Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
Nobody thought to count the house sparrow while it was everywhere, and that is the first difficulty in explaining where it went. Through the 1990s and 2000s, people in many Indian cities noticed that the small brown bird that once hopped across every veranda was now hard to find. Birdwatchers’ records suggest the loss has been sharpest in the big cities, while villages and small towns have kept more of their flocks.
Why it happened is still argued over, and no single cause has been proven. The likely suspects, though, have something in common. An old house, with its tiled roof, wooden beams and cracks under the eaves, offered a sparrow endless places to nest; a block of glass and concrete offers almost none. The parents live largely on seeds, but their chicks need soft insects in their first days, and a neighbourhood of paved yards and clipped lawns of foreign grass breeds few insects. Grain that once spilled outside the corner shop now comes in sealed packets. Hedges and kitchen gardens have given way to parking. Radiation from mobile towers is often blamed too, but that popular claim remains unproven. The sparrow, in a sense, was a casualty of tidiness.
The return, where it is happening, is modest. Every 20 March is now marked as World Sparrow Day, and Delhi has made the house sparrow its state bird. Residents in several cities fix nest boxes under their balconies, and some pairs do move in. Yet a box is only half an answer. The pair inside needs insects for its young close by, so the more practical volunteers now plant native shrubs beside the boxes and leave one corner of the garden untrimmed.
The remark that a nest box ‘is only half an answer’ implies that:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → a place to nest does little for sparrows unless food for their chicks is also close by
The sentence after the remark explains what the other half is.
- A nest box gives a pair somewhere to live. But “the pair inside needs insects for its young close by”.
- Earlier the writer says that chicks “need soft insects in their first days”. Paved yards and clipped lawns breed few of them.
- So a box solves only the shelter problem. Without insects nearby, the pair cannot raise its young. That is why volunteers also plant native shrubs beside the boxes.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 2: nest boxes help sparrows only when they are fixed under balconies rather than elsewhere — Incorrect. Misread: Balconies are just where residents put the boxes. The missing half is food, not the right spot for the box.
Option 3: sparrows usually refuse to nest in boxes that people put up for them — Incorrect. Contradicted: The passage says “some pairs do move in”.
Option 4: planting native shrubs is a better way to help sparrows than putting up nest boxes — Incorrect. Wrong link: The shrubs are planted “beside the boxes”, to go with them. The writer does not rank one above the other.