All species › Passerines › Sparrows › Eurasian Tree Sparrow
Eurasian Tree Sparrow | Passer montanus
Ringmus | Gorrión molinero
The Eurasian Tree Sparrow is a small, neat sparrow with a chestnut crown and a black cheek spot, at home in this region mainly in Mesopotamia and the northern Levant. In North Africa and most of Arabia it is a rarity.
Voice
Drier and higher-pitched than House Sparrow. The flight call is a hard, wooden tek tek; also a clear tswit and a short chip. The song is an irregular series of chirps.
Recording: Thierry THOMAS — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12.5–14 cm. Smaller and more compact than House Sparrow. The whole crown and nape are warm chestnut; the white cheek bears a round, sharply defined black spot, and the black throat patch is small and neat. A narrow white collar separates cheek and nape. Back rufous-brown with black streaks, two narrow white wing bars, underparts dull grey-brown. Bill black, with a yellow base in winter. Sexes alike; juveniles duller with a greyish cheek spot.
Confusion species
Male House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) has a grey crown, a plain cheek without a spot and a larger bib; the female has no head pattern. Male Spanish Sparrow (Passer hispaniolensis) also has a chestnut crown, but a white cheek without a black spot, a large black bib and black-streaked flanks. Because both sexes of the Eurasian Tree Sparrow are alike, a flock of identical birds with cheek spots already points to this species.
Habitat
Orchards, palm groves and fields with trees and hedges, riverine woodland, village edges and the outskirts of towns. Nests in tree holes, holes in walls and old buildings, also in the base of stork and raptor nests. Outside the breeding season in flocks on stubble fields, often with other sparrows and finches.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the habitats of North Africa and the Middle East.
Range and movements
Resident in Iraq, especially in the north and in Mesopotamia, and in northern and eastern Syria along the Euphrates; scarce in Lebanon. In Israel and Jordan a scarce winter visitor that has occasionally bred. In the Gulf small, probably ship-assisted populations have become established around ports and towns, including in Kuwait, Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia; a vagrant elsewhere in Arabia. In North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt) a rare vagrant, partly probably ship-assisted. Beyond the region from western Europe and Turkey across Asia to Japan and South-East Asia; introduced elsewhere.
- Resident
- Summer visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Winter visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Iraq, in orchards and villages near Mosul or Erbil; in a flock of sparrows listen for the dry tek tek in flight and look for the black cheek spot. In the Gulf states it pays to check the sparrows around ports and parks.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. Strongly declined in western Europe through agricultural intensification; the trend in the Middle East is poorly known. The small Gulf populations are probably recent and possibly human-assisted.
Scientific name
Passer montanus | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Fringilla montana; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Passer was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Passer is the Latin word for 'sparrow'. montanus is Latin for 'of the mountains', from mons 'mountain', though the tree sparrow is not a mountain bird but one of open farmland. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bagnacavallo, Italy.