House Sparrow

Overview

House Sparrow: Medium-sized, stocky sparrow with black-streaked brown upperparts and pale gray underparts. Wings are brown with single white bar. Cheeks and crown are pale gray, contrasting with black throat, upper breast, and bill. Legs are shorter and black bill is thicker than in native sparrows.

Range and Habitat

House Sparrow: Native to Britain, northern Scandinavia, and northern Siberia to northern Africa, Arabia, India, and Burma. Introduced and established worldwide except in Antarctica; resident throughout temperate North America. Preferred habitats include cities, towns, and agricultural areas.

INTERESTING FACTS

These birds return to their birthplace after every migration (a characteristic known as philopatric). Because of this, local populations have adapted to the color of their habitat resulting in 15 distinct subspecies in the West.
In Japan the sparrow is traditionally a symbol of loyalty, perhaps because of its socialable nature and how it gets along in large numbers.
The Old Testament Bible associates the symbol of the sparrow with loneliness and solitude, while the New Testament views it as a sign of insignificance. Poor House Sparrow.
A group of house sparrows are collectively known as a "blight", "humiliation", and "subdivision" of sparrows.

The House Sparrow is rated as Least Concern. The range of this bird species is around 10 million square kilometers at this time. The population of the House Sparrow is extremely large. It is estimated that the population of this bird in Europe alone could be as large as 270 million individual birds, not including its population in many other parts of the world. The prior rating for this bird species was Lower Risk. Due to the extremely large range and population of this bird species there are no immediate concerns.