The English Sparrow

By Al Lowe
Contributor

The English Sparrow is also commonly known as the House Sparrow. It is so common that just about everybody will be familiar with it.
The English Sparrow is not a native to this continent, it is from Europe. It was first introduced into New York, Montreal and Quebec about 140 years ago. Its introduction was a very bad mistake.
The male of this species is not too bad looking. He has a black bib, a white patch near his shoulder, and a reddish bit on the nape of his neck. The rest of him is gray or mottled, and he has a white wing bar.
The female is dull mottled brown on top, with a solid dirty gray belly and underparts.
These sparrows nest just about anywhere. In towns and cities, any kind of a ledge will do. So will bird boxes and holes in trees. On the farm, they nest in barns, henhouses, storage sheds, under the eaves and sometimes in heavy vine growth or dense bushes. They are also fond of the nests of swallows or other small birds.
The House Sparrow is certainly responsible for the decline of many of our native birds. It is very pushy and aggressive, and will take over the nests of Bluebirds, Tree Swallows, Cliff and Bank Swallows, and so on and on. Any bird which nests in a cavity is fair game for this pugnacious sparrow.
The major foods of these birds are grain and seeds although they will eat anything if they have to. They are always found at the farm, at the feed store, and along the tracks where carloads of grain move.
Years ago, when I was a boy, most of the delivery, and the heavy work on the farm and in town, was done by horses. The sparrows thrived on the undigested oats which went through the horses. So they could get food, winter and summer, on any streets. The demise of the workhorse at least lowered the sparrow population quite a bit.
The importation of this bird was a huge error. It is a nuisance, it kills other birds and stops them from breeding. It is a noisy pest, and has no nice song at all. It is like an ugly street brawler, with almost no redeeming features. It does sometimes eat some insects, but nowhere near enough to make up for the rest of its behaviour.
The House, or English Sparrow is Passer domesticus. It is the only species of its kind (Old World Sparrows) which lives here in North America. In Canada, it breeds from the Yukon to Newfoundland, and in the U.S., it covers the whole thing.
This is a very good example of the foolishness of taking a species from its own turf to somewhere entirely new. We have many other examples, both in North America and elsewhere. Almost all of these 'transplants' disrupted the native species and upset the ecology.