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.
Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Because the bird was not counted while it was common, it is hard to say exactly how far its numbers have fallen.
The opening line points to a problem with the facts themselves.
- The writer says “nobody thought to count” the sparrow “while it was everywhere”. This is called “the first difficulty”.
- Without old counts, there are no firm figures to compare today’s numbers with. People could only see that the bird was missing.
- So we can infer that no one can say exactly how far the numbers have fallen.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: Sparrows did well in older houses mainly because the families living there put out grain for them on purpose. — Incorrect. Wrong reason: The passage links old houses to nesting places such as “cracks under the eaves”. The grain it mentions is grain that “spilled” outside a shop, not grain put out on purpose.
Option 3: Villages have kept more sparrows mainly because villagers have put up more nest boxes. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage gives no reason why villages kept more of their flocks. It speaks of nest boxes only in cities.
Option 4: Many sparrows moved out of the cities and settled in villages once city homes changed. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: The passage says the birds became fewer in cities. It never says they flew off to villages.