What you call the “English Sparrow” is actually the house sparrow (Yes, American birds’ vernacular is standardized by the A.O.U. just as the scientific nomenclature.). The house sparrow does occur in England and is not a bunting. Buntings themselves are not even in the same family as each other; some buntings are Emberizids (e.g., genus Emberiza) and some are Cardinalids (e.g., genus Passerina). House sparrows are members of Passeridae, a family also referred to in English as “Old World Sparrows.” But house sparrows are not closely related to America’s native sparrows, which are composed of quite a few genera in Emberizidae (From Aimophilia to Zonotrichia!).
Both European starlings in North America and house sparrows throughout most of their range occur nearly exclusively in the vicinity of human development. The species name for the house sparrow is aptly domesticus! And it was humans who purposefully introduced both species.
The only reason these new birds are competing at all is because they are driven by instinct to survive. Maybe we should let the house sparrows and Europeans starlings to their own and begin eredicating humans. After all, if humans had not released these two birds and provided habitat for them in the form of developed areas, there would be no competition among them and native species.
Ahhh, Passer domesticus, our friend the House Sparrow, a weaver finch. I now have rather intimate knowledge of these little guys having spent the last couple weeks bleeding several hundred on behalf of the CDC for a West Nile serosurvey. They are amazingly tough birds (we took about 0.45 cc from the jugular and it didn’t faze them at all - this is something I wouldn’t dream of doing to any other bird this size.) We’ll catch them again in a couple of months and look for more virus.
Okay Cheap Bastid, what to do about those birds? Climb up with a shoebox and collect them. Take them to a rehab center. They may jump the nest and you’ll have to run after them. If they get away into a tree, then they are nearly fledged and Mom and Dad will take care of them. Keep Fluffy and Rover at bay until the kids are secured (you’d be surprised how quick a little bird can disappear). The rehab place will have the right kinds of food available and will be able to feed nestlings as frequently as they need it. Good luck.
lissener: I agree about European Starlings (Sturna vulgaris). They remind me of F16s - so agile in the air. My friend tried to get me a kid earlier this year to raise as he had done. He had raised a female and said it was an amazing experience. She was free-ranging and would come back to get goodies in the kitchen. She’d fly to him and fall asleep on his knee when he was sitting down. She’d use her beak to pry between his fingers, looking for food. Later, when she was raising her own brood, she’d come back with them, take food from him and give it to her kids! Way cool.
BTW, a recent decline of the House Sparrow (although I couldn’t attest to it - I found gobs and gobs of them) in the northeastern US is apparently due to the presence of the House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus). House Finches appear to outcompete House Sparrows. The House Finch, although native to North America, is new to the region (it began as a release of captive birds on Long Island in the 1940’s). They are originally a western bird. Here’s one for the natives!
I’ve noticed this too, for about the last 10 or 12 years. Before that, you rarely saw house finches in settled areas. I remember as a child seeing a pair nest in an awning at my grandparents’ house, only to be displaced the following year by a pair of domesticus. Pissed me off. I hope the house finch pushes the house sparrow right off the continent. They have such a beautiful song, and they have some color to them, and of course they’re native.
Of course you’re right, Wood Thrush; I’m guilty of confusion (I confused my memory of domesticus’s genus [Passer] with that of the North American birds most commonly referred to as buntings [Passerina]) and of oversimplification in lumping members of one [mistaken, misremembered] genus under on generic name. (Although “sparrow” and “bunting,” as generic names, serve the same function in birds’ english colloquial names as the genera of the latin taxonomy, they were not arrived at by the same exacting system of taxonomy and say more about the birds’ perceived relationships than about their actual genetic relationships.)