I have a new camera (thanks Chris), so I’ve been trying to photograph birds (trying to). And look: a success, of sorts…
Yes, it was a pleasant surprise to find that our local House sparrows Passer domesticus – we’ve had none here for the longest time, but now there’s a group of about ten – are eating blackberries while hanging out in a privet (and blackberry) hedge. I can’t say that I’m surprised to find that House sparrows eat blackberries, I just didn’t know it for sure. Checking Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa; the Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume VIII: Crows to Finches (Cramp et al. 1994), as you do, I’ve been surprised by the amazing versatility and flexibility in the diet and foraging behaviour of this widespread and familiar species.
That House sparrows eat seeds, fruit and arthropods of diverse kinds is well known. These objects are collected by gleaning from bark or the ground, by perching on branches, or by hovering. But less well known is that House sparrows have also been seen to collect dead insects from car radiators (a behaviour first reported in 1940 and said to be widespread by the 1990s), the fronts of trains, and from spider’s webs.
Caption: I can’t be the only one who’s looked at the insect-splattered front of a locomotive and thought “Mm-mm, those dead arthropods look like good eatin’”. Oh, there are feathers here too. Photo from October 2021. Image: Darren Naish.
House sparrows have also been seen breaking into milk bottle tops to eat milk, a behaviour famously established for Eurasian blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus and often said to be mostly extinct these days due to the near-death of the milk delivery industry. Apparently, the sparrows saw tits doing it and copied them (Cramp et al. 1994). Soaking dried bread in water to soften it and moving stones to find seeds dropped beneath a bird feeder are also on the list of behaviours. And they’re also kleptoparasites that have been seen snatching food items from the bills of wrens, tits, thrushes and starlings, and even taking grasshopper prey from digger wasps.
Caption: a possibly arty shot of two fighting House sparrows, taken at Howletts, the Aspinall Foundation Wildlife Park, in 2014 (the black and white object in the background is a tiger’s underside). Image: Darren Naish.
It stands to reason that a bird that’s commensal with us and mostly thrives in urban and suburban environments is flexible, adaptable and quick to exploit new situations, but I’m nevertheless pleasantly surprised to find that these birds do such interesting things. Then again, I’m pleasantly surprised to watch them do mundane and familiar things anyway.
For previous articles on passerines, see…
Great tits: still murderous, rapacious, flesh-rending predators!, February 2013
For The Love of Crows, October 2015
Thoughts on the Passerine Tree, 2016, October 2016
A Battle Among Blue Tits, February 2018
Cocks-of-the-Rock, Extreme Cotingas, April 2019
Birdwatching in Suburban China, May 2019
Tell Me Something Interesting About Dunnocks, July 2019
Suburban Birdwatching in Queensland, Australia, November 2019
Kirk W. Johnson’s 2018 The Feather Thief, a Review, February 2021
The Locustella Warblers, May 2021
Chiffchaffs and What Are 'Old World Warblers' Anyway?, February 2022
Refs - -
Cramp, S., Perrins, C. M., Brooks, D. J., Dunn, E., Gillmor, R., Hall-Craggs, J., Hillcoat, B., Hollom, P. A. D., Nicholson, E. M., Roselaar, C. S., Seale, W. T. C., Sellar, P. J., Simmons, K. E. L., Snow, D. W., Vincent, D., Voous, K. H., Wallace, D. I. M. & Wilson, M. G. 1994. Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa; the Birds of the Western Palearctic, Volume VIII: Crows to Finches. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
