Talk:House Sparrow

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To-do list for House Sparrow:	edit · history · watch · refresh
Lead is too long - make sections

Contents 1 endangered species 2 Photo 3 House Sparrows in the USA 4 North American House Sparrows 4.1 == 5 See also? 6 Content removed from article 6.1 Sparrows in literature 7 Sparrows as food

[edit] endangered species

Does this species really warrant being in the category Endangered Species? You'd be hard pressed to find many species that aren't endangered somewhere in the world. Shouldn't the category endangered species be for ones listed as endangered of extinction as a species, rather than a county/state/country? Sabine's Sunbird 01:29, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Agreed; it isn't globally endangered. I've removed the Category:Endangered. - MPF 23:02, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is just me, but I don't think it should even be listed as Lower Risk, my reason being that the article says that there are over 400 million of these birds in the U.S. That's nearly two birds for every single person in the country. - Draconiator 11:39PM, 1 Jan 2006 (EST)

Numbers have plummeted in eastern Australia too it seems. There is a theory going around that this cause by benzine (a carcinogen) which is high in our unleaded petrol exhausts and the birds have developed cancers. Mind you numbers of other birds espeically smaller ones have plummeted too whereas larger birds like Sulphur-crested Cockatoos seem to be thriving. 58.107.76.139 13:22, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The unleaded petrol theory seems unlikely as one would expect drops in its population everywhere that has introduced unleaded petrol, yet the areas of decline don't seem to follow this pattern. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.146.46.247 (talk) 16:32, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

On a recent visit to the UK It seemed to me that house sparrow numbers have recovered substantially. Three years earlier they were almost totally absent from the area I was staying (London SE20), but this year they seem plentiful. They also seem to be more slender than they were. This enables them to feed from bird feeders which were originally designed to exclude sparrows. Here in Australia they seem much larger than their UK counterparts despite food shortages caused by prolonged drought.Bebofpenge (talk) 02:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Photo

Can anybody confirm if the following is a young/female House Sparrow? I'm willing to license it under cc-by-sa if Wikipedia wants it. http://www.steinsky.me.uk/Image:bird_02.jpg Joe D (t) 02:21, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

It's an immature European Robin, beginning to moult into adult plumage, so it's lost much of the underpart spotting, and a trace of red is just apparent at the top of the breast. The spotted upperparts and insectivore's bill rule out juvenile House Sparrow, which has a much thicker bill, and usually shows a pale supercilium. A nice photo, and a typical Robin exposed perch.

The article currently only has adult Robins, so this would be a useful addition

jimfbleak 08:07, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] House Sparrows in the USA

I query the inclusion of this section. Are we to have House Sparrows in France, House Sparrows in Azerbaijan, House Sparrows in Slovakia. It seems more than a little USA-centric to have section for a country where the sparrow is an introduced species jimfbleak 17:11, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Would turning it into a section on North America in general fix the problem? Joe D (t) 17:22, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I could live with that, better than as is at present. jimfbleak 20:02, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I couuld provide a sh*tload of material on the sparrow in Australia. Is this of interest.58.107.76.139 13:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please do. Drayke 08:20, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] North American House Sparrows

Under climatic pressures etc, the House Sparrow in North America is developing intersting adaptive forms .... and anyway, they are so well established by now that they area antaive species, albeit one of recent arrival. Interesting topic to keep an eye on.

[edit] ==

Hi, About the "shortest incubation period record". House sparrows are comparable to other passerines in this respect, and theirs is not the shortest incubation period. According to a 2004 publication, equally short incubation periods (10 days) have been recorded for Carduelis flammea (common redpoll), Plectrophenax nivalis (snow bunting) and Calcarius lapponicus (lapland longspur), as well as a shorter period for Quelea quelea (red-billed quelea) at 9.6 days. The article reports an 8-day-record for the sparrow-larks of genus Eremopterix, from subtropical Africa. Source: Lloyd P. 2004. Eight- to ten-day incubation and nestling periods among Eremopterix sparrow-larks. Ibis 146: 347–350.

C. Morgan (10 May 2006)

[edit] See also?

Great sparrow campaign --rmo13 01:20, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Content removed from article

[edit] Sparrows in literature

The Roman poet Catullus addresses one of his odes to his lover Lesbia's pet sparrow (‘Passer, deliciae meae puellae...’), and writes an elegy on its death (‘Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque...’). The sparrow's playful erotic intimacy with its mistress ('To whose seeking she often gives her first finger/And provokes sharp pecks') makes the poet envious. At the climax of its elegy he reproaches it for dying, and distressing her ('Now, by your deeds, my girl's/Little eyes are slightly swollen and red from weeping'). The diminutiveness of the sparrow, and the hugeness and eternity of the afterlife, form a bathos that is typical of the mock elegy form: ‘qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum/illuc unde negant redire quemquam’ ('He now goes on a journey through that gloomy place,/From where they say no one returns'). Note how the sparrow's hopping is represented metrically. The bird is also alluded to in the line "He who lives by the stick, dies by the stick" in James Wilson's "The Stick Finch".

In Phyllyp Sparowe (pub. c. 1505), by the English poet John Skelton, Jane Scrope's laments for her dead sparrow are mixed with antiphonal Latin liturgy from the Office of the Dead. It belongs to the same tradition as Catullus' poem, or Ovid's lament for a parrot in the Amores, but the erotic element is more direct: 'And on me it wolde lepe/Whan I was aslepe,/And his fethers shake,/Wherewith he wolde make/Me often for to wake/And for to take him in/Upon my naked skyn'.

This is all very interesting, but belongs in a more general article about sparrows. Katr67 05:31, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sparrows as food

I'm not sure which species it is that is consumed, but I'm assuming it's House Sparrow since they are fairly commonplace. This occurs in China and Japan, but I don't want to put anything in the articles without knowing for sure which species it is. Robin Chen 04:49, 4 April 2007 (UTC)