Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus)

Eurasian Tree Sparrow

        (Passer montanus)

The Eurasian Tree Sparrow is a passerine bird (also called a song bird) of the sparrow family. It is somewhat smaller and much more shy than the house sparrow. It lives in many parts of Asia and all over Europe with the exception of Iceland and central and northern Scandinavia. The sociable Eurasian Tree Sparrow winters with buntings and finches in integrated flocks. The adult birds feed mainly on seeds of herbs, grass and grain.

For brooding the Eurasian Tree Sparrow builds a rather untidy nest with an entrance at the side. The nest is typically located in cavities of old trees and constructed of stems, feathers, leaves and even flowers. The female lays four to six eggs and broods for 11 to 13 days. Some mates stay together for a lifetime and even use the same cavity for years in a row while other Eurasian Tree Sparrow males court a new female every spring.

A Super-Tool *

Yes, look at me more closely. Do you see my beak? Not very remarkable from the outside, right? But it is a miraculous tool which my Creator gave me: super-light, and yet capable of the hardest tasks. Somebody figured out that the tearing length of the horn of my beak is about 31 kilometres. That means, if you made a wire of this material, and could fasten it somewhere, then the wire would only tear as a result of its own weight when it was longer than 31 km. The material that you humans use for aircraft construction has a tearing length of just 18 kilometres.

A Look Through the Telescope

Did you know that my entire skull is lighter than both my eyeballs? That doesn’t mean that you have to make nasty remarks about my birdbrain. My eyes are far better than yours are. We birds have seven to eight times more visual cells per unit of surface area than you. That way we have an image in our brains that is much sharper than yours. For example, if you wanted to see an object as clearly as a buzzard does, you would have to use a (8 × 30) telescope. I admit, my eyes are not quite so sharp, but I’m still sure that they are much better than yours. A biologist wrote that my eye is a miracle of construction, function and efficiency. It is one of the most perfect optical organs in the vertebrate world. It has to be, because even when we are flying at our fastest we can’t afford to miss any important detail.

Besides our sharp eyes, God also gave us a very flexible neck. It is so flexible that we can reach every part 16 of our body with our beak. Do you think this is just a coincidence? You try touching your forehead to your knee while standing. Oh, so you can do it, can you? No, there’s no need to do it now. If you really can do it, you’ll probably hear your bones cracking. For me, this flexibility is a matter of life and death. (...)

 

continued: Catapult and Jackknife

* quotes from the book "If Animals Could Talk"

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