If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere.
That line from the title song in the movie "New York, New York" was written either by Broadway lyricist Fred Ebb or by a house sparrow.
Ebb gets credit, but the sparrow certainly could have provided the theme. The bird was introduced to NewYork City in 1853. It has since colonized all of North America except the high Arctic. We are key to its success, anywhere: It needs humans and seeds.
House sparrows came to us from England, 100 of them, perhaps in a wicker basket. The birds were supposed to help control insects harming crops. Surprise — house sparrows take insects only when feeding chicks, maybe two weeks each year. Otherwise, they eat grain.
City or rural, with spilled grain, birdseed or bread crumbs, we provision the bird. The sparrows are roosting right now in the shrubs beside your front steps (particularly if you live in Minneapolis proper), digesting weed seeds or food from a feeder.
They also are picking at loose grain in a Nebraska farmyard 30 miles from the nearest town. If we are there, so are they.
An Old World order
The house sparrow is not a sparrow in the North American context. It is an Old World sparrow, in a different taxonomic category. It is related to only one other species here, the Eurasian tree sparrow, also an introduced species.
Our 35 native sparrow species are similar in appearance to the intruder, but not quite. House sparrows have shorter legs, not that you're likely to notice, and a thicker bill, easier to see.
Also, native sparrows generally are shy, rarely scavenging beneath tables at sidewalk cafes or roosting in flocks of 20 or 30 in your front-yard shrubs. House sparrows are friendly.
Cavities are their preferred nesting sites. People who tend bluebird nest boxes (me) are bedeviled by the sparrows. They take boxes meant for native bird species, and sometimes kill for possession.
They are not bad birds, per se, just behaving as nature intended, but they can irritate.
Nests made of what's handy
Their nests are unmistakable: a stuffed collection of grass, rootlets, leaves, feathers, scraps of paper or cloth, odds and ends.
House sparrows can build nests in trees if the corners and crevices of human buildings aren't available. I've seen a tree nest at a highway rest stop in Montana. It was of woven grass, globe-like, the size of a sauce pan. If you are urban, however, you are more likely to find a house sparrow nest in a nook of your garage or tucked into the lettering of a neon sign.
The number of house sparrows in North America is estimated at about 70 million. This number has fallen significantly in the past 50 years. Changes in the way we farm are the reason: More high-tech cropping, fewer large animals in the barn.
Many people take pleasure in sparrows at their feeders because sparrows are birds and birds are good. House sparrows are faithful year-round, not migrants. And they offer friendly year-round chatter over there in the bushes, cheep, cheep, cheep.
Which, incidentally, is their complete song, easy to learn, one note — cheep.
Read Jim Williams' birding blog at startribune.com/wingnut.
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