The house sparrow. In Canada, these are some of the most common birds you'll see. In other parts of the world, they are dwindling. I remember being in India a few years ago where a local school was raisings funds to help increase the population of sparrows that had almost disappeared from the region where the school was. In the UK, their population is slowly declining. I'm not sure what they compete with here that they are declining, but Canada apparently doesn't have enough species to kick their butts, so they are always increasing, it seems, to the point that some people in the birding community feel hostile toward them. They are an invasive species to Canada, brought over by the British sometime during colonial times. It's not like they were the only animal introduced, but for some reason they are the ones whose populations have increased the most, and they are aggressive in that they'll kill the eggs of species of native birds and take over their birdhouses or nests. So you can see why some people don't like them, although I would hesitate to be hostile toward them.
What I find most entertaining is that because they are not as numerous here in the UK, people often don't know what they are. I see lots of posts on the Facebook group for IDing birds here, and it makes sense that people wouldn't know what they are, but it's more of an exception back in Canada when people don't know the name of the house sparrow or have the ability to recognise it. I'm just going by the birding Facebook group I'm with back home; sometimes people will post because they are really new to birding, so it makes sense, but most people tend to know what they are. I'm not sure if that is the case here, but certainly it seems that a larger portion don't recognise them.
Anyway, like the mallards and Canada geese, it behooves me to include the house sparrow here because they are birds I see in the UK, so I want to include them because they are actually a native species here and are a welcome visitor to anyone's garden or bird house. These photos are from Stonehenge. The flight portrait isn't great, but the little guy looked like a speeding bullet, so I had to include it!
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