The house sparrow is one of nature's feistiest, most adaptable birds. So why are its numbers starting to decline?
Welcome to this week's edition of Something Wild. I'm Rosemary Conroy for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
If you've been to one of those large home improvement stores lately, you may have noticed a few birds flying around inside. Believe it or not, those birds are quite happy there. And why not? They have free food, A/C, and few predators.
Those clever big box birds tend to be house sparrows, also known as the English sparrow and now one of the most common birds in North America.
While you may be inclined to admire these plucky creatures for their tenacity and adaptability, many bird lovers hate them for the very same reasons.
You see, back in 1850 or so, some well-meaning people imported these sparrows from Europe to help control insect outbreaks in Central Park. From those few birds, 400 million individuals are now found from British Columbia to Panama.
To make it in the Big Apple and beyond, you have to be tough, persistent and kind of pushy. In nature, this often means avian upstarts like house sparrows displace less aggressive species. That's why birders loathe them - they played a big role in the decline of beloved natives like bluebirds and purple martins. In fact, many bluebird aficionados advocate trapping and killing house sparrows to reduce their numbers.
Ironically, in Europe, its population is in serious decline and people are quite upset about it. British birders actually put out mealworms and build special houses for them.
This gave me pause when I began to worry about the house sparrows taking over my bluebird boxes this spring. Then I discovered that the sparrow numbers are starting to decline, albeit slowly, in parts of the U.S. too, including around here.
So should we be happy that this pushy outsider may have finally met its match, although no one really knows why? Or should we be concerned that something as feisty as the house sparrow is suddenly having trouble surviving in our modern world?
Something Wild is a joint production of New Hampshire Audubon, NHPR and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
For Something Wild, I'm Rosemary Conroy.
