Spanish Sparrow | Passer hispaniolensis

Voice

A slightly higher, fuller and more metallic chilp than House Sparrow, often in fast series; colonies keep up a loud continuous chatter. Flocks in flight give a rolling chur-chur.

Identification

About 15–16 cm, slightly larger and bulkier than a House Sparrow. The male has a wholly chestnut crown and nape, a pure white cheek, a narrow white supercilium behind the eye and a large black bib that spreads over the whole breast into heavy black drops and streaks on breast and flanks. The mantle is black with creamy stripes, the wing chestnut with a white bar. After the autumn moult crown and black are subdued by pale fringes, but the streaked flanks remain visible. The female closely resembles a female House Sparrow but often shows faint streaking on breast and flanks, a paler supercilium and paler mantle stripes.

Confusion species

House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) has a grey crown, greyish cheek and a smaller bib without flank streaks. Italian Sparrow (Passer italiae) and the Italian-looking hybrid birds of Algeria and Tunisia also have a chestnut crown and white cheek, but a small bib and plain pale flanks; every intermediate occurs in the Maghreb. Dead Sea Sparrow (Passer moabiticus) is smaller, with a grey head, a yellow neck spot and a small bib. Females in flocks can often be told from female House Sparrows only by the flank streaking, and not always.

Habitat

Open countryside with trees and bushes: fields, orchards, olive groves, oases and date-palm groves, riverbanks with tamarisk and eucalyptus, hedges of jujube and acacia, up to the high plateaus of the Atlas. It breeds colonially in trees and bushes, often in the base of stork or raptor nests, and nests in buildings less than House Sparrow. Outside the breeding season it gathers in large flocks in cereal fields and stubbles and at communal roosts in reedbeds and clumps of trees.

Range and movements

Widespread in the Maghreb: in Morocco mainly north of and in the Atlas and on the Atlantic plains, in Algeria and Tunisia in the north, on the high plateaus and in the northern Saharan oases, and in Libya in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. In Egypt mainly a winter visitor and passage migrant in the Nile Delta, Nile Valley and Sinai. In the Levant it breeds in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria and in northern Iraq, with heavy passage through the Jordan Valley. In winter spread over Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, scarcer in Oman and Yemen. Beyond the region from Macaronesia and Iberia through the Balkans and Turkey to Central Asia.

• 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 Morocco and Tunisia a colony is easiest to find in a eucalyptus or a stork nest near a farm. In the Levant and the Gulf states the winter flocks at cereal fields and reedbed roosts are often large; look for the streaked flanks to separate them from House Sparrows.

Conservation status

Not threatened. Numerous, and in parts of its range even increasing. In the Maghreb it is regarded as a pest in cereal fields and is sometimes controlled.

Scientific name

Passer hispaniolensis | (Temminck, 1820)

Temminck described the species in 1820 as Fringilla hispaniolensis; 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'. hispaniolensis is New Latin for 'Spanish', after Algeciras in southern Spain, where the type specimen was collected. The specimen the first description was based on came from Algeciras, southern Spain.