House sparrows have several vocalizations, the most common being a loud cheep. It is difficult to think of this as a song, but since house sparrows have no multinote phrase or warble, and since they do use this loud, persistent, repetitive, sometimes annoying cheep to accomplish the usual tasks of birdsong—the claiming and defense of territory or nesting place, and the advertising for a mate—most ornithologists do call this the house sparrow song. But while most songs are proclaimed only by the male bird, female house sparrows also cheep, though not as loudly or as often. Both sexes prefer not to cheep at all in the cold or the rain. Simple calls, chirps, gurgles, and chips are heard year-round, and groups of females in particular will gather and chatter, as if knitting together at a stitch-’n’-bitch.
Starling vocalizations may not seem melodious, but they are varied, complex, and speak to the species’ intelligence. Starlings are capable mimics and passably imitate other birds (killdeer are a special favorite), cell phones, jackhammers, creaking doors, orchestral instruments, and human speech. It was the murmuring of a caged starling at a market in Salzburg that prompted Mozart to buy it and take it home, where they mutually inspired each other—the starling mimicked Mozart’s piano concertos (though his G was always a bit sharp), and the starling’s warbles were a kind of muse for the maestro. When the starling died, Mozart composed a poem for her and organized a more elaborate funeral than he did for his father. I have raised several starlings, including one right out of the egg. I named her Delphinium, and though she was eaten by a cat before I could teach her to sing a Mozart concerto, as I’d hoped to do, I lived with her long enough to learn that starlings are delightful, playful, interactive pets and will follow you around the house as loyally as any puppy. I remember attempting to create a rare moment of starling-free solitude by locking Delphinium out when I used the bathroom, but she called piteously from the other side of the door, then rejoiced when I finally opened it, jumping up and down on her stout pink legs.
For house sparrows and starlings, the historical fall from public grace was as swift as their geographic dispersal. As early as 1883, just a decade after house sparrows were successfully introduced, the Pennsylvania Messenger proclaimed: “The little sparrow has been declared an outlaw by legislative enactment and they can be killed at any time. They were imported into this country from Europe some years ago as a destroyer of insects, but it has been found they are not insectivorous. Besides they drive away all our native songbirds and give no equivalent. Let them all be killed.”
William Leon Dawson is my favorite historical ornithological writer, beloved by myself and many others for his winsome combination of avian knowledge, dry wit, and over-the-top florid prose. “The increase of this bird in the United States,” Dawson wrote of house sparrows in 1908, “is, to the lover of birds, simply frightful.” But he is just warming to his subject:
What a piece of mischief is the Sparrow! how depraved in instinct! in presence how unwelcome! in habit how unclean! in voice how repulsive! in combat how moblike and despicable! in courtship how wanton and contemptible! in increase how limitless and menacing! the pest of the farmer! the plague of the city! the bane of the bird-world! the despair of the philanthropist! the thrifty and insolent beneficiary of misguided sentiment! the lawless and defiant object of impotent hostility too late aroused! Out upon thee, thou shapeless, senseless, heartless, misbegotten tyrant! Thou tedious and infinite alien! thou myriad cuckoo, who dost by thy consuming presence bereave us daily of a million dearer children! Out upon thee, and woe the day!
The list of house sparrow and starling ills is much the same today as it was at the turn of the nineteenth century: they damage crops; eat flower buds and pull up seedlings; deface buildings with their droppings; stuff their bedraggled, stringy nests into every nook and cranny of our houses, shops, ledges, gutters (where they can cause water backup), vents, cinder blocks, and the visors that surround stoplights (here they seem to prefer the top light, and they have caused accidents by blocking the flash of red); and wake us early with their incessant, repetitive, unmelodious chirring that drowns out even the crows. All of these are relatively minor inconveniences for humans. But there is one more, the unforgivable thing: they compete aggressively with beloved native birds, especially cavity nesters (those that lay their eggs in hollows rather than constructed nests), for nest sites. House sparrows and starlings do not excavate their own nesting cavities but are happy to take over those excavated by others, even if the creator of the nest happens to still be inhabiting it. Eggs will be tossed out; resident nesters fought, evicted, and sometimes killed.
The Pennsylvania Messenger’s plea was one of the first eradication efforts, the “important hostility too late aroused” that Dawson spoke of. In the latter nineteenth century, many states instituted a bounty, just a couple cents each, for the birds. Children killed them with slingshots and used the money for hard candy. In just a three-month span in 1892, the county treasurers of Illinois reported paying out eight thousand dollars in house sparrow bounty on a total of four hundred and fifty thousand birds. There was no noticeable impact on the bird’s population.
All avian conservation groups recommend population-control efforts for house sparrows and starlings, but it is the bluebird societies that are the most zealous advocates of lethal measures. Some common methods of house sparrow euthanasia proposed in their literature are capturing the birds in traps, then compressing their chests or tracheae; putting them in a plastic bag and filling it with car exhaust; snapping their heads between thumb and forefinger; and holding them against a big rock and smashing their heads with a hammer. Because starlings are audacious omnivores, sometimes descending en masse to ravage agricultural crops, with subsequent heavy economic tolls, farmers and government agencies join conservation groups in working to eliminate the birds. They have deployed traps; explosives; Roman candles; plastic owls; amplified starling distress calls; chemical sprays; poisons; and a special concoction that is sprayed on the birds’ plumage and doesn’t dry until the birds freeze to death. None of these have worked in the long term.
The ornithologist Margaret Morse Nice, one of my personal heroines, asked Konrad Lorenz how he managed the house sparrows that showed up on his porch to nibble the scratch he put out for pet birds. “I never kill birds,” said the revered scientist, who confessed a respect for the ubiquitous sparrow. “To a certain extent I am a friend of successful species. This goes so far that I even like weeds.” I personally am not in favor of killing birds, and there are more effective things we can do to limit house sparrow and starling reproduction around our homes (see box, here). The reality, as the ecological concept of carrying capacity teaches, is that creatures in a given place will always reproduce and grow in numbers to fill the space, food, and habitat available to them. If we want fewer house sparrows and starlings, we do not need to kill them, we need to create an urban landscape in which a richer variety of species can thrive.
What is the true impact on native birds? Tina Phillips of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology says that regarding house sparrows, we just don’t know. “There are no long-term studies showing the effect of competition between house sparrows and our native cavity nesters.” She heads up a citizen science nest-box monitoring project that she hopes will give us some numbers. But anecdotal evidence abounds, and anyone who pays attention is likely to observe house sparrow aggression. Bluebirds may be the species most affected by house sparrows, but even living in a bluebirdless city, we can watch how house sparrows operate. They will first try to chase unwanted birds away, cheeping and flying at them. If that doesn’t work, they might corner adult birds in their nest boxes, evicting them physically or sometimes even killing them, hacking at their skulls with those pointed, conical beaks until the birds die. Sometimes the brain is sucked out and eaten, a sparrow version of Babette’s Feast. A friend told me about house sparrows building nests right on top of the bodies of tree swallows they’d killed in the nest boxes around his home. Chicks of native cavity nes
ters are killed or just pushed out of the nest, and eggs are destroyed by the sparrows’ poking big holes in their shells. (House wrens destroy eggs of other songbirds as well, piercing the eggs with their tiny, needle-tipped bills—house sparrow destruction is easy to differentiate.) Starlings are bigger than house sparrows and take over more nests from larger species than the sparrows do, including those of woodpeckers, wood ducks, buffleheads, and even small owls.
As is true for house sparrows, the ecological impacts of starlings are little understood. Almost everyone who lives alongside starlings has seen them behaving badly to “nicer” little birds. In a DIY study published in The Condor, Norman Weitzel surveyed the birds on his land in the foothills of Reno every day for a decade and documented the nesting habits of native birds there. Before 1978, there were no starlings (in a charming detail, this is corroborated by Mrs. George Minor, who was born on the land in 1900 and lived there until Mr. Weitzel purchased it from her). In 1979, five pairs of starlings nested in Weitzel’s two big cottonwoods, and over the next eight years, that number grew. During this time, Weitzel watched as the starlings aggressively displaced mourning doves, house finches, killdeers, Lewis’s woodpeckers, spotted towhees, and western bluebirds who used to nest in the area around the cottonwoods until finally no natives at all nested in or around the trees. Just starlings. Turning out to be something of an avian vigilante, Weitzel took matters into his own hands in 1984 when he “began a systematic extermination of the starling population on my property by shooting individuals with a 20 gauge shotgun.” By 1987, he’d killed forty-seven starlings, and there were, once again, seventeen pairs of nesting native birds.
With all of this observed aggression, it was long taken as an ornithological given that starlings wreak havoc on native populations, but it wasn’t until recently that researchers at Berkeley did extensive years-long surveys to precisely determine the impact of starlings on native birds, and they were surprised that for most species, they were unable to find quantifiable harm. The population records from historical times to the present were examined for the twenty-seven species believed to be most at risk from starlings, and of these, five species’ populations increased rather than decreased after starling colonization, including the red-bellied woodpecker, which regularly suffers nest usurpation by starlings. Five species showed insignificant population declines, and the losses could not be directly linked to starlings. Study author Walter Koenig somewhat reluctantly concluded that his data could not support the long-held belief that starlings had severely affected cavity-nesting birds. He did say that the exoneration of the starling was “provisional,” as the story of starlings continues to unfold. In urban places, starling impact is likely insignificant, given that human disturbance already prevents more sensitive species from nesting.
Studying the nonnative triumvirate for The Urban Bestiary, I have temporarily done things I previously purposely avoided: I have scattered millet for sparrows and cracked corn for pigeons; put out a birdhouse with a large, sparrow-size hole that would intimidate a native chickadee; carefully watched the progress of sparrow and starling nests rather than removing them. It was easy enough to enjoy starling research, for though I do wish they’d never darkened our shores, and though the shotgun-wielding Weitzel would surely disagree, this is a species with charm to spare. Starlings are intelligent and highly watchable little birds, and their abundance, tolerance, and accessibility make them a natural for urban-wildlife study. They are diverting to watch as they feed on our lawns, with widespread legs that give them a waddling gait. Starling mandibles are hinged with uniquely powerful abductor muscles that allow them to poke their bills in the soil and then open them, gaping for hidden invertebrates. A sign of starling presence is the pattern of round holes they leave in the grass. Their nests may seem like a mess of nothing special, but they are worth a second look—sometimes the male will decorate with bits of colorful paper, shiny ribbon, or foil, presumably to impress his mate, as bower birds do. This was once thought to be the reason male starlings often thread their nest entrances with greens and flowers, but now we suspect that these may be a deterrent against the ectoparasites that plague starling chicks. One of the most common plants they use is yarrow, a natural insecticide. In addition to being jesters and mimics, starlings are also, apparently, practical botanists.
In the beginning, house sparrow research took a lot of psychological effort for me. Having spent years dutifully disliking house sparrows, ignoring and discouraging them as best I could, here I am, turning the tables on myself. Now I am learning all I can through close observation of these round, despised avian presences. As the neotropical migrants began to show up this season, I found myself giving just a passing glance to the glowing yellow arrival of the Wilson’s warbler who had just flown all the way from Mexico to my cherry tree and, instead, scanning the bushes for a stupid house sparrow. Attention breeds, if not love in this case, then at least a reluctant and complicated affection. House sparrows are fun to watch.
Rural house sparrows eat corn, waste grain from the fields, and their favorite—the partially digested grain found in horse dung. City sparrows eat just what you’d think they would—birdseed. They are partial to the millet from commercial mixes that is tossed aside by other, more discerning birds in search of sunflower seeds. They forage on the ground, in groups, and get around by hopping. Very rarely will you see house sparrows walk, foot by foot. Like most songbirds (but unlike the highly terrestrial starling), house sparrows have legs that are designed to grasp branches, and walking is difficult or impossible. Older sparrows sometimes walk, their grasping muscles presumably in decline (and a hint at our shared biological frailty—humans hop less as we age too). Their foraging habits merge with their social nature and general tameness when we see them at sidewalk cafés hopping among the crumbs at our feet. There is something satisfying in this, dropping crumbs from your chair and watching a wild little being scuttle in to eat them. Most people don’t know enough about house sparrows to dislike them and so can enjoy the moment with purity—the sense of graced closeness when an animal that could at any moment fly chooses to stay near instead. Yes, this is what Dawson referred to as “imbecile sentimentality,” the indiscriminate gushing over “dear little birdies,” but it is something else as well, something important and beautiful: the honest thrill of connection, and the native delight in communing across species.
Doing Our Part to Keep House Sparrows and Starlings from Taking Over the Earth
1. If you feed birds, use only good-quality seed—black oil sunflower for general feeding, or Niger thistle for goldfinches. Avoid cheap mixes with the millet favored by house sparrows. Use feeders with tiny perches and refrain from scattering food on the ground.
2. House sparrows and starlings begin nesting early. If you put up nest boxes, put them up as late as possible. Watch resident chickadees for signs of nesting readiness (exploring cavities in trees or electrical poles, carrying nest materials in their bills as they fly overhead) or watch for the arrival of migratory swallows or other target species before putting your boxes out.
3. Use nest boxes with holes that are the appropriate size for the species you want to attract, and keep them as small as possible—an inch is good for most small birds—as house sparrows and starlings prefer larger entrances. Do not use perches—starlings and house sparrows like them; other small birds don’t need them.
4. Cover all vents and tubes around your house with metal hardware cloth or commercially available vent covers. Also try to cover gutter corners and any other bird-nest-friendly openings. If you see starlings or house sparrows investigating a spot, cover it. Remove nests as they are built. If there are eggs, remove those too. Then cover the entrance!
5. If you are up to it, addling eggs (rendering them infertile), then returning them to the nest may be more effective than nest removal—it makes the birds think the eggs are still developing, so they won’t attempt another clutch, and it is humane if accomplished soon after the eggs
are laid (not when the chicks are about to hatch). The best method is refrigeration: Pop the eggs into the fridge for twenty-four hours. Let them return to room temperature before replacing them or the birds may reject them. Another good method is oiling: Cover the eggs completely with food-grade oil, then let them dry. This blocks the airholes required for the chicks to develop. Wipe the eggs gently, then return them to the nest.
6. Cultivate native trees, shrubs, and plants to encourage a diversity of native birds.
7. Share this information with neighbors (maybe at a nice community-building party with homemade cookies).
House sparrows are incredibly sociable—they nest close together, and in spite of the occasional intraspecies male arguments, they are not particularly territorial among themselves, and outside of the breeding season they are constantly in the company of their kind. Some activities, like dust-bathing—flapping about in dry dirt to dust their skin, which stimulates the production of beneficial oils and discourages ectoparasites—are nearly always undertaken alongside other sparrows. They dust-bathe enthusiastically, dirt flinging wildly, and leave empty, sparrow-shaped holes behind. Even during the breeding season, males will gather nest stuffs side by side with other males, with minimal antagony. Activity about the nest is ceaseless. The male is constantly present, watching, guarding, carrying food, peering in.
I had a chance to observe how devoted a parent the male house sparrow can be when our beloved domestic predator Delilah the cat—who is supposed to stay indoors—sneaked out and killed a mother house sparrow, the one who had raised her brood to near-fledging in the roofers’ birdhouse. If it were a different kind of bird, the chicks might have starved, as the males of many songbird species do not tend the young. But the male house sparrow, though he seemed a bit agitated and confused after observing the demise of his mate, quickly manned up and started feeding his motherless young. The next day, the first fledgling emerged, and he followed her everywhere while watching and feeding the young that remained in the nest.
The Urban Bestiary Page 16