House Sparrow (Passer domesticus): Facts, Diet and Habitat

What does a house sparrow look like?

The house sparrow is a compact bird with a round head, a full chest, a short tail and a thick, cone-shaped bill built for cracking seeds. Males and females look clearly different, which is unusual among sparrows.

The male has a gray crown, chestnut-brown sides to the head, white or pale gray cheeks and a black patch on the throat and upper chest called the bib or badge. His back is warm brown streaked with black, his underparts are pale gray, and he shows a short white bar on each wing. In fresh fall plumage the bright markings are partly hidden by pale feather tips, which wear off by spring to reveal the full breeding colors. The bill turns black in the breeding season.

The female is plain buff-brown with darker streaks on the back, pale gray-brown underparts and a distinct pale stripe above and behind the eye. She has no bib and no gray crown. Young birds look like females but are scruffier, with a paler, yellowish bill.

Size of the bib varies between males and increases with age. It has been studied intensely as a possible signal of status, but research has shown only that older males tend to have larger bibs.

How big is a house sparrow?

House sparrows are slightly larger and stockier than a European robin or an American goldfinch, with a broad head and thick bill.

Birds from colder, more northern areas are larger on average than those from warm regions, a pattern known as Bergmann’s rule. In North America, sparrows have become measurably larger in the north and paler in dry western areas since their introduction in the 1850s.

Where do house sparrows live?

The house sparrow is thought to have originated in the Middle East and to have spread across Europe and Asia alongside early farming, perhaps 10,000 years ago, feeding on grain around settlements. Today it lives from Ireland and Scandinavia east to Siberia, south through North Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. In most of eastern Asia it is replaced by its close relative, the Eurasian tree sparrow.

From the mid-19th century people carried it around the world. It was released in Brooklyn, New York, in the early 1850s (see how house sparrows got to America), in New Zealand from 1859, in Melbourne, Australia, in 1863, near Buenos Aires around 1870 and in southern Africa around 1900. It now occurs from northern Canada to Panama, across most of southern South America, in eastern Australia and on many islands.

House sparrows depend closely on people. They live in cities, towns, villages, farms and suburbs, and have even nested in factories and warehouses. They avoid dense forest, open tundra and deserts far from human settlement.

What do house sparrows eat?

House sparrows are omnivores with a strong preference for seeds. Studies in farmland have found seeds make up about 90% of the adult diet, especially cereal grains such as wheat, oats and maize, as well as the seeds of grasses and weeds. They also eat buds, berries, fruit and, in towns, bread and scraps from cafés and garbage.

Insects are essential for chicks. For their first two weeks, nestlings are fed mainly on caterpillars, beetles, aphids, grasshoppers, crickets and spiders. A shortage of these insects in towns and suburbs is one of the leading explanations for the species’ recent decline (see why house sparrows are declining).

Sparrows feed mostly on the ground, hopping rather than walking, and they swallow small grit to help grind seeds in the gizzard. They are famously resourceful: individual birds have learned to open automatic doors to enter supermarkets and to raid food at outdoor tables.

Behavior and social life

House sparrows are highly social. They feed in flocks, roost together in dense shrubs and ivy, and nest in loose colonies. Before settling at night and again at dawn, a roost fills with loud, communal chirping. At feeders and nest sites, females are often dominant over males despite being slightly smaller.

Their best-known sound is a simple, repeated chirp, written as chirrup or philip. Males call constantly beside their nest holes in spring to claim them and attract a mate.

House sparrows keep their feathers in shape by bathing in water and in dry soil, often in groups, scraping small hollows in garden beds and paths (see why sparrows take dust baths). Most house sparrows are sedentary and rarely move more than a few kilometers in their lives.

Nesting and reproduction

House sparrows prefer to nest in holes and crevices: under roof tiles, in eaves, gaps in walls, nest boxes, ivy and old swallow or woodpecker holes. In warm areas they also build untidy domed nests in trees. The nest is a bulky ball of straw and grass lined with feathers, paper and other soft material. The male starts building, and pairs usually stay together for life, although about 15% of chicks are fathered by a male other than the mother’s partner.

A clutch usually has 4 or 5 eggs, white to bluish with brown or gray spots. Incubation takes 11–14 days, mainly by the female, and the chicks leave the nest after about 14–16 days. Pairs raise two or three broods a year in temperate regions, sometimes four, and more in the tropics.

House sparrow look-alikes and relatives

The house sparrow belongs to the Old World sparrow family, Passeridae, and the genus Passer, which has about 25 species in Europe, Africa and Asia. Despite the shared name, it is not closely related to the native sparrows of the Americas, such as the song sparrow and white-throated sparrow, which belong to a separate family, Passerellidae.

Its closest look-alikes are other Passer sparrows:

• Eurasian tree sparrow: slightly smaller and neater, with an all-chestnut crown and a black spot on each white cheek. Males and females look the same. It is common in eastern Asia and is also established in a small area around St. Louis, Missouri.
• Spanish sparrow: males have a chestnut crown and heavy black streaks on the chest and flanks. It lives around the Mediterranean and into Central Asia.
• Italian sparrow: males have a chestnut crown and white cheeks. It is the breeding sparrow of most of Italy and is thought to have arisen long ago from hybrids between house and Spanish sparrows.

Female house, Spanish and Italian sparrows are almost impossible to tell apart in the field.

How long do house sparrows live?

House sparrows lead short lives. Only about 20–25% of young birds survive to their first breeding season, and adults have a yearly survival rate of about 45–65%, so most live just a few years. The oldest known wild house sparrow was found dead 19 years and 9 months after it was ringed in Denmark, and a captive bird lived 23 years.

Their main predators are domestic cats and birds of prey, especially sparrowhawks, Cooper’s hawks and merlins. Crows, magpies and squirrels raid nests. House sparrows are also frequent victims of road traffic and window strikes.

Is the house sparrow endangered?

Globally, no. The IUCN Red List classes the house sparrow as Least Concern, with a population estimated at well over a billion birds, but a decreasing trend. It remains one of the most numerous wild birds on the planet.

Locally the picture is very different. The UK population has fallen by more than half since the 1970s, and the house sparrow is red-listed as a bird of high conservation concern there. It has almost vanished from central London and has declined sharply in other European cities, in North America and in parts of India. Delhi named it the official state bird in 2012 to raise awareness, and World Sparrow Day is held each year on March 20.

Myths and facts

• Myth: house sparrows are a kind of finch. They look finch-like and were once classified with finches, but they belong to their own family, the Old World sparrows.
• Myth: house sparrows are everywhere, so they cannot be in trouble. They remain numerous worldwide, but some city populations have collapsed, and nobody has fully explained why.
• Fact: sparrows owe much to horses. In the age of horse transport, spilled grain and undigested oats in dung fed huge urban sparrow populations. Numbers in many cities fell when cars replaced horses in the early 20th century.
• Fact: it was one of the first animals given a modern scientific name. Linnaeus described it in 1758 from a Swedish specimen, and domesticus means “of the house”.

House sparrows and people

Few wild birds are as closely linked with people. For centuries house sparrows were regarded as pests of grain fields and were netted, shot and eaten across Europe; in northern Europe people even hung clay “sparrow pots” from houses so the young could be taken for food. Sparrow clubs in Britain killed millions of birds in the early 20th century, with little lasting effect on numbers.

In North America, where it is called the English sparrow, it competes with native birds such as bluebirds, tree swallows and purple martins for nest holes. Yet for many city dwellers it is the most familiar wild animal of all, and its cheerful chirping is the soundtrack of streets, farmyards and British gardens.