House Sparrow

The short answer

• House Sparrows were introduced to North America in the 1850s and are now one of the most widespread birds on the continent, concentrated around houses, farms and shopping centers.
• They are driven by millet, cracked corn and sunflower hearts. Cutting those three from your yard is the single change that moves the count fastest.
• A wire cage will not stop them. At about 28 g they pass through the same 1.5 in mesh that excludes starlings, grackles and squirrels.
• The real conservation issue is nest boxes, not seed: House Sparrows evict and kill Eastern Bluebirds, and a monitored box with a sparrow spooker is the fix that works.
• They are not protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but state and local law still applies, so check with your state wildlife agency before acting on that.

The House Sparrow is not a sparrow in the North American sense. It belongs to an Old World family of seed eaters, it arrived in a series of deliberate releases beginning in Brooklyn in the 1850s, and within fifty years it had crossed the continent on the back of horse transport and grain agriculture. It is now tied almost entirely to us: houses, barns, grain stores, parking lots. Walk into unbroken forest or open prairie and you will not find one. That association is why it turns up in numbers no native sparrow does, and why the usual anti-pest hardware fails against it.

Identification, and the birds people confuse it with#

A breeding male is unmistakable: gray crown, chestnut running back from behind the eye, clean white cheek, and a black bib that widens through the season as pale feather tips wear away. The bill is black in breeding condition and horn-colored the rest of the year. Females and juveniles are the harder call and the ones people misidentify: plain dusty buff below with no streaking at all, a brown back with black streaks, and a pale line running back from the eye.

The behavioral tell is as good as the plumage: House Sparrows feed shoulder to shoulder without spacing out, dust-bathe in dry soil in groups, and chatter from inside a hedge before dropping onto the feeder all at once.

How a flock uses a feeding station#

House Sparrows are resident and non-migratory, so unlike grackles or blackbirds there is no season when they simply leave. Numbers build through late summer as young birds join the local group and stay high all winter.

The daily pattern is what makes them exhausting. They are on the feeder within minutes of first light, and rather than feeding and leaving they cycle: five minutes on the seed, ten in the nearest dense shrub, then back. A feeder within 15 ft of thick cover can be occupied by the same twenty birds all day. They do not queue, and dominance is loose and mostly settled by bib size among males, so the flock feeds as a mass rather than in an order. A chickadee has to time its approach around them rather than wait its turn. They are also reluctant fliers over open ground, which is the weakness the management below exploits.

What it eats#

House Sparrows are generalists with a strong bias toward small grain and anything already hulled.

Skip for this species: Peanuts (in shell), Nectar.

Three foods carry almost all the pressure: white proso millet, cracked corn and sunflower hearts, all rated top-tier. Those are exactly the ingredients that bulk out cheap supermarket mixes, so a yard running a general mix from a hopper or a tray is running a House Sparrow feeder with a few other species allowed in.

Two foods do the opposite. Safflower rates near the bottom for them and top-tier for cardinals. Striped sunflower has a thick hull a House Sparrow bill handles badly, while cardinals, jays, grosbeaks and titmice open it without difficulty. Together those two seeds feed most of the birds you want and offer the sparrows very little.

The management that works#

Work down this list in order. The first two do most of the work.

1. Cut the three foods. Stop white proso millet, cracked corn and sunflower hearts, and stop any mix containing them. Run in-shell black oil, striped sunflower, safflower and nyjer instead. In-shell seed matters: the hulling work slows a sparrow flock more than it slows a finch or a chickadee.
2. Remove the open surfaces. Take down platform and tray feeders and stop ground feeding for two weeks. A pole-mounted tube with short perches and no catch tray is the least sparrow-friendly feeder in normal use.
3. Move away from cover. Apply the 20 ft rule above.
4. Fix the nest boxes. See below. That is the part that matters beyond your yard.
5. Wait ten days. Hold the change and count birds at 8am on days 1, 5 and 10. Sparrows keep checking a station that has gone quiet, and people give up on day 3, just before the drop.

Nest boxes: the part that actually matters#

Seed is an annoyance. Nest boxes are the real problem. House Sparrows are cavity nesters competing directly with Eastern Bluebirds, Tree Swallows, Purple Martins and chickadees, and they do not compete politely: a male holding a box will enter an occupied cavity, kill the adult inside, destroy eggs and young, and build over the remains.

A 1.5 in entrance hole excludes starlings completely. It does not exclude House Sparrows, which fit through anything a bluebird fits through, so the answer has to be management rather than geometry:

• Site boxes at least 100 ft from buildings, further if you can, and away from farmyards, feed sheds and dumpsters. Sparrow density tracks human structures closely, so a box on an open field edge is far less likely to be claimed than one on a garage wall.
• Monitor weekly. An unmonitored box in sparrow country is a trap, not a help. Learn the nest: a deep untidy dome of coarse grass, feathers, string and paper stuffed to the roof, quite unlike a bluebird's neat woven cup.
• Fit a sparrow spooker once the first bluebird egg is laid, not before. It is a light frame over the roof carrying two or three mylar streamers. Bluebirds that already have an egg tolerate it; sparrows prospecting for a site usually will not approach. Take it down after fledging so it does not lose its effect.
• Remove sparrow nesting material persistently. Repeated removal often pushes a pair to relocate, but expect to do it several times.

The legal position, stated carefully#

House Sparrows, like European Starlings and Rock Pigeons, are non-native and are not listed under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act in the United States, the statute that makes it illegal to harm nearly every other bird in your yard or disturb its nest. People often stop reading there.

Federal exemption is not blanket permission. State wildlife law, municipal ordinances, cruelty statutes and rules on trapping or discharging any weapon all still apply, and they differ between states and even between towns. Identification liability sits on you too: a native sparrow harmed by mistake is a federal matter regardless of intent. Before acting on anything beyond seed changes, exclusion and nest box management, confirm the position with your state wildlife agency.

Everything on this page is exclusion and habitat management, which is legal everywhere and holds for as long as you keep it up. The full sequence is in the house sparrow problem guide, and if a crowded station is also building disease pressure, read bird diseases at feeders before you next refill.

Worth knowing: in much of its native European range the House Sparrow is in steep decline and is a conservation concern there. The argument for managing it here is about the bluebirds and swallows it displaces, not about the bird itself being worthless.

Frequently asked questions#

How do I get rid of house sparrows at my feeders?

Change the menu before you change the hardware. Stop offering white proso millet, cracked corn, mixed seed and sunflower hearts, and run in-shell black oil sunflower, striped sunflower, safflower and nyjer instead. Take down open trays and ground feeding for two weeks. Expect the flock to keep checking for about ten days before numbers drop. Cages and weight-activated feeders will not help: a house sparrow is too light to trip a weight perch and small enough to walk through cage mesh.

How can I tell a house sparrow from a house finch?

Look at the bill and the face. A House Sparrow has a thick, blunt, conical bill and, on the male, a gray crown, chestnut nape, white cheek and black bib. A House Finch has a slimmer bill with a curved upper edge, and the male is red on the forehead, throat and rump with brown streaking down the flanks. Female House Sparrows are plain buff with a pale line behind the eye and no streaking below. Female House Finches are streaky gray-brown all over.

Are house sparrows protected in the United States?

House Sparrows are non-native and are not covered by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which is the law that protects almost every other bird at your feeder. That is a federal point only. State statutes, city ordinances, animal cruelty law and firearm or trapping rules all still apply, and they vary widely. Before you act on anything beyond exclusion and habitat change, confirm what is legal where you live with your state wildlife agency. Misidentifying a native sparrow is a serious mistake with real legal weight.

Why do house sparrows kill bluebirds?

They are obligate cavity nesters competing for a scarce resource, and they are aggressive about it. A male House Sparrow claiming a box will attack an incubating bluebird inside it, peck eggs, kill nestlings, and build his nest on top. This is why unmonitored nest boxes near buildings often do more harm than good. A box you check weekly, sited well away from structures and fitted with a sparrow spooker once the first bluebird egg is laid, is a box that helps.

Do house sparrows eat suet?

Only occasionally, and mostly in cold weather or when the suet is soft and crumbly. They rate well below woodpeckers, chickadees and starlings for it. If sparrows are working your suet, switch to a firm pure-fat cake without added seed or grain, and use a bottom-access design. The same change that shuts out starlings makes suet awkward for sparrows, because neither species is comfortable feeding upside down for long.

Sources and further reading

1. House Sparrow Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Identification, introduced history, range and nesting behavior
2. Nest Boxes and Nest Box Management Cornell Lab of Ornithology, NestWatch Box siting, hole sizes and monitoring practice
3. Migratory Bird Treaty Act Protected Species US Fish and Wildlife Service Which species the federal statute covers
4. Feeding Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Seed preferences and feeder types by species group