Botanical Glossary - Home

House Sparrow - Building a nest inside Hastings Mill Store/museum at Alma and Point Grey Road in Kitsilano. This sparrow is accessing a panel space behind the siding through a knothole, bringing in a bit of fluff from a cigarette filter for a nest being built for his anxious mate patiently waiting on the ledge nearby.

This variety of sparrow has been introduced from Eurasia and has now naturalized through most of North America. The House Sparrow is sooty looking, probably the most familiar and common sparrow in the Pacific Northwest. The Male has rusty wings, a black throat, white cheeks, and a chestnut nape. The females have no black throat, have dingy gray-brown breast, brown cap and rusty wings - look for a thin brown eyestripe without the grayish eye ring to distinguish this sparrow from a field sparrow.

The old Hastings Mill Store and Post Office (circa 1865), is thought to be the oldest building in Vancouver, and was one of the few buildings to survive the great fire of 1886 that swept through what was Vancouver. In 1930 the store was moved from Burrard Inlet to its present site at Alma and Point Grey Road.