Bird Profile

House Sparrow

The House Sparrow is an introduced species with no legal protection in the United States, a taste for exactly the seed most people buy, and a habit of taking nest boxes meant for bluebirds. Here is how to identify it and how to make your yard less attractive to it.

The House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) is a stocky, 6 inch (15 cm) bird that lives almost entirely alongside people: farmyards, hedges by parking lots, gaps under store signs, and your feeder. It is not a native North American sparrow. It was brought over from Europe in the 1850s and, along with the European Starling and the feral pigeon, is one of the very few wild birds in the United States with no federal protection.

That legal status matters because House Sparrows take nest cavities from native birds, and often kill the occupants to do it. If you run a bluebird box, this is the species you plan around.

It is also worth saying plainly that this is a bird in trouble in the country it came from. Sparrow flocks that seem endless in an Iowa farmyard have thinned to almost nothing in some British cities.

This profile covers how to tell a House Sparrow from the native sparrows and finches people confuse it with, why it is so successful around buildings, what draws it to feeders, and the exclusion and nest box tactics that actually work.

How to identify a House Sparrow#

Adult males are distinctive once you look past the general brownness. The crown is plain gray, bordered by a chestnut band running back from the eye. The cheek is clean white to pale gray. The throat and upper breast carry a black bib that is small and ragged on a young male in fall and broad and solid on an older male in spring. The bill turns black in breeding condition and horn-colored the rest of the year.

Females and juveniles are the harder birds: dull buff-brown above with black and tan streaking on the back, plain unstreaked pale gray-buff below, and a broad buffy line running back from behind the eye. No black anywhere.

Birds people confuse with it#

• House Finch. The commonest mix-up. Male House Finches are red or orange on the head, breast and rump; female House Finches are blurrily streaked underneath, where a female House Sparrow is plain. Compare directly on the House Finch profile.
• Native sparrows. Song Sparrows, Chipping Sparrows and White-throated Sparrows all have finer bills, cleaner face patterns and, in most cases, streaked or boldly marked underparts. Native sparrows also rarely form the tight chattering flocks in a shrub by a doorway that House Sparrows do.
• Eurasian Tree Sparrow. A second introduced species, restricted to a small area around St. Louis. It has a chocolate-brown crown and a black spot on a white cheek.

Why House Sparrows are so successful around people#

Nearly everything about this bird suits a human landscape. It nests in cavities and will accept a hole in a sign, a dryer vent, a gap in a storefront awning or a purpose-built nest box. It eats grain, weed seed, bread scraps and insects with equal willingness. It is non-migratory, so a flock holds a good site all year rather than surrendering it each fall.

It also breeds fast. A pair can raise two to four broods a season in a warm year, and young birds from an early brood may be feeding beside their parents while the next clutch is being incubated.

The flip side is that House Sparrows are tied to us so closely that they largely disappear from unbroken forest, open prairie and true wilderness. If your feeder sits in a suburb, expect them. If it sits in the middle of 40 wooded acres, you may never see one.

What House Sparrows eat at feeders#

House Sparrows are seed eaters with a heavy conical bill built for grain. In a yard they concentrate on the cheapest, smallest, most abundant food available, which is precisely what a bargain seed mix is made of.

The practical version: read the label on your seed. A mix that is largely millet, milo and cracked corn is a sparrow subscription service. The reasoning behind that is in reading a seed mix label.

Feeder tactics that reduce a sparrow flock#

None of this requires touching a bird.

• Change the menu first. Safflower in the hopper, nyjer in the finch feeder, sunflower in the shell in the tube. That alone thins most flocks within a week or two.
• Remove the standing room. Take the wide tray off a tube feeder and choose perches under three quarters of an inch (2 cm). House Sparrows can use a short perch, but they feed far less efficiently than they do on a flat surface.
• Stop feeding the ground. Sweep or rake spill, and retire open ground feeders during a sparrow surge. Ground scatter is where flocks build.
• Try a caged feeder. A caged or selective feeder with mesh openings around 1.5 inches (4 cm) admits chickadees, titmice, nuthatches and finches while excluding most House Sparrows, which are bulkier than they look.
• Take a break. Pulling every feeder for one to two weeks disperses a resident flock. Chickadees and woodpeckers come back within days of your restart; sparrow flocks are slower to rebuild.

The full sequence, including what to do if the flock returns, is in controlling house sparrows at feeders.

Nesting and nest box management#

House Sparrows nest in cavities and build a bulky, untidy mass of grass, paper, string and feathers that fills the whole box. Clutches run 4 to 6 eggs, incubation is about 11 days, and young leave the box roughly two weeks after hatching. They start early, often in March, which lets them claim boxes before bluebirds and swallows are ready.

Competition is the problem. A male holding a cavity will puncture eggs and kill nestlings of the previous occupant, and will sometimes kill an adult trapped inside. That is why House Sparrow management is central to bluebird work rather than an afterthought.

What helps, in order of effect:

1. Site boxes away from buildings. At least 100 feet (30 m) from houses, barns and feeders, in open ground. Sparrows drop off sharply with distance from structures.
2. Monitor weekly and remove sparrow nests. Legal for this unprotected species, and it must be repeated, because a determined pair will rebuild several times. Removing one nest and walking away accomplishes nothing.
3. Use the right hole size where you can. A 1.5 inch (3.8 cm) entrance keeps starlings out but not sparrows. A 1.125 inch (2.9 cm) hole excludes House Sparrows and still admits chickadees, titmice and wrens. There is no hole that admits bluebirds and excludes sparrows.
4. Consider box style. Slot entrances and lightweight hanging PVC boxes are widely reported to be less attractive to House Sparrows, though no design is sparrow-proof.
5. Close boxes you cannot check. An unmonitored box in a sparrow-heavy yard produces more sparrows, not more bluebirds.

Sizing, siting and monitoring in detail are in nest boxes: sizing and siting and how to attract bluebirds.

Population and status#

North American House Sparrows peaked in the horse-drawn era, when spilled grain was everywhere, and have been declining for decades since. They remain abundant and are in no conservation trouble here.

In their native range the picture is different. British populations, especially urban ones, fell steeply from the 1970s onward, enough that the species carries a conservation listing there, and comparable declines have been reported in other western European cities. The causes are debated: loss of nest holes in sealed modern buildings, fewer insects for chicks in early summer, and changes in farming are all proposed, and no single explanation is settled.

Both things are true at once. The bird crowding your platform feeder in Ohio belongs to a species that has vanished from streets in London where it was once part of the background noise.

What to do this week#

• Read the label on your current seed and stop buying anything that leads with millet, milo or cracked corn.
• Take the trays off your tube feeders and switch the hopper to safflower.
• Rake up the ground spill under the feeders, which also cuts down on rodents.
• Check every nest box on your property, note what is in it, and set a weekly reminder through the breeding season.
• Clean the feeders while they are down, since dense flocks raise disease risk. Method is in how to clean a bird feeder.