One Question

When we’re all sat around the fire side (!) the boss tells us stories of years gone by, including his memory that there were once sparrows all over London, more common even than pigeons are today. He was banging on about being able to hold out food in your hand and having hundreds of the little fellows flock around you, landing on your hands.

That’s certainly not the case today. In Manchester we’ve kept up a two day vigil and seen a few blue tits, some magpies, and a whole load of club footed pigeons, but not a single sparrow.

Apparently their population has halved since the 70′s, but from our evidence it would seem that the decline is worse than that.

All sorts of factors are blamed, including modern housing being too well sealed to allow them in to nest, cats (always blame the cats we say), disappearing hedgerows, more birds of prey (in Manchester?) and that we don’t put out the right sort of seeds.

Whatever is happening we miss the little brown flecks flitting around and would like to help reverse their decline. We’re going to look for sparrow seed to put on our office window bird feeder.

It takes a long time for a nation to take on a nick name and even longer for it to loose it. We’ll look at Yanks sometime soon, but for now what about the Brits?

Rosbiefs the French often call us, not quite as incisive as Frogs I’d suggest.

And then there was Limeys. I don’t hear it anymore, except it was in a film the other night, an Aussie referring to his British mates as Limeys, so we needed to know why.

Apparently in was originally used for the British navy in the 18th century who were made to eat limes and other citrus fruits to help ward off scurvy. No other navy did this and so the term started way back when. What I’d like to know is whether or not it worked? It should have because the citrus would have helped restore their vitamin deficiency, but if it did then why didn’t the other navies follow suit?

We ought to look at the Aussie’s love of calling us Poms at some stage, though I remember from school days that it’s a hard one to get any consensus on.

Tommy is an interesting one too. Let’s hope we remember to come back to them all.

Sean.