Eurasian Tree Sparrow - Relationships With Humans

Relationships With Humans

The Tree Sparrow is seen as a pest in some areas. In Australia, it damages many cereal and fruit crops and spoils cereal crops, animal feed and stored grain with its droppings. Quarantine rules prohibit the transport of this species into Western Australia.

Chairman Mao Zedong of China attempted in April 1958 to reduce crop damage by Tree Sparrows, estimated at 4.5 kg (9.9 lb) of grain per bird each year, by mobilising three million people and many scarecrows to drive the birds to death by exhaustion. Although initially successful, the "great sparrow campaign" had overlooked the numbers of locusts and other insect pests consumed by the birds, and crop yields fell, exacerbating a famine which led to the deaths of 30 million people between 1959 and 1961. The Tree Sparrow's consumption of insects has led to its use in agriculture to control fruit tree pests and the common asparagus beetle, Crioceris aspergi.

The Tree Sparrow has long been depicted in Chinese and Japanese art, often on a plant spray or in a flying flock, and representations by oriental artists including Hiroshige have featured on the postage stamps of Antigua and Barbuda, Central African Republic, China and The Gambia. More straightforward illustrations were used on the stamps of Belarus, Belgium, Cambodia, Estonia and Taiwan. The fluttering of the bird gave rise to a traditional Japanese dance, the Suzume Odori, which was depicted by artists such as Hokusai.

In the Philippines, where it is known as maya, the Tree Sparrow is the most common bird in the cities. Many urban Filipinos confuse it with the former national bird of the Philippines (the Philippine Eagle since 1995), the Black-headed Munia, also called maya.