Brave little birds, and there are sparrows all over the world.
It is said that sparrows nest on ships in the harbors, and when the ship lands in the harbors of other countries, then the sparrows fly inland with their young. This accounts for them spreading in many countries, and I will ask Mrs. Wikipedia where the first sparrows originated from.
The house sparrow (Passer domesticus) is a bird of the sparrow family Passeridae, found in most parts of the world. It is a small bird that has a typical length of 16 cm (6.3 in) and a mass of 24–39.5 g (0.85–1.39 oz). Females and young birds are coloured pale brown and grey, and males have brighter black, white, and brown markings. One of 28 species in the genus Passer, the house sparrow is native to most of Europe, the Mediterranean Basin, and a large part of Asia. Its intentional or accidental introductions to many regions, including parts of Australasia, Africa, and the Americas, make it the most widely distributed wild bird.
28 species and our specie is called a Cape Sparrow (Passer melanurus).
I will use this White-backed Mousebird (Collius collius) as a line break, as I have a different cape sparrow in the shots below it.
This one below found a slug in the grass and come to see what he does with it.
Bang, bang, bang, as the sparrow killed the slug by banging it on a rock (3 shots).
His nest must have already youngsters in it, and he really had a nice mouthful to feed them in pieces.
I will end this post with one of our dwarf geckos, whose tail is busy growing out again. You can see that the blunt ending of the tail is not fully developed yet.
Here you can see it better, as the other one next to it's tail has grown back. What do you think happened to their original tails?
The issue with their tails is that whenever they are attacked by birds, such as the sparrows, they drop their tail off to protect their lives and normally the bird flies away with the tail, with the lizard fleeing into cover. Sparrows are the main culprits, and on same hot days here when the little lizards are out, we can see many with missing tails. They are called dwarf geckos as they are very small and most of them are adults. What I am saying, is they are not the normal big lizard size, and that's why they are being called dwarfs.
Such is life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the story.
Photos and words by Zac Smith. No AI and no Photoshop. All-Rights-Reserved.
Camera: Canon PowershotSX70HS Bridge camera.
Until next time, shalom!