The sparrows of Salamanca Square have met their match – an eagle-eyed magpie who stands guard at the electric doors of Banjo’s.
Over the years I have enjoyed the antics of the cheeky and smart sparrows who always seem to find their way into the bakery despite the efforts of staff to keep them out on the pavement.
‘The sparrows have enjoyed rich pickings of pastry and crumbs inside Banjo’s, timing their assault at the precise moment customers trigger the sliding doors.
But the sparrows have now been thwarted by the equally street-wise Banjo’s staff who have placed a life-size, remarkably authentic art work of a magpie just inside the doors. Sparrows are wary of the powerful beak of the magpie – as are posties during the magpie breeding seasons – and this appears to have done the trick.
Munching on an apple scroll the other day, I looked for the sparrows, as I always do – without at first realising the reason for their absence – and immediately feared the worst. Australia’s sparrows were struck down by a mystery virus a few years back which decimated numbers in Hobart. At the time there were fears the virus might affect other birds but luckily it did not spread beyond the sparrow population. The sparrows soon bounced back after the virus had passed.
I first observed the sparrow trick of outsmarting electric doors at a McDonald’s outlet in central Melbourne a few years back. Returning to Hobart I was pleased to see that our intelligent sparrows had worked out the same strategy.
When I first caught sight of the magpie sculpture and its obvious impact on the sparrow psyche, I thought it might be a coincidence; a piece of decorative Tasmaniana to enhance the historic sandstone structure of the Banjo’s outlet. But a staff member soon confirmed the magpie was in fact providing in-house security against the sparrow scourge. And with a grin, he pointed a plastic owl placed above the electric doors, which had the same outcome.
The European house sparrow (Passer Domesticus) has a long association with humans, dating back thousands of years when the people of the Mediterranean region moved from a hunter-gatherer existence to farming.
The sparrow, a member of the sparrow-weaver family of Africa, followed the first farmers out of the Middle East as they spread across Europe. Then the sparrows were spread across the world by colonial settlers wanting a piece of the old country in new lands.
Sparrows in Europe are inexorably linked with cities. In Paris the French singer Edith Piaf was dubbed the “little sparrow” and the species carries the name “cockney sparrow” in London.
Hearing sparrows’ excited chirping, I’m always transported back to the cockney London of my birth. Now I have “sparras” in Hobart running up against the ”minder”. It could be straight out of the British TV crime show, The Sweeney.