House Sparrow – Passer domesticus

This is the most abundant bird in my backyard. They are very cute but they can fight and scrap with the best of them. They squabble and zoom around my yard like jet fighters with incredible, acrobatic agility.

Usually you think of the males fighting with each other for mates but with the House Sparrows, its the females who do the fighting. Go get’um ladies!

They courtship dance is quite involved. The male will approach the female shimmying and shaking until he gets close to her. In my backyard, the preferred dance floor is on the fence where these pictures were taken. Perhaps it is my sick sense of humor but I get a little chuckle when the male gets so wrapped up in his dance that he accidentally falls off the fence. As is the case with many females who are observing a coquettish male (in many species), if he is trying to hard, it might not be the worth watching the whole show, and she flies off.

While they may call my yard home, they are not native to the Americas. They were brought here from Europe but originate from the Middle East. Now they are found almost all over the world.