop down this weekend. As we do each time, we promptly put the baby sparrow back in its nest. We came back in the evening and my foot brushed against something soft lying on the ground and there she was again. We fed her some water and food and put her back. But this little sparrow seemed to have a death wish. She has come out of her nest and dropped into our bedroom more than six times now. And every time she lands on the marble floor, she is unable to keep her balance. In the normal course, sparrows land on the marble flooring, slip and propel themselves up with their wings. This little girl is not able to do that. We find her on her back, with her legs in the air, struggling to right herself. When this happened more times than it has with other babies, we decided to examine her and found that she did not have any wings. There was a small stub on one side instead of a wing and on the other, there isn’t even that. She is almost as big as her mom and ready to move out of her nest, which is why she is so tenacious in jumping out. She leaps high and wide and lands on her head everytime –but just doesn’t give up. She is a fighter.


I have been encountering birds and squirrels since childhood, but have never come across any baby that didn’t have fully formed limbs. Our house is very close to not one, but two mobile telephone towers. We have read about sparrow eggs being threatened due to mobile phone tower radiation. Could our little baby sparrow be a victim of it too?