In spring of this year we played host to a family of birds in our backyard. The very short YouTube video below was shot from my phone after I suspected the birds were in the birdhouse. I could barely see them, but did glimpse of some activity.
I love birds but don't know a lot about them. I tried to identify the birds in my backyard by looking at pictures on the Internet, and by reading descriptions of behavior. I'm guessing the birds in my birdhouse are house sparrows (Passer domesticus). Here is a picture from Wikimedia Commons of a typical house sparrow.
Nabin K. Sapkota. Used under CC 4.0 license
A few weeks after my sighting of the birds my daughter called me to the backyard. The residents of the birdhouse were clearly evident. They had grown, and there seemed to be two babies. Their chirping was quite loud. I could see their yawning beaks in the doorway of the birdhouse. Dinner must have been overdue, because these chicks were making a racket. 'Begging' is a survival tool for baby chicks...the yammering prompts a parent to bring food.
One of the chicks was larger than the other. The larger one seemed to be more assertive. You can see the smaller one in the picture below barely has its mouth open and seems to be in the shadow of the larger chick.
Here is another shot of the siblings yelling for food.
I'm not sure if this next shot shows the mother/father with the small chick or if the much larger chick is dominating the picture. I do believe though that the size of the head indicates that the bird on the left must be a parent.
At some point I didn't see the smaller chick anymore. Only one chick appeared in the door and this is the large chick. I was pretty sure at this point that the smaller one had died.
Although there are some bird species where siblings kill each other (siblicide) and where even parents kill the weaker of the brood, that does not seem to be the case with house sparrows. House sparrows do kill other birds, especially bluebirds, but this is mostly for nest or territory competition. They are not dedicated bluebird predators.
Generally, most sources I consulted say that house sparrows do not cannibalize each other. I did find one paper that describes what seems to be a parent feeding a chick the remains of a deceased nest mate. This feeding is presented however as a rare instance.
I was lucky to catch a shot of the mother/father as this parent was delivering food to the now-solitary chick.
House sparrows are found in many parts of the globe. According to Wikipedia they are the most widely distributed wild bird in the world. House sparrows are strongly associated with human habitation. They tend to nest where people live.
When the picture above this paragraph was taken, the bird family in my backyard likely was reduced to just one chick. As you can see, this chick has grown to be quite large and occupies the entire entrance to the birdhouse. I had the feeling the bird was looking straight at me when I took this picture.
According to the website All About Birds, the house sparrow may be found across the U. S. and Mexico. The bird does not migrate, and may also be found in parts of South America--especially in Brazil and along the west coast of the continent.
The house sparrow is believed to have originated in Eurasia, Africa and the Middle East. In 1851, house sparrows were deliberately introduced to the U.S., when several pairs were released in Brooklyn, NY. Today the bird is so abundant that some people consider it to be a pest. The house sparrow aggressively defends its territory and even poaches on the territory of native bird species. The bird has been noted attacking 70 different bird species.
In the picture above, the chick in my birdhouse is halfway through the door. This position, perched in the doorway, does not seem to be safe. Sure enough, a few days later my daughter found the little bird on the ground. She wasn't sure if the chick had fallen or if it had attempted to fly.
In the picture above, the bird is almost out of the nest. This is a side view of the bird, taken on the same day as the previous picture.
House sparrows may have as many as four broods a year and may lay as many as eight eggs. However, they may also have only one brood and lay one egg. I'm not sure how many eggs my little backyard brood began with, but it seems obvious that only one chick survived.
In the picture above, there is one parent and the rather large chick behind. The young bird looks well developed.
Here is the chick looking out to the right, the direction from which its parent flies for a feeding. If you look at the video that heads this blog, you'll see that the tree is to the left of the birdhouse and the wide world, from which food will come, is to the right.
Both father and mother incubate eggs and feed the chicks once they are born. Although the father may feed the mother while she is watching the nest, the mother also will leave to eliminate and to find food.
The picture above was taken when the chicks were very young. It seems in this shot that the beak of one chick is on the left, and the back of a second chick is on the right. It's hard of course to see exactly what is going on in the nest.
When my daughter saw the chick on the ground she wasn't sure what to do. The bird's mother/father was nearby, chirping at its offspring. My daughter looked up information on what to do and when she returned the chick was gone, although she could still hear chirping.
Did that chick survive? Did it fly away? Was it coaxed by its mother to safety. Did one of the neighborhood cats find it?
We wish our little chick well. I hope this bird family decides to revisit our backyard birdhouse this summer. It would be nice to see another family and root for that family's success.
Thank you for reading my blog. Health and peace to all.
All photos in the blog are mine, except for the one credited to Wikimedia Commons.
