GuardianIceQueen
Jackabee
Am I one of the few people in the world that has a few issues with Ted Andrew's Animal Speak? Of course I do think it is one of the better ones out there though.
What kind of issues do you have with it?
I suppose one of my biggest issues is the entry on sparrows. He treats them all as if they are the House Sparrow(through out most of it). House Sparrows are agressive, they are non-native and have taken over most of the country... and they are a pest.
House sparrows were introduced multiple times in multiple places in the U.S. thanks in part to Europeans strange desire to make any country they moved to like home. The most successful release of sparrows was thanks to the same group that introduced European starlings to the Americas... something about introducing every bird mentioned in shaekespeare. After they were introduced, they would have probably made it accross the country fine enough, but people took birds from the established populations and spread them further.
Now as to their agression... well they are killers. House sparrows are well known to take over some of our meeker native birds' nests, and it isn't a pretty thing. First the sparrow drives off the parents (I'll use blue birds in this example because they try to fight back). In some cases the blue bird will try to come back, but often there is nothing the blue bird can do but helplessly watch as the sparrow could attack and seriously harm the adult. The sparrow then procedes to kill any young, be they eggs or hatchlings. Then the sparrow will sit outside the nest and
sing chirp. Sometimes, the sparrows will make a new nest(on top of the dead babies and old nest) in the newly liberated nesting cavity... but other times it will just leave. Maybe the sparrows kill to lessen competition. The only reason they would need to do that is for nesting area competition, since most of their victims do not eat the same thing (tree swallows, martins eat bugs, bluebirds eat bugs and fruits) never mind the fact that house sparrows are the most versitile eaters that I have seen next to the pidgeon. And since they aren't nearly as picky nesters as their common victims (they make nest in signs in shopping centers for goodness sake!) I don't really see nesting as being a problem. They just seem to be bullies.
Now the fact that they kill our native birds and out compete the native sparrows would be enough to make them pests to most birders, but the real reason they were originally called pest and a big reason that they managed to spread is well as they did was because they eat grain. That's about all I have to say on that.
Now one of the things that he mentioned was the sort of common triumphing. Indeed they are common, and even in places you don't see the rock dove/ pidgeon you will find the hous sparrow. They are adaptive. Triumphal... ummm not as much as you would think. Sure they've taken over the western world, but oddly enough... they're endangered in England. How is it that a critter that makes nests in the signs of supermarkets is threatened by the disappearance of hedgerows in England I do not know.
Okay okay, so he's right... on a non-native sparrow... but that is totally wrong for most of our native sparrows. He mentions, however, the song of the sparrow. Now if he were talking about House sparows, I would laugh so hard.... The house sparrow's song is perhaps the closest thing I have ever heard to "chirp". Yes, that's right. All it ever does is chirp chirp chirp. Now some of our native sparrows, well some of them have songs that are, in my opinion, more beautiful than those blasted canaries. Others have songs that are kinda odd. The chipping sparrow's song is a repetition of the same note rapidly. You can listen to just about all of our native sparrows here:http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/browse_tax.aspx?family=24
you can also find the house sparrow on there as well, but they're in a different section because they are not closely related to our sparrows despite looking very similiar.
Which reminds me, he mentions markings on the throat, by which I guess he means the house sparrow male. The house sparrow male is quite colorful and I guess the markings on its chest and throat are somewhat triangular. Hmm...
What is sad, is that the non-native sparrows is one of the few birds people see everyday. Many of our native sparrows live in places where few venture and where they are hard to spot, often in grasses or in the brush. And one grassy colored bird in one very grassy area, well I probably can't spot it even with binoculuars. The house sparrow is just about always that little brown bird you see in parking lots or on sidewalks, eating french fries at a mcdonalds. No one sees them because no one is looking.
I guess that is what is also good about them. In places where you wouldn't see birds normally, there is the house sparrow. Of course in most of those places, people never look around anyway and if they do, they look over the sparrows.
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I like it, just because it is one of the better books out there.
Yeah, same here. I think if I got any other book, it would infuriate me. Andrews has at least worked with animals, and has observed many that few have gotten to see. He has a better grasp on the realities of animals than most.
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