SPARROW REHABILITATION REPORT LUCKNOW

The project on Sparrow Rehabiliation was conceived by Sir Arun Krishnamurthy, a passionate environmentalist,  who has been a great source of inspiration for all volunteers. 

The project took place in the grounds of La Martiniere College on the 18th of December, 2011 where volunteers from both La Martiniere Boys’ & Girls’ joined hands to protect the sparrow community. The project work started with the help of sample nests sent by Arun sir from Chennai. He coordinated with the volunteers regarding other requirements that helped our project gain momentum.

The nests that we constructed were made out of scrap wood shafts collected from the school campus.  Narayan Bhaiya  (carpenter at La Martiniere Boys’ ) too, along with the enthusiastic group of boys and girls, had immense fun sawing the wood into the required sizes. The girls especially had a great time drilling holes into the nests, though their slender yet strong hands were vibrating more than the drilling machine itself!

The pieces were then nailed together and the nests were painted in camouflaging green hues to attract birds to habitate in them.

Dr. Denzil John Godin, an ornithologist visited the busy work station and gave valuable insight and information regarding nest building, ornithology[ study of birds], Oology[study of birds’ eggs] and correct usage of binoculars for observing birds. He also showed us his collection of eggs that he has been collecting since his teenage. In his short visit,  Dr. Godin  suggested that we create a group and following his advice,  we created WILD which stands for Working for the Indian Living Diversity and it will work under Arun sir’s group EFI [Environmentalist Foundation of India].

The work resumed after Denzil sir left, with even more zealous and enthusiastic workers.  After constructing a sufficient number of nests, the exhausted group took a refreshing tour round the school and learnt about the rich natural heritage that the campus is so proud of and we are so fond of !!

Various locations have been marked for installing the hand-made nests with the help of Mr. Hamlin and the rest of the WILD group.

The group will meet again in the month of March for giving the final strokes of success to the project.

This report would be selfish without a note of thanksgiving to all the volunteers of this project as well as a few more personalities for their respective contribution in the great work, Miss R. Ali (teacher at La martiniere Girls’ ) for her much needed support,  Mr. A. D. Hamlin (teacher at La martiniere Boys’ ) for his extremely valuable assistance in the group activities, and  though his name has been mentioned so late, Mr. C. A. McFarland (Principal of La martiniere Boys’ ) is the hero without whose support, encouragement and financial assistance, this project could not have existed.

Abhinav Kumar Saxena coordinated the group and its activities, Ayushi Johari designed the logo of the group “WILD” with immense creativity and innovation,  Supriya Swarup gave the group its tag line “Do your bit to nurture the wild, come support WILD”, Radhika Mathur got the “WILD” t-shirts made, Nikhil Keswani , our mechanical engineer (:p), was the expert in machine work, Sagar Kapoor, our official photographer did wonders with his Canon DSLR camera, Hemang Chaturvedi did unbelievable hard work that included monkeying on the trees, Ananya Agarwal donated us wood for the nests, (sparrows should really thank him ) ;)

Parnika Madar, Aakarshika P, Devbhuj Bundela, Samarth Gupta, Shadab Hasan, Rupali Dubey, Umang Agnihotri,  Kane A Bennett, Radhika Sharma, Sohail Afzal, Apoorva Singh,  Akshat Kumar, Mohammad Musab, Nikita Nayak, Devika, Deepan Keswani are also righteous of appreciation for their good work.