The BPN Avian theme for April is "Sparrows' which prompted me to write a little bit about what a "sparrow" is.
First, the word apparently derives from old Anglo-Saxon "spearwa" meaning "flutterer". The problem with the name is that it is applied to several unrelated groups or individual species around the world and so is ambiguous.
The original ornithological application of "sparrow" was to refer to certain species in a large old-world group of birds in the family Passeridae- the familiar, and now declining, House Sparrow would be an example, but there are many others. All well and good, but then you have other old-world species such as the Java Sparrow which is an Estrildid finch, and the Hedge Sparrow which is in the Accentor family (this species is more correctly called the Dunnock). Then in North America, "LBJs"- Little Brown Jobs- were called sparrows because they looked similar to what the European settlers knew as sparrows. In this case the word is again applied to an unrelated group of birds- the Emberizids- a large and diverse assemblage from all over the world except Australasia. About 80% of Emberizids are from the Americas, and many are called sparrows such as Song, Fox, Swamp, Rufous-collared et al. The group also includes other American species, for example the towhees, and juncos. In Europe and Asia many Emberizids are referred to as “buntings” and we have the Emberizid Lark Bunting in the Americas. It would be fair to say that the sparrows of the Americas are equivalent to the buntings of Europe, but then the word bunting is used to refer to yet more species that are in different families (Indigo and Painted Buntings for example). The English names are in a mess! Not only the naming is a mess but the taxonomic relationships with families such as the Emberizids still needs to be worked out fully.
So you guys and gals from Europe and Africa- submit your (real) sparrows to the BPN Avian theme for April!
Last edited by John Chardine; 04-15-2012 at 07:44 PM.
John: Thanks for this post trying to explain just what a sparrow is. There are lots of those LBJs around here and I enjoy watching and photographing them. Little did I know that they were such a diverse group of birds and that the buntings are actually so closely related..
What is a "sparrow" anyway?
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