The Cape sparrow is a bird of the sparrow family Passeridae found in southern Africa. A medium-sized sparrow at 14–16 centimetres, it has distinctive plumage, including large pale head stripes in both sexes. Its plumage is mostly grey, brown, and chestnut, and the male has some bold black and white markings on its head and neck. The species inhabits semi-arid savannah, cultivated areas, and towns, and ranges from central coast of Angola to eastern South Africa and Swaziland.
About Cape sparrow in brief
The Cape sparrow is a bird of the sparrow family Passeridae found in southern Africa. A medium-sized sparrow at 14–16 centimetres, it has distinctive plumage, including large pale head stripes in both sexes. Its plumage is mostly grey, brown, and chestnut, and the male has some bold black and white markings on its head and neck. The species inhabits semi-arid savannah, cultivated areas, and towns, and ranges from the central coast of Angola to eastern South Africa and Swaziland. It is common in most of its range and coexists successfully in urban habitats with two of its relatives, the native southern grey-headed sparrow and the house sparrow, an introduced species. Its population has not been recorded decreasing significantly, and it is not seriously threatened by human activities, so it is assessed as a species of least concern by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. A typical clutch contains three or four eggs, and both parents are involved in breeding, from nest building to feeding young. The Cape Sparrow’s calls are chirps similar to those of the house Sparrow, but much more musical and mellow. The basic call is used in flight and while perching socially and transcribed as chissip, chirrup, chreep, or chirrichup. The specific epithet comes from a Latin word for small birds, while the genus Passer comes from the Greek epithet of the Greek word “moss” The nominate subspecies Passer melanurus is found in western South Africa, east part of the Free State, and north of Angola.
The subspecies vicinus, sometimes included in subspecies melanurus, occurs from Free State and Lesotho to east Cape Town, and east of Lesothos. The second subspecies damarensis ranges from extreme southern coastal areas of Angola into Namibia and southern Zimbabwe, as well as northern South Africa as far east as Swasiland. The third subspecies is Benguela, which is found from extreme extreme southern areas of Namibia into southern Zimbabwe and southern Botswana, and as far north as Angola and Angola in its northern point in its southernmost point in the north. It has three subspecies, which are distinguished in different parts of the range. The breeding male has a mostly black head, but with a broad white mark on each side, curling from behind the eye to the throat. The female is duller and has a grey head with a different pattern from the male, though it bears a hint of the pale head markings of the male. The juvenile is like the female, but young males have black markings on the head from an early age. Adults range in weight from 17 to 38 grams. The male has white and a black wing bar below its shoulders, and flight feathers and tail streaked grey and black. The underparts are greyish, darker on the flanks, and its back and shoulders are bright chestnut.
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This page is based on the article Cape sparrow published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 02, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
