japanese sparrows | source

Forest Homes. Written by Vitali Bianki. Drawings by Maĭ Miturich. 1979.

Internet Archive

Mother Goose rhymes - 1911 - via Internet Archive

Ohara Koson

Sparrows and Wisteria

ca. 1930-35

Riding out the Storm

(c) gif by riverwindphotography, January 2024

feeding tree sparrows 🪶 | source

Niels Peter Rasmussen (1847 - 1918) - Two Sparrows Defending Their Nesting Box. 1906. Oil on canvas.

Sparrows! Male house sparrows have black patches on their throats that darken during the mating season - darker patches are more attractive to lady sparrows. :-)

[ID: an illustration of a male and a female house sparrow. The male is perched on a branch to the left and the female is coming in for a landing to the right. The background is a soft orange sunrise with sun rays radiating from the center. End.]

White crowned sparrows

Migratory birds that can sense the planet's magnetic field might experience a similar irritation over being micromanaged. Researchers from the University of Western Ontario in Canada and Bowling Green State University in the US have found they can lilterally switch off their neurological navigation aid when no longer in need of it. The research looked at white-throated sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis) and found that they were able to activate a particular part of their brain when they needed to migrate, and put it back into a dormant mode while resting at stopover points. This 'cluster N' brain region has previously been identified as being important to avian navigation, but it hasn't been clear precisely how it was used across species, or if it activates and deactivates automatically based on daily or seasonal cycles. "This brain region is super important for activating the geomagnetic compass, especially for songbirds when they migrate at night," says psychology graduate student Madeleine Brodbeck from the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

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tattooed these eurasian tree sparrows on some fake skin today

Евгений Чарушин "Вот они какие". 1962.

Twenty-five bird songs for children - William Benjamin Olds - c.1916 - via Internet Archive

happy new year

Manabu Endo 遠藤学 (b. 1981, Chiba Prefecture), 生き際 (Iki sai / Edge of Life), 2022.

Kawanabe Gyosui Two Sparrows and Flower