A summer with the birds (3/7). The sparrow, a “piaf” less common than it seems

Every morning, I say “Good morning!” to Philippe. I get on my bike and ride down Rue de Crimée to go into the great outdoors, to do my exhilarating job as a bird guide somewhere in the Île-de-France region. Philippe lives at the beginning of this street, in a dark wall that looks a bit like the facade of a medieval fortress with a stone missing. And in front of this hole, the place of his nest, Philippe stands, his throat swollen, his tail held upright, his wings quivering. He sings, tirelessly, the same two syllables: “Phi-lippe!”, “Phi-lippe!”, “Phi-lippe!” I stop for a second to greet him. Philippe calls his female, or even females, because this slightly mischievous monogamist freely accepts extramarital relations with females who solicit him, and has several broods per year. Let’s just say he’s talkative, not to say a tad libertine. But he’s also a good dad, building the nest and feeding his chicks with devotion.

Sacred Philippe! It is thanks to him that I changed my point of view on the dullest of birds, the famous “piaf” of the Parisians, yet so fascinating in its behavior and its history. Its real name is called the house sparrow, so called for its dull plumage which makes it look like a monk’s habit. The nickname “Philippe”, in reference to its song, was given to it by our English friends.

If today I respect and admire him, it is because I have to make up for it. I even have a crime to atone for. For many years, I did not like this bird. I found it ugly. In my childhood in the United States, it was one of the “trash birds” these “garbage birds”. Like the starling, the domestic pigeon… Because too common, associated with the concrete and gray sidewalks of our over-polluted cities. Why so much contempt? When I started to observe birds as a child, I only saw their aesthetics, I looked for the most colorful ones. As a teenager, it wasn’t rock star posters that I pinned to my bedroom wall, but images of quetzals, scarlet ibises…

The most civilized of birds

Then I grew up, discovered ethology (the study of behavior) and biology, and all the mechanisms that govern living things. And the sparrow was reborn from its ashes to become a creature with a thousand and one faces, one of the most fascinating in the world. Not “one” bird, but several in one, depending on the angle of view you take to study it. The Roman “passer” (which would later give the word “passerine”), is not only the first bird named by the naturalist Linnaeus, but also the most civilized and the least shy of the 11,000 species in the biosphere. A totem bird that has faithfully accompanied us in our cities and villages since the invention of agriculture, very attached to the seeds that we accumulate, and to the insects that feed around it. In a word, an anthropophilic bird – “that loves humans”. And this love, I willingly return it today to my friend Philippe.