RSPB Spotlight Sparrows

By Amy-Jane Beer

RSPB Spotlight: Sparrows is packed with eye-catching, informative colour photos, and features succinct, detailed text written by a knowledgeable naturalist.

Sparrows are often considered familiar to the point of invisibility, but the recent steep decline in numbers of both native British species is a reminder that these unassuming chatterboxes deserve a little more attention.

Of all the true sparrow species found worldwide, only two occur in the British Isles. Globally, the story of the House Sparrow is one of dramatic expansion: from humble origins in the Middle East where they spread, along with agriculture, to become the most widely distributed bird on the planet. The smaller, more active Tree Sparrow has also spread extensively, following the domestication of rice rather than wheat, and both species have been heavily persecuted in recent years.

In Spotlight Sparrows, Amy-Jane Beer examines the causes behind the decline of these familiar species, and explores their biology and life cycle, social behaviour, and the significant role that sparrows play in human culture, from Shakespeare and Edith Piaf to Captain Jack Sparrow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jul 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781472955944

Amy-Jane Beer

Dr Amy-Jane Beer is a biologist turned naturalist and writer. She has worked for more than 20 years as a science writer and editor, contributing to more than 40 books on natural history. She is currently a Country Diarist for The Guardian, a columnist for British Wildlife and a feature writer for BBC Wildlife magazine, among others. She campaigns for the equality of access to nature and collaboration between farming and conservation sectors. She sits on the steering group of the environmental arts charity New Networks for Nature and the land rights campaign RightToRoam.org.uk, and is honorary President of the national park society Friends of the Dales. Her book The Flow won the 2023 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.

Book preview

Contents

Meet the Sparrows

Global Citizens

Sparrow Bodies

Daily Dramas

It Takes Two

Circle of Life

Sparrows in Culture

From Persecution to Conservation

Glossary

Further Reading and Resources

Acknowledgements

Image Credits

Meet the Sparrows

A torrent of chirping chatter issuing from a dense hedge is an unmistakable sign of sparrows living close to human settlements, cheekily at ease with artificial structures and facilities. But draw too near and they fall briefly silent before erupting from the vegetation in a blur of whirring wings, up and away towards another favoured hangout where they can resume their rowdy conversation unobserved. So, who are these skittish but irrepressible little scrappers?

House Sparrows are closely associated with people and, in some places, are happy and willing to engage with humans.

A close association

Like mice, sparrows are human commensals – species typically found in association with people, but on their terms, rather than ours. It’s not that sparrows have any fondness for humans (in fact, they have good reason not to), but our settled landscapes, populated not only by people but also by abundant livestock, suit them. In taming wild places by cultivating and rearing domestic animals, and building houses, sheds, barns and storehouses, we have inadvertently created perfect habitats for these little opportunists, and contributed to their extraordinary success. Indeed, such is their reliance on human environments that, in huge parts of their range, sparrows cannot live without us.

Tree Sparrows are smart-looking, sociable birds, with all members of a flock, male and female, looking and sounding much the same.

Seen clearly, House Sparrows are far more splendid than the rather dismissive label ‘little brown job’ suggests. The plumage patterns are most striking in spring.

The cosmopolitan House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) is probably the most familiar bird on the planet after the domestic chicken, and is regarded with a peculiar mixture of affection and animosity. The abundance of this particular species has prompted a significant body of research, but the familiarity of sparrows as a group has earned them a sort of invisibility. For most of recorded history, they have been so common that they scarcely warranted attention beyond largely unsuccessful attempts to exterminate those that took too many liberties with our jealously guarded crops. Indeed, these archetypal ‘little brown jobs’ (as birders like to call the plethora of occasionally hard-to-distinguish species in the order Passeriformes) were so numerous as to be scorned even by naturalists. In his 1896 Dictionary of Birds, Cambridge ornithologist Alfred Newton dismissed the House Sparrow as ‘far too well known to need any description of its appearance or habits’. However, in Britain at least, perceptions of sparrows have begun to change. When their numbers decreased suddenly and dramatically towards the end of the 20th century, we started to miss them, and to wonder what on earth was going on. Twenty years later, we still don’t fully understand the decline, but we are finding new respect and fondness for our two native sparrow species.

The birds next door

The common name ‘sparrow’ comes from the Old English speerwa, which in turn originates in the Aryan verb spar, ‘to flutter’, and perfectly encapsulates the restless movement of a flock – all agitation and energy. The name ‘sparrow’ has been applied to a wide variety of birds, not all of which are closely related, and many of which have since been reclassified, for example as buntings, finches and American sparrows. The species in this book are true sparrows, of the genus Passer. They belong in the family Passeridae, or Old World sparrows, although the range of some now extends into the Americas, Australasia and Micronesia.

In his first attempt at a systematic classification of living things in 1758, the taxonomist Carl Linnaeus named the House Sparrow Fringilla domestica, and grouped it alongside common seed-eating finches such as the Chaffinch (F. coelebs) and Brambling (F. montifringilla). This error was corrected two years later by French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson, who established a new genus and named it Passer, the Latin word for sparrow, which was probably applied to a wide range of little brown birds in Roman times.

Passer is a name that hints at familiarity, and this is the type genus (the archetypal form on which other classifications are based) not only of the family Passeridae, but also of the vast bird order Passeriformes, otherwise known as the perching birds, which includes more than half of all bird species. A heavy burden of representative responsibility rests on those mundanely plumaged shoulders.

In Britain, we have two species of ‘true sparrow’, the House Sparrow and the Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus). These days, both the House Sparrow and Tree Sparrow are well studied, partly on account of their unwelcome abundance in some parts of their range, partly because of concern for their conservation status elsewhere, and partly because they are convenient and accessible models for general ornithological research. I like to think that it is also because they are exceptionally interesting birds.

As a group, the sparrows share several characteristics, including a small size, dowdy plumage and a stout, conical beak ideally suited to crushing seeds, especially those of grasses and cereals. This feeding preference was the trait that first brought the birds into close contact with humankind, as our ancestors began domesticating grain crops and growing them extensively in fields.

A garden fence is a good lookout for a territorial male House Sparrow but also a risky one – Sparrowhawks specialise in swiping birds from exposed perches like this.

At a glance

House Sparrow

Male House Sparrows are grey on the crown and belly, and streaky brown on the back and wings, with a pronounced pale cheek patch and a striking black bib and eye-stripe. Females and young birds are much more uniformly dust brown. The species occupies a vast natural range, extending east from Ireland and the Iberian Peninsula to the Sea of Okhotsk on the eastern edge of Asia. House Sparrows are divided into 11 geographic races, or subspecies, which can be grouped into two main forms, known as the Palaearctic (domesticus) and Oriental (indicus) types. Introduced populations occur extensively in North and South America, South Africa and Australasia.

Note the grey cap and pale cheeks of the male House Sparrow.

The muted plumage of the female House Sparrow provides excellent camouflage.

Tree Sparrow

The Tree Sparrow is the only true sparrow in which the sexes look identical – the females exhibit the same plumage features as the male, including a black bib, streaky back and wings, a rich chocolate cap and nape, and pale cheeks with a dark patch. Juveniles sport a duller version of the adult plumage pattern. The species occurs as six or seven subspecies and is native from Britain to Siberia, with introduced populations in North America, Indonesia, the Philippines, Micronesia and Australia.

Male and female Tree Sparrows are virtually identical, with a gorgeous brown head and a very obvious black cheek patch.

Who’s who?

Within the Old World sparrow family and within the true sparrow genus Passer, the lines between species are sometimes blurred. This is a familiar problem for zoologists. The widely used Biological Species Concept defines a species as ‘a group of organisms that can actually or potentially interbreed to produce fertile, viable offspring, while remaining reproductively isolated from other such groups’. In reality, however, we are often confronted with the inconvenient truth that nature has no respect for formal definitions. Indeed, it would be hard to find a better example of species uncertainty than the true sparrows. Debates continue as to precisely which forms are worthy of full species status, and crosses between various species are well known in areas where ranges overlap (see box here). Given these difficulties, modern definitions of species are often qualified with molecular (mostly DNA) evidence, but this sometimes makes matters more complicated rather than less so. For example, one 1990 study suggested the family Passeridae might be expanded to include accentors, pipits, wagtails, weaverbirds and widowbirds, among others – an uncomfortably varied grouping.

Most experts balance the conflicting evidence with a bit of common sense and go with a grouping that ‘feels right’. On this basis, the passerids currently include the 28 true sparrows (genus Passer), along with 15 or so other Old World species, including the Rock Sparrow (Petronia petronia), the Pale Rockfinch (Carpospiza brachydactyla), the bush sparrows (Gymnoris spp.), the confusingly named snowfinches (Montifringilla spp.) and the Cinnamon Ibon (Hypocryptadius cinnamomeus). The weavers, buntings and finches are regarded as sister groups, and the so-called New World or American sparrows, for many years placed in the bunting family (Emberizidae), now have their own family, the Passerellidae.

House (top) and Tree Sparrows (bottom) as they appeared exactly 100 years ago in Thomas Coward’s book The Birds of the British Isles and their Eggs, illustrated by Archibald Thorburn.

African sparrow cousins include the Parrot-billed Sparrow (Passer gongonensis; top); the Cape Sparrow (Passer melanurus; middle) from South Africa (here, a female); and the Northern Grey-headed Sparrow (Passer griseus; bottom).

Another African species, the Yellow-throated Bush Sparrow (Gymnoris superciliaris; top); a White-winged Snowfinch (Montifringilla nivalis; middle); and a Yellow-throated Sparrow (Gymnoris xanthocollis; bottom), also known as the Chestnut-shouldered Bush Sparrow or Petronia, from southern Asia.

Distant sparrow cousins include buntings, such as the Reed Bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus; top). Finches, such as the Brambling (middle) and Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis; bottom), are no longer considered part of