HomeBack The Howland Picture Pages: House Sparrow

Page by Royce
Last update: $Date: 2004/10/23 17:21:16 $ (UTC)

The House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) is an old-world Sparrow found abundantly through-out North America, virtually anywhere at any time of year. It does very well in human-inhabited or -impacted areas, whether rural agricultural or urban settings. No doubt this is one major reason for its rapid spread since a few of the birds were introduced to this continent in Brooklyn around 1851.

According to the information at the weaselhead.org web site, the House Sparrow first appeared in Alberta around 1898, and is a pest that is not a protected species here. Nevertheless, they are "protected" well enough as evidenced by (among other things) the weekly dent they make in the supply of bird-seed in our back yard feeders!

Resources where you can find out more:

Guess who dropped in for dinner?

Oddly enough, we made our first visit out to Beaverhill Lake relatively recently, August 10, 2003. This lake is a major conservation and birding site and yet we had never ventured there.

On this particular day we didn't have a huge amount of time, and due to various factors we didn't see much. These factors included time of day and the weather -- very dry, meaning the "shore" was very far out from where we could get to. Beaverhill Lake is very shallow. Opportunities for photos were extremely few, and I captured only two birds, each with their lunch -- this House Sparrow and a Savannah Sparrow.

If I had known this bird was a House Sparrow, I probably wouldn't have wasted the storage on my camera's flash card, even though I had so little else to photograph. :~) But this shot was taken with a digiscoping setup at a distance of perhaps 12 meters, and when viewing through the camera's LCD it isn't always possible to visually identify what I'm photographing at the time.

So mainly I concentrate on getting a "good take" when digiscoping. If I don't immediately know what I am shooting (which is common with Sparrows and Flycatchers, for example), I handle the identification when I'm back home with my Sibley, Thayer birding software, and other resources.

EXIF 2.2 photo info:

  • 320 x 290 true color
  • Exposure time: 1/84.90
  • F-stop: 6.6
  • ISO speed: 100
  • Focal length: 17.8000 (plus Pentax PF-80EDA scope & William Optics DCL-28 eyepiece)
  • Exposure mode: Auto
  • White balance: Auto
  • Exposure bias: 0.0000
  • Metering mode: Pattern
  • Exposure program: Aperture priority
  • Gain control: None
  • Contrast: Normal
  • Saturation: High
  • Sharpness: Hard
  • Camera make: NIKON
  • Camera model: E4500

HomeBack

Copyright Notice

Unless stated otherwise, all photos and other content on these pages is copyright © 2002 - 2003 by Royce Howland.

Please don't steal anything for your own purposes, in particular if you have a plan for making fabulous stacks of cash in so doing. If you would like to use a photo or other content you find here, or just want to contact us about something, please send email to royce@3ge.com.