New Delhi: The house sparrow is still very much a part of Delhi’slandscape.Its numbers might seem on the decline, but findings of ‘Citizen Sparrow’ — a national survey to understand the population dynamics of house sparrows — paint a brighter picture. In Delhi, there were 627 records from people on whether they hadseen a sparrow. While 50% to 60% of the respondents had seen the bird occasionally, 22% had seen them almost all the time in certain localities. Only 17% reported no sightings. Citizen Sparrow shared the distribution trends in Delhi with TOI immediately after they wrapped up the first phase of their study. Nationally, 9975 observations were made from 7966 locations across the country. The sightings were high in tier-2 cities andtownsbut very thin in metros. “It gives us hope that a majority of the respondents in Delhi had seen sparrows even if they spotted them occasionally. Sightings from north and south Delhi were reported very rarely,”said research associate, nature conservation society and co-investigator, Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS),Citizen Sparrow project, Koustubh Sharma. Most sightings were from west Delhi, specially Dwarka and Rohini, but not too many from Mayur Vihar. Lots of people also reported to have seen them regularly in Gurgaon, Greater Noida and trans-Yamuna area. “It’s very interesting that people have hardly reported any sightings from north and south Delhi and very few from central Delhi as well. This can be directly linked to the fact that sparrows don’t like manicured gardens. Usually in south Delhi colonies, gardens are manicured and there is regular spraying of insecticides. Sparrows cannot find soft insects to feed on. There is only one sighting reported from Panchsheel Enclave, which pointstotheskeweddistribution of these birds in Delhi. Also the population has definitely reduced after 1995,” Koustubh added. Strangely not too many sightingswere reportedfrom Old Delhi either. One sighting was reportedfrom Jahanpanah City Forest and one from Timarpur. The reason for a thinning population in OldDelhicouldbethecompetition from pigeons. Since Greater Noida and Gurgaon are newly urbanized areas, they still retain characteristics of the erstwhile agrarian landscape. That may have gotsomething to do with higher sparrow sightings. However, the team will analyse the findings of their survey in the coming months to conclude the reasons behind thinning numbers and patchy distribution. The analytical report will be released next year. Citizen Sparrow is a public participatory project that is run by Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), MOEF and conservation organizations across the country. It was started in April 2012 and was supposed to be run for April and May but the team is continuing to get responses from people. Interestingly, the Delhi government recently declared the house sparrow to bethe ‘statebird’ and a bio-indicator species of the capital.