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Iliyas Bepari doing his bit to save city’s disappearing sparrows

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BELGAUM: Since the past 5 years Iliyas Bepari, on Havelock road Camp has enjoyed feeding sparrows next to his shop. Hoping to help conserve the depleting sparrow population to some extent, now about 200 odd sparrows flock the small tree and wait Iliyas to throw the feed which includes rice and also special cashew powder brought from Goa.

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Iliyas Bepari in Camp Belgaum feeding the sparrows

 

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Cashew nut powder the favorite of the Sparrows

Sparrows have been dwindling mainly due to lack of food and nesting sites. Modern buildings do not provide crevices and nooks for the sparrow to nest. Here even a couple of nests were built.

Bepari told AAB that he started to feed these birds about 5 years ago, and now its a passion and also a need. When he began hardly 5-10 sparrows were seen but now the number goes in hundreds.

The first thing Bepari does after opens his shop in the morning, is feeding the sparrows. The timings for him to feed to the sparrows are – 8 am, 11 am, 2 pm and 5 pm. He has also arranged drinking water facility for them in form of small tub.sparrow3

The sparrows are so used to Iliyas that they flock together when he whistles which is a sign that their food is coming.

Iliyas is happy feeding these little ones and he is doing his bit to save these sparrows.  

13 thoughts on “Iliyas Bepari doing his bit to save city’s disappearing sparrows”

  1. Hats off to Mr. Illyas. I am a sparrow lover myself. This story took me down the memory lane to my school days in Gadag. Two pairs of sparrows used to stay along with us, inside our house. Me and my brother had made small box homes for them and tied in the corners along the ceilings in two different rooms. Basically we had provided shelter for the two pairs. Most of the time they were finding their food but occasionally we fed them also. Everyday morning they used to fly out and return in the evening, spend the night and then again fly out in the morning. Virtually they used to sleep and get up with us. Though my mother used to shout at us as these sparrows would make a mess while building the nests within those boxes from the twigs, grass, etc they used to get from outside. But we were relentless and used to take the scoldings, but never allowed her to remove these boxes. Many a times we have seen the little off springs take their wings and fly away. It used to give us immense pleasure and satisfaction for having provided them atleast something.

    I would like to share a very hilarious and emotional episode of one of the pair. I should tell you, the female sparrows are very possessive of their male partners. One night, the male sparrow had brought along with it another female sparrow. When the female sparrow of the house saw the other female, it immediately became aggressive and literally pounced on the new entrant and engaged into a fight. A fight to retain its love. Both the females were flying around the whole room fighting. This went on for quite some time till one of the female (I assume it was the mistress) flew out of the house. And the funny part was, during the whole episode, the male sparrow was sitting in one corner witnessing the fight. Witnessing such passionate moment, we could not control our laughs at the male sparrow which had committed this crime and also appreciated the emotional attachments the female sparrow had.

    Unfortunately, now am not in India, and there are no sparrows around our building, but would like to continue my association with these little angels, once I relocate myself back to India in the future. Until then, I would like to take inspiration from such great souls. Thanks Mr. Illyas. Keep it going. Hope during my visit to India next time, I make it a point to meet him.

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  2. Great job Ilyas Bhai, in today’s world very few people think of animals and birds. Hats off brother keep it up

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  3. Very Good Initiative, Keep it up Bro.
    If we individually spare atleast 10-15 min daily for such good deeds in conservation our NATURE, then definitely there will be a big difference in our Environment.

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