A small, brown and grey, ground-feeding bird (Passer domesticus), native to Europe, Asia, and N Africa, and introduced worldwide; usually near habitation; eats almost anything; nests in holes; also known as the English sparrow. (Family: Ploceidae.)
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Least concern (LC) |
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Passer domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758) |
The House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) is a member of the Old World sparrow family Passeridae.
Wherever people build, House Sparrows sooner or later come to share their abodes.
The 14 to 16 centimetre long House Sparrow is abundant but not universally common;
The male House Sparrow has a grey crown, cheeks and underparts, black on the throat, upper breast and between the bill and eyes.
So familiar a bird should need little description, yet it is often confused with the smaller and slimmer Tree Sparrow, which, however, has a chestnut and not grey crown, two distinct wing bars, and a black patch on the cheeks.
The House Sparrow is gregarious at all seasons in its nesting colonies, when feeding and in communal roosts.
The short and incessant chirp needs no description, and its double call note phillip which originated the now obsolete popular name of "Phillip Sparrow", is as familiar.
Nesting
The nesting site is varied;
The House Sparrow is quite aggressive in usurping the nesting sites of other birds, often forcibly evicting the previous occupants, and sometimes even building a new nest directly on top of another active nest with live nestlings. The House Sparrow has the shortest incubation period of all the birds: 10-12 days and a female can lay 25 eggs a summer in New England.
House Sparrows in Europe
In large parts of Europe, populations of House Sparrows are decreasing.
Various causes for its dramatic decrease in population have been proposed:
More and more houses were built without roof tiles, or the construction of the roofs was so well done, that the sparrows did not have space left for building their nests;House Sparrows in North America
While declining somewhat in their adopted homeland, house sparrows are still possibly the most abundant bird in the United States, with a population estimated as high as 400 million.
In the United States, the House Sparrow is one of three birds not protected by law (the others are the European Starling and Rock Pigeon, also introduced species). House Sparrows sometimes kill adult Bluebirds and other native cavity nesters and their young and smash their eggs. The House Sparrow is partially responsible for the near extinction of Bluebirds in the United States.
House Sparrows often take over unmonitored nest boxes and Purple Martin houses in the United States. European Starlings are aggressive enough to take nests from House Sparrows in the United States if the entrance hole is big enough for them to fit through.
Photo gallery
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Male House Sparrows |
Female House Sparrow |
House Sparrow chick |
Sparrows in literature
The Roman poet Catullus addresses one of his odes to his lover Lesbia's pet sparrow (‘Passer, deliciae meae puellae...’), and writes an elegy on its death (‘Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque...’).
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