Skip to Navigation Skip to Content
Decorative woodsy background

House Sparrows in Winter

TOS_House_sparrow_w.jpg
Illustration by Adelaide Tyrol

House sparrows – those little brown and gray birds that flash mob the bird feeder – are common and easy to see. They’re quarrelsome, noisy, and when they’re on the ground, they move in vigorous hops that remind me of popcorn popping out of a pan.

They’re also an invasive species, scavengers that have hitched their wagons to humans, and at least on this continent, are having a very successful ride. Our farms, lawns, and grocery store parking lots provide all kinds of year-round foraging for these birds, and our structures provide them shelter. From gutter pipes to the bulb rims of traffic lights, house sparrows know how to make themselves at home in human-dominated settings, regardless of whether humans want them there.

Unfortunately, they are a real menace to bluebirds, purple martins, and many other native bird species. They’re extremely aggressive competitors for nesting sites. They destroy eggs, kill chicks, and will peck to death adult birds. Adding insult to death, they have even been known to build their own nests on top of their victims’ corpses.

This behavior isn’t pretty, but as the bird world goes, it’s hardly unique in its villainy. Cute little house wrens, for example, will sometimes destroy other birds’ eggs and young. House sparrows are reviled because there are just so many of them, and the frequency of their crimes is overwhelming. They’re prolific breeders, and this time of year they’re already preparing for next summer’s broods.

House sparrows are highly social birds that return repeatedly to the same hierarchically-organized flock in order to forage and roost. From August into September, you’re likely to see them massed together, looking especially scruffy as they go through their post-breeding molt.

By October, new feathers have formed, hormones are on the rise, and courting behaviors begin. The most obvious sign of this transition is the gradual darkening of the male bird’s beak color, which turns from yellow and gray to uniform black in winter. The male’s black chest badge may also serve as a courtship display, and studies suggest that its size roughly correlates to status in the flock. The bigger the badge, the more a male is likely to be a dominant bird with multiple mates. Male courting behaviors including intensive chirping at females, and rapid vibration of lowered wings.

By November, some house sparrows have established mate bonds. They may visit nesting sites from previous years, or stake out new sites. Courtship behaviors simmer down with the colder temperatures, but erupt in warm spells throughout the winter, and hormones continue to build. By the time favorable weather for nesting arrives, well before many of our migratory songbirds return, there will already be house sparrow couples committed to nesting sites, and primed to breed. Others will pair off during the spring breeding season.

Once house sparrows begin to raise young, they continue do so with gusto throughout the summer months. A sparrow pair can produce multiple broods in one year. The number of broods, and recovery intervals between them, is dependent in part on environmental factors. Ironically, nest boxes, which many of us put up to support the recovery of bluebird populations, are ideal sites for you-know-who.

If you’d prefer not to shelter these birds, understanding their winter courtship behavior is a good first step. If you see them around your home this winter, consider boarding up nest boxes until early spring, so they won’t develop an early attachment to these nesting sites (although this does mean less cold weather shelter for other wildlife). To be guaranteed sparrow-free, however, there’s no avoiding the hassle of monitoring boxes throughout the breeding season.

You can also take a philosophical view. While house sparrows are a hard bird to like, I’ve felt a (little) more friendly towards them since learning that they are in decline in much of their native range. In England, for example, the species has dropped an estimated 70 percent since 1977, according to the British Trust for Ornithology. The cause of this decline is poorly understood, but a loss of insects from pesticides and changes in agricultural practices are commonly cited factors. Hitching your wagon to humans is always a gamble.

Discussion *

Jan 22, 2022

I truly enjoyed your article on sparrows and look forward to more!

Steve
Dec 21, 2020

I have made suet for the wintering sparrow’s but they have vanished. I normally had 15-20 around all year. None….birds are gone.

William Miller
Jan 23, 2020

Very beautifully written article have read for a while. As if I was reading NY times with beautiful metaphors like popcorn. Very insightful that sparrows pair and nest well before other birds arrive.

At our bird feeder in the beginning I hated sparrows because they ate everything and 90 percent were sparrows. After a while I realized that if there are no sparrows at the feeders there are no other birds as well. Figured out that the cardinals, finches, doves, blue jays, nut hatchers were using sparrows as bait. They would calmly wait for sparrows to start eating and if after a while sparrows are safe and still feeding, cardinals and other would flock to the feeder. So sparrows were used as testers by other birds for danger from Cats and Hawks.

Sparrows are what rabbits are in the animal kingdom, the bottom of food chain. They sustain many birds of prey. The hawks and owls would have perished in winter had there not been a good flock of sparrows. We have a resident hawks and owls in our backyard who visit every single day for sparrows.

There is one common capability that nature provides to the bottom food chainers like sparrow, rabbits and mice - they procreate a lot. They help the entire birds of prey .

David Chhetri
Oct 30, 2019

My house sparrows have vanished too!  I have a couple cardinals that visit in the evening and a few chickadees in the afternoon.  And that’s all I’ve seen lately.

Elizabeth
Oct 23, 2019

Very well written article !! The only way to keep house sparrows at bay is to put boxes in open field and put hole reducers on chickadees box and trap.I have opened to many boxes with dead chickadees in them before I made these changes.

Michele
Sep 12, 2019

With a flock of 30 birds in the garden all summer, they have suddenly vanished completely; even leaving the feeder untouched.
Does anyone know why?

David
Sep 11, 2019

I can’t stand the little pests. They’ve taken over the feeders once again. I guess I need to get out the trap. They’re aggressive little things that shove off all the other birds, till no other birds come. That, to us anyway, isn’t very entertaining to watch.

Terry
Aug 29, 2019

House sparrows are very aggressive to my purple Martin’s. I live on the bay and watch how they distroy martins nest and eggs and kill the Young.

Robert Louis Hummel
Jul 18, 2019

We have a house sparrow, a young female that adopted us. She comes to our porch at night,  jumps in her cage we provided for her and expects to be wined and dined in the house from 8 to 9 p.m until she’s ready to go out and play the following morning.  She’s a joy and quite amusing.

David Knipes
Jan 12, 2019

I like them. They’re the ones who inspired me to start feeding birds and later attract native birds that weren’t around before…and I think their hop is cute. Blue jays have no trouble with them and the chickadees sneak in, saw all three chickadees today in fact. Then a nut hatch as well as as few cardinals, woodpecker, juncos, and gold finches have been around. What I like about them is that they’re raise orphan baby house sparrows and work together as a species rather than being territorial like other birds (although it’d be nice if they didn’t work against other birds either)...but I haven’t had any problems with them and other birds. I did notice one thing though, if the weather is cold,  they tend to become more aggressive. However, once I put more food, the aggression went down so maybe just having enough food is the key to being peaceful… they just want to survive…and before I put food out, they were more aggressive with eachother even,not just the other types of birds, so maybe it’s just the instinct to survive like any creatures would do.I respect that you are open minded enough to consider their declining population in their native land. Perhaps we should smuggle some chickadees and nut hatches to Europe. Kidding, I wouldn’t want any cheep cheep to be hurt or treated badly (from smuggling).

Adria Sorensen

Leave a reply

To ensure a respectful dialogue, please refrain from posting content that is unlawful, harassing, discriminatory, libelous, obscene, or inflammatory. Northern Woodlands assumes no responsibility or liability arising from forum postings and reserves the right to edit all postings. Thanks for joining the discussion.