Tuesday, August 09, 2011

House Sparrow Appreciation FAIL

So it was a rainy day and I only had a few moments to watch for House Sparrows in my back yard. Not wanting to slight my chosen bird of the week, I dove into the best online sparrow reference out there:

Lowther, Peter E. and Calvin L. Cink. 2006. House Sparrow (Passer domesticus), The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online: http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/012

I was all set to learn some fascinating things to help me better appreciate House Sparrows when I came upon this little tidbit about sparrow diet:
Nestling diet almost all invertebrate prey, especially Diptera larvae

For those of you not up on your insect classification, Diptera are flies. Fly larvae are...maggots!

Baby sparrows are maggot eaters! Ugh!


House Sparrow Appreciation FAIL! Back to the article, and I vow to spend more time outside watching the birds tomorrow!
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2 comments:

  1. birdchaser9:47 PM

    And I'm sorry, when I got to this part I almost died!

    Drinking, Pellet-Casting, And Defecation
    No information.

    What? Are you kidding me? Either somebody didn't do their homework here, or nobody's paying attention to our little brown friends!

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  2. Unknown10:32 PM

    The last two days, I seem to have been seeing only House Sparrows, so based on your blog, I decided to honor them and actually watch them. They didn't do anything exciting. This last spring though I watched one female mate with at least five other males. That was exciting!

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