IT MIGHT not be widely realised that the central area of Heathrow Airport is home to some species of rare birds. These are, in fact, house sparrows.

There has been a small but diminishing population there for many years, safe from the predatory magpies that infest the Heathrow villages and farmland outside the airport.

These sparrows form a small but hardy population that used to live in the bushes surrounding the grass space that is now under the concrete of the bus station.

They even survived Virgin's fairground, when much of that area was churned up by fairground lorries when Virgin got its first Heathrow slots.

Now their habitat is nearly all concrete with, I fully suspect, every effort being made by Spanish-owned BAA to get rid of them, probably due to some health and safety rule(s) about bird droppings.

But realising that sparrows are indeed an endangered species in Middlesex, it can only be hoped that BAA will tolerate their presence. Perhaps it is too much to ask that

BAA puts up some nesting boxes on the outside walls of the bus station?

C J BRADY

Harlington by e-mail