Indian house crow and Indian large-billed crow are well known crow species around us. House crow is associated with human habitations and distributed in the Indian subcontinent, Nepal, up to Iran on West Asia. It has been self-introduced to several islands. Whereas large-billed crow appears in and around human habitations and also in forests up to high altitudes including Nilgiris. It is mainly distributed in South Asian countries. Both species have same foraging habitat and show association during forage. The present study is an attempt to understand the roosting behavior and roosting interactions between the house crow and large-billed crow. We have made an observational study on the factors such as arrival to and departure from roosting places, post-arrival disturbances, couple wise roosting, communication between the two bird species during their early roosting attempts, postroosting activeness during various seasons and under varied weather conditions. In our observation, we found that large-billed crows used to arrive earlier to their roosting sites compared to house crow. We even noticed a rare interaction between the two birds belonging to two different species. Both the species showed lunar phase dependent nocturnal activeness at roosting places. Several post-arrival disturbances like sudden-fly before eventide of each species was also noticed.
Background: The House Sparrow (Passer domesticus L.), is a human-commensal bird species, belonging to the order Passeriformes. The rapid changes in our lifestyle resulted in the decrease of this bird population during the past four decades. Among the various causes viz., lack of food resources, pollution pressure, indiscriminate usage of pesticides etc. Habitat loss is found to be one of the main threats for their rapid decline. Installation of artificial nest boxes was found to be the best alternatives for raising the bird population.
Methods: Jangareddigudem of West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, India, was chosen as the study area. The nest boxes were designed by incorporating certain modifications to the basic model specified by British Trust of Ornithology. Installation of the nest boxes was initiated from an area with moderate food resources, located towards south-west edge of the town and was expanded in to other areas in a latitudinal wise towards north and south directions. Data was collected on a regular basis to study the occupancy of the nest boxes by the house sparrows.
Result: The model designed was proved to be protective from predators and also well accepted by the public. Out of 570 nests that were installed in the study area, 550 nests were occupied and being used for breeding, that comes to around 97.6% occupancy indicating the suitability and protectiveness of this model. The sparrow population in the study area has been increased with a count of sparrows from few to 300+ sparrows at each roosting site (two roosting sites) by the end of 2020 by utilizing the nest boxes.
House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) is a bird species connected to humans, widely distributed in most of the human settlements. They build nests in the crevices of our homes. The recent changes in house design minimized the crevices to build the nests and lead to habitat loss. The nest boxes are the alternative ways to re-establish the decreased House Sparrow population. We investigated the usage of nesting materials by House Sparrow with reference to construction of Open nests and Inbox nests in our study area. Because of its flexible attitude, it utilizes all the available materials for nest construction. In our study area at Jangareddigudem, we have examined about 100 Inbox nests and 40 Open nests. There are around 29 varieties of nesting materials used by Sparrows in the examined Inbox nests and around 27 varieties in the Open nests. Dūrvā grass found to be the major component of all the analyzed nesting materials in both Open and Inbox nests that constituted 43% and 36.5% respectively. The other structural materials such as coconut fibre (3.5%) and broom fibre (6%) were found to be more in Inbox nests. Synthetic fibre was more in Open nests (3.7%). We found significant differences between the Open and Inbox nests with respect to quantum of each nesting material type used, weight of the nests and time taken for nest construction by House Sparrow.
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