Abstract
After its introduction in the 1850s, the house sparrow quickly spread across North America, and 40 years later, it had colonized large parts of the continent. At its peak, the number could have touched half a billion. After that, the house sparrow population shrank in stages with periodic rapid decreases. In between, the numbers stabilized, before the decline continued. Lately, subpopulations, especially in the big cities, have all but collapsed. A series of causes has contributed to this long-term, strong decline. The replacement of horses with cars and tractors, the return of many species of predatory birds, and the competition from the native invasive house finch are seen as some of the most important factors. Today, the number of house sparrows in North America is only some 25 million, and the trend continues downward.
The species no longer constitute a significant problem.
“Dear sister, it’s a long time since I last wrote and I haven’t heard from you either for years, but yesterday something happened that suddenly brought back so many memories from our childhood that I felt compelled to write. Don’t worry, it was nothing bad. In fact, I can barely remember the day I felt so happy. Why? I saw a small bird from back home. You may laugh because in Småland those sparrows are so common that you hardly notice them, but here we haven’t had any at all—till now that is. I hadn’t really thought about that they were missing, but when I saw it, my heart filled with joy and my eyes with tears and I thanked God with all my heart.” (From a letter from a Swedish emigrant to America to her sister in Sweden)
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Jernelöv, A. (2017). The House Sparrow in North America. In: The Long-Term Fate of Invasive Species. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55396-2_5
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