I quite like House Sparrows, invasive colonizers though they are. They’re friendly: comic relief from a loaded world of human interactions. They come in about fifty shades of brown, the males with rich black bibs.
The other day, while my coworkers talked something out over tacos, a House Sparrow hopped up. I asked if it wanted a little piece of corn chip thrown to it. It said yes, and brought all its friends.
A lot of birders hate them. As birder and activist Trish O’Kane writes, search “house sparrow” online and the first thing you’ll learn is how to kill them, and lots of creative death sentences: Shoot males at nest boxes, trap them and whack them and freeze them and squish them, smash eggs — it’s all legal.
Humans have made House Sparrows the world’s most widespread bird. Europeans brought them here during their own colonization of North America. The birds love agricultural areas, feeders, city-fulls of crumbs, grain picked from horse dung. So they thrived, reaching most parts of the U.S. within 50 years — and ornithologists said they were pushing out native birds.
Although, sparrows didn’t do near as much habitat damage as the humans did!
Unlike bluebirds, Purple Martins, swallows and wrens, House Sparrows stay in the Gorge year-round. Hopeful migrants can return to find nest boxes already full of early-nesting sparrows.
I read of a farmer who loved his Cliff Swallow colony, so he built shelves on his barn for mud nests. Still, the colony stopped growing and filled up with sparrows. He took to knocking the swallow’s mud homes down each winter with a long pole, so sparrows couldn’t squat on swallow property.
Other tips: build species-specific nest boxes and place them properly using guidelines from Cornell University or another reputable source. Install in pairs 10 feet apart, so a pair of House Sparrows include both in their defended territory, leaving one empty for other species. Offer food they don’t enjoy: Striped sunflower, nyger, suet.
Happily, motor cars helped— no grain-filled barns, troughs, and dung-piles to nibble!
Anyway, I still like House Sparrows. The damage they cause isn’t their fault, and they can’t fix it. Humans are the biggest destroyer of habitat, and the only species capable of deliberately replanting, rebuilding and restoring it.
I’d love if we all planted oaks and natives instead of lawn grass and invited wild nature into one vast city ecosystem. We’re not there yet, are we?
In the meantime, on dull concrete and stained bricks, in towns devoid of native plants, we have this one little, resilient, mischievous resident to charm us.
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