The great Indian bird: Agra's conservation efforts pay off as sparrow population rebounds

Siraj Qureshi

UPDATED 19:30 IST

There was a time when the sparrow's chirps were the first sound anyone heard waking up in the morning in Indian households. Whether villages or the urban cities, the sparrow was omnipresent, with their nests jammed in any nook and cranny of the house they could find.

But over the past decade, the number of sparrows in the cities has been dwindling to an extent that sparrow sightings have become rare events in the cities these days. However, the villages are still faring much better in this respect, with sparrows still nesting in huge numbers in the region around the Chambal river which passes through UP, MP, and Rajasthan.

Continued  

Parrot rats on killer, murder solved

Thursday, 27 February 2014 - 6:00am IST | Place: Lucknow | Agency: DNA
Deepak Gidwani

Singing like a bird took on a different meaning and turned two killers into jailbirds when a pet talking-parrot in Agra helped the police "identify" a murderer. The bird proved worthy of its name, Heera (diamond), and the UP Police commended it, saying the parrot helped them crack the murder case.

Neelam Sharma, wife of Vijay Sharma, editor of a local Hindi newspaper, was found murdered at her home in Balkeshwar locality of Agra on February 20. She was alone at home as Vijay and their children had gone for a wedding to neighbouring Firozabad. Vijay returned to find his wife and their pet dog Tuffy stabbed to death while cash, jewellery and other valuables were missing from the house. The police investigations ran into a blind alley as there were no suspects or evidence to nail the killers.

Initially, a milk-seller who had mediated a land deal between Vijay and a buyer was interrogated, but it provided no clue about the crime. The family members, however, got suspicious after noticing a change in the behaviour of their pet parrot. "Heera sulked whenever Ashutosh (Vijay's nephew) came home or passed by its cage," said Vijay's brother Ajay Sharma. "The parrot would also start behaving strangely whenever somebody took Ashutosh's name," he added.

Read on