Birds


Lesser Pied Kingfisher | Crimsonbreasted Barbet | Common Hoopoe
River Tern | Indian Robin | Oriental Magpie-Robin | Indian Roller
Cattle Egret | Redvented Bulbul | House Sparrow | Grey Tit
Common Myna




Photograph by T.N.A. Perumal, F.R.P.S., M.F.I.A.P.

House Sparrow

» SCIENTIFIC NAME: Passer domesticus
» KANNADA NAME: Gubbachchi
» HINDI NAME: Gauriyya

Plump, pretty birds, full of character and charm. Their declining numbers are blamed on food scarcity, caused by changes in human lifestyles and on pesticides that kill insects necessary to sustain sparrow chicks. Happily, sparrows are now making a slow comeback.

Colour and description: Brown body with streaked wings and an ashy grey rump, prominent white cheeks and white belly, black breast and chin and brown crown. Small, black, beady eyes. Typical seed-eating beak. Two-inch long brown tail. Females are somewhat drab: brownish grey, with streaked wings.

Call: Chirping call notes. Song of breeding male is a loud, monotonous ‘tsi, tsi, tsi’ or ‘cheer, cheer, cheer’.

Food: Grain, fruit buds, flower nectar and insects. During ‘avarekayi’ season, sparrows are found looking for worms amidst the avarekayi.
Nesting season: Practically all year. Several successive broods often raised.

Nest: Indoors and out: in trees, a hole in the ceiling, niche in wall. Nest is a collection of straw, rubbish and feathers.

Eggs: Three to five, pale greenish white, stippled and blotched with brown.