Dr. Katie Aitken, an ornithology instructor at Yukon College, says it’s “unknown” if Yukon’s house sparrow population will expand to become a problem downtown or with bird lovers. She admits she has a soft spot for them. “It was the first species I identified when I started birding as a child down south,” she told me outside the Independent Grocer as I watched a sparrow climb into a lamp-post.
Wherever people go, so goes the house sparrow. I’ve enjoyed their company on the beach in Hawaii, and their noisy cheeps inside airports in Victoria and Halifax. (They can learn to activate automatic doors – once they were seen in Superstore’s dairy section.)
Some tallies estimate there are 50 million pairs on the planet.
Have you seen house sparrows in Whitehorse? Record your observations on eBird or send an email to the [email protected]
Happy birding!
