Poor things :-( England must have changed a lot. On the other hand, that's intriguing about their having been rare until the early 19th century, and makes me wonder about the agricultural balance then. I suppose the Industrial Revolution had led to regrowth of woodlands on former pasturage, and that the continuation of coppicing added to this, whereas coppicing almost died out in WW2 ... And I wonder whether the loss of all the "wasteland" I remember from the 1960s, some of which was WW2 bombsites, is a factor. Not quite interested enough to wade through all the footnotes in that link, but sad about the starlings. And the sparrows.

M