House sparrow

House sparrows live near people.

They live in cities, towns and farms. You will not find them deep in a forest.

House sparrows live almost wherever people have buildings: city streets, parks, zoos, suburbs and farms, especially around livestock. You won't find them in big forests or wild grasslands, and in deserts or the far north they live only right next to people.

They are native to Europe, much of Asia and North Africa. People brought them to many other places. In North America the first were released in Brooklyn, New York, in 1851, and by 1900 they had spread to the Rocky Mountains.

The IUCN lists a native range spanning Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and much of Asia, and introduced populations across the Americas, southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand and many islands. Audubon describes it as native to Eurasia and northern Africa and, in North America, essentially always found around man-made structures.

The North American population began with a release in Brooklyn in 1851; further introductions in San Francisco and Salt Lake City in the early 1870s aided its spread west, and Cornell reports it is now common across North America except Alaska and the far north of Canada. It is a permanent resident over most of its range.

House sparrows eat seeds and grain.

In cities they also eat crumbs. In summer they catch bugs for their babies.

House sparrows mostly eat grain and seeds, such as corn, oats, wheat and the seeds of weeds and grasses. Around farms they eat spilled livestock feed, and in cities they eat crumbs and dropped food. At bird feeders they like millet, corn and sunflower seeds.

In summer they also eat insects and feed them to their chicks. Sparrows are inventive hunters: they catch insects in the air, follow lawnmowers, visit lights at dusk and even pick insects off the fronts of parked cars.

The diet is mainly grain and seeds, from corn, oats, wheat and sorghum to ragweed, crabgrass and buckwheat, plus livestock feed and, in cities, discarded food. Nestlings are fed insects, which adults catch in flight, by pouncing, by following lawnmowers or at lights at dusk.

Audubon notes that house sparrows may take smashed insects from the fronts of parked cars and search bark for insects, and Cornell reports them stealing food from American robins and piercing flowers to drain the nectar.

House sparrows love company.

They hop around in noisy groups. They chirp 'cheep cheep' again and again.

House sparrows are sociable. They feed in crowded flocks, squabble over crumbs and bathe together in puddles. Their song is simple: a loud 'cheep' repeated over and over.

To court a female, a male puffs out his chest, droops his wings, raises his tail and hops stiffly in front of her, bowing. Other males sometimes join in! Sparrows also fiercely defend their nest holes, and in North America they sometimes push out native birds such as bluebirds and tree swallows.

Close social living has produced a rich set of dominance and submission signals: nervous birds flick their tails, while aggressive birds crouch, thrust the head forward, partly spread and roll the wings and raise the tail, escalating to lifted wings, raised crown and throat feathers and an open bill.

Courting males fluff the chest, half-open the wings, fan the tail and hop stiffly before the female, and other males may join the display. Nest-hole defense is aggressive: an 1889 report described attacks on 70 bird species, and in North America sparrows evict eastern bluebirds, purple martins and tree swallows.

There are still lots of house sparrows.

But in some places there are far fewer than before. Bird counts show the drop.

House sparrows are still very common worldwide, and the IUCN Red List rates them Least Concern. Partners in Flight estimates about 740 million breeding birds.

But in many places they are vanishing. In North America their numbers fell by nearly 80 percent between 1966 and 2019. In the United Kingdom, where they are on the Red List of birds of conservation concern, almost 30 million have disappeared since 1970.

The global assessment (IUCN, 2016) lists Passer domesticus as Least Concern, and Partners in Flight (2020) estimates a global breeding population of about 740 million. Yet the North American Breeding Bird Survey records a decline of about 3 percent a year, nearly 80 percent in total, from 1966 to 2019; Cornell notes that sparrows colonized farmyards in the twentieth century and now seem to be declining with the industrialization of farms.

In the UK, the RSPB reports a fall of 71 percent between 1977 and 2008, addition to the Red List in 2002 and continued declines in England, although Breeding Bird Survey data show recent increases in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.