Homes for House Sparrows

This National Nestbox Week (14th-21st February), Heath Hands’ volunteers have been focussing on building new homes for a once-ubiquitous garden bird, the house sparrow Passer domesticus.

Known affectionately by Londoners as the Cockney sparrow for its unrelentingly cheerful (or noisy!) disposition and gregarious nature, house sparrows are increasingly rare in the capital, with numbers down by an estimated 71% since 1995, and are ‘red-listed’ as a species of the highest level of conservation concern. 

It's thought that one contributing factor in the decline of this colony nester is a shortage of suitable breeding and nesting sites, which would typically be dense bushes, hedges, creepers and the crevices of buildings.

House Sparrow in the Hive Meadow at Parliament Hill 2024 (c. Adrian Brooker)

Here on Hampstead Heath, we are very fortunate to have a small colony of house sparrows living around the southern edge, close to Heath Hands’ ‘Hive’ building.

Over the past ten years or so, Heath Hands has been working to encourage the birds further onto the Heath by planting a ‘sparrow’ wildflower meadow in partnership with the RSPB to provide food; we have planted over 200 metres of new hedgerows around the Hive building to provide food and shelter; and have built and installed nest-box ‘terraces’ at our building, the Hive (see installation photo below), and at the nearby Savernake footbridge.

Putting up sparrow terrace on The Hive, Parliament Hill.

This year, Heath Hands’ house sparrow project continues with volunteers constructing new sparrow terraces installed at the front of the Hive building, above a section of newly planted hedgerow, which has already seen lots of sparrow activity.

Now is the time when birds are scoping out new nesting sites, so it’s hoped that come April, the new terraces will be occupied and ringing out with the chirruping of a new generation of Cockney sparrow chicks.

If you’d like to help the sparrows of Hampstead Heath, you can adopt a sparrow nest box.

To learn more about the house sparrow, you can read one of our earlier blog posts.

Heath Hands volunteers making sparrow terraces.