Between Two Species: House Sparrow Meets Italian Sparrow in Sufers

The house sparrow is common throughout most of the world – except in Italy. The Italian sparrow, by contrast, occurs almost exclusively in areas where Italian is spoken. The two species can be distinguished by their crown colour: the house sparrow has a grey crown, while the Italian sparrow’s is chestnut brown. Otherwise, there are hardly any differences between them. Both species are closely associated with human settlements, and no nests have been recorded more than 100 metres from the nearest building.

In Graubünden, the southern valleys form part of the Italian sparrow’s range, while the house sparrow inhabits the northern part of the canton. In between lies a transition zone in which house sparrows predominate, but where hybridisation – interbreeding between the two species – also regularly occurs.

The discovery of a hybrid between a house sparrow and an Italian sparrow in the Rheinwald valley clearly shows that Graubünden remains, to this day, a region of transition: a place where southern Europe meets the north, where not only cultures and languages converge, but where nature, too, intermingles.

In collaboration with the Amt für Jagd und Fischerei Graubünden