Passeridae Old World Sparrows

Although these plain-clothed, sturdy little birds eat a diet rich in seeds, they supplement it with insects, especially during the breeding season. Indeed, their chicks subsist almost exclusively on invertebrates for the first few months of their lives. Still, passerids have special modifications of the palate and tongue with which they husk the many seeds they ingest. Granivory enables them to endure in some of the most extreme desert and alpine environments in the world. It is therefore perhaps no accident that the House Sparrow Passer domesticus, via human introductions, has spread and thrived over almost all of Earth’s land surface or that it has been one of the best-adapted commensals of humans for millennia.