House Sparrow

The house sparrow originated in the Middle East and spread, along with agriculture, to most of Eurasia and parts of North Africa. Since the mid-19th century, it has reached most of the world, chiefly due to deliberate introductions, but also through natural and shipborne dispersal. Its introduced range encompasses most of North America (including Bermuda), Central America, southern South America, southern Africa, part of West Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and islands throughout the world. It has greatly extended its range in northern Eurasia since the 1850s, and continues to do so, as was shown by its colonisation around 1990 of Iceland and Rishiri Island, Japan. The extent of its range makes it the most widely distributed wild bird on the planet.

Introduction. The house sparrow has become highly successful in most parts of the world where it has been introduced. This is mostly due to its early adaptation to living with humans, and its adaptability to a wide range of conditions. Other factors may include its ability to suppress costly inflammatory and behavioural responses to immune challenges in its non-native range, compared to less-successful invaders like the Eurasian tree sparrow. Where introduced, it can extend its range quickly, sometimes at a rate over 230 km (140 mi) per year. …

The house sparrow is a very social bird. It is gregarious during all seasons when feeding, often forming flocks with other species of birds. It roosts communally while breeding nests are usually grouped together in clumps. House sparrows also engage in social activities such as dust or water bathing and "social singing", in which birds call together in bushes. The house sparrow feeds mostly on the ground, but it flocks in trees and bushes. At feeding stations and nests, female house sparrows are dominant despite their smaller size, and they can fight over males in the breeding season. House sparrows also have strong social learning ability, for example about novel objects in their environments. Typically, house sparrows show a lot of variation in their responses to novel objects, foods, and environments, where some individual birds are willing to approach and explore novel items, whereas others stay away, a behaviour known as "neophobia." Captive house sparrows learned about novel objects near their food dish (and changed their behaviour towards novel objects) both from observing another individual and from hearing recorded sparrow calls.

To many people across the world, the house sparrow is the most familiar wild animal and, because of its association with humans and familiarity, it is frequently used to represent the common and vulgar, or the lewd. One of the reasons for the introduction of house sparrows throughout the world was their association with the European homeland of many immigrants. Birds usually described later as sparrows are referred to in many works of ancient literature and religious texts in Europe and western Asia. These references may not always refer specifically to the house sparrow, or even to small, seed-eating birds, but later writers who were inspired by these texts often had the house sparrow in mind. In particular, sparrows were associated by the ancient Greeks with Aphrodite, the goddess of love, due to their perceived lustfulness, an association echoed by later writers such as Chaucer and Shakespeare. Jesus's use of "sparrows" as an example of divine providence in the Gospel of Matthew also inspired later references, such as that in Shakespeare's Hamlet and the hymn His Eye Is on the Sparrow.