FAR AND WIDE
Also known as spuggy, spadger, sprog and squidgie, the house sparrow is the most widespread bird in the world, living on every continent except Antarctica and numbering over five million pairs here in the UK.
Marauding field and city in cheerily chattering groups – the females an understated buff, the males with chestnut wings, grey caps and black bibs – they have lived cheek by jowl with humans for millennia. As the name suggests, they like to nest in and around buildings and, like Wombles, they make good use of the things that they find. String, plastic, cigarette ends, hair and paper are turned into housing; all kinds of seeds and scraps eaten as dinner, with one study of stomach contents finding 838 different kinds of food.…