In the city, she lives on the edge. Beyond the standard expectation of motherhood, she must scout prime real estate for a home, provide warmth and care, and find optimum nutrition for the perpetually open offspring mouths. Her partner, meanwhile, sticks to his brief: mostly standing guard and looking alert. In the bird universe, this is not bare minimum. This is “progressive” since the evolutionary role of most male birds does not go beyond mating. And since the house sparrow male does more than that, his “involvement” in parenting is lauded as participatory. In a newly released paper, the researchers look at the difference in parental care between urban and rural house sparrows as well as between their sexes. They monitored 183 nest boxes set up by local NGOs at 17 locations in Tamil Nadu — urban Chennai and rural/urban sites around Arani in Tiruvannamalai district — for three years between in 2021 and 2024. They collected behavioural data on nest construction, incubation, guarding and food provisioning and looked at the reproductive success in terms of both hatching and fledging. The researchers also looked at how the risk of predation affected reproductive success. A male house sparrow stands guard while his mate exits a nest. Researchers monitored 183 house sparrow nest boxes set up across Tamil Nadu to understand differences in parental care. Males were primarily invested in guarding behaviour, while females took care of incubation. Image by Agnes Francila. A female house sparrow carries food for her young. In…This article was originally published on Mongabay
