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Indian village study found most house sparrow nests in buildings

Male house sparrow flying into a nest entrance
Research · Reproduction & development

A six-month field study in Salaiya village, Rewa District, Madhya Pradesh, India, followed 37 active house sparrow (Passer domesticus) nests from April to September 2025. Together the nests contained 168 eggs and were checked repeatedly through laying, incubation, hatching and fledging.

Most nests were associated with buildings. Fifteen nests (40.5%) were in wall gaps or building crevices, ten (27%) in roof cavities or ventilators and six (16.2%) in cattle sheds or storerooms. Four nests (10.8%) were in trees and two (5.4%) in artificial nestboxes.

Nest material was 71% plant-derived, including grasses, straw, twigs and crop residues. Human-derived materials such as paper, cotton, thread, cloth and plastic made up 20%, while feathers and animal hair accounted for 9%.

Most observed nests produced at least one fledgling

Clutches contained three to six eggs, with an average of about 4.5 eggs per nest. Of the 168 eggs, 139 (82.7%) hatched. Of those hatchlings, 119 (85.6%) fledged.

Twenty-nine of the 37 monitored nests produced at least one fledgling, giving an observed nest-success proportion of 78.4%. This measure is simply the share of monitored nests that fledged young; it is not an exposure-corrected daily nest-survival estimate.

Both sexes incubated, with females recorded more often

Breeding behaviour was observed with scan sampling at repeated periods in the morning, evening and at night. In those observations, females accounted for 68% of recorded incubation activity and males for 32%. The percentages therefore describe the observed incubation scans rather than continuous monitoring of every minute of incubation.

The authors conclude that house sparrows in Salaiya relied heavily on nesting opportunities in human structures and showed high local hatching and fledging rates during the six-month study.

Sources and image credit

  1. Rolaniya, S. R., & Das, B. (2026). Study of nesting and breeding ecology of House Sparrow (Passer domesticus). Journal of Fisheries and Zoological Sciences, 1(3), 13–20. https://doi.org/10.65385/JFZS0015Primary field study of 37 active house sparrow nests in Salaiya village, Rewa District, Madhya Pradesh, from April to September 2025, documenting nest sites, nest material, clutch size, incubation, hatching and fledging.

Image: Louis Dewame / Wikimedia Commons — male house sparrow (Passer domesticus) flying into a nest entrance; representative nesting image; cropped to 16:9 · CC BY 3.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ · Source

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