House Sparrow
Passer domesticus
House Sparrow · Brooklyn Botanic Garden · 24 August 2025
A House Sparrow on a sunflower head in the Botanic Garden in August, one of the seed sources that helped the species conquer a continent. House Sparrows live wherever people do, on every continent but Antarctica, and every one in North America descends from birds deliberately released in Brooklyn in 1851, in an attempt to control canker worms.
The population spread across the whole continent within a century. The bird is now declining across much of its range, London included, and nobody is quite sure why.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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