The rock sparrow or rock petronia (''Petronia petronia'') is a small

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by t ...

bird in the sparrow family

Passeridae Old World sparrows are a group of small passerine birds forming the family Passeridae. They are also known as true sparrows, a name also used for a particular genus of the family, '' Passer''. They are distinct from both the New World sparrows, ...

. It is the only member of the genus ''Petronia''. It breeds on barren rocky hills from the

Iberian peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...

and western north Africa across southern Europe and through the

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Sibe ...

Siberia and north and central China. It is largely resident in the west of its range, but Asian birds migrate to more southerly areas, or move down the mountains.

Taxonomy

The first formal description of the rock sparrow was by the Swedish naturalist

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

in 1766 in the twelfth edition of his ''

Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomen ...

''. He introduced the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Fringilla petronia''. It is now the only species in the genus ''Petronia'' that was introduced by the German naturalist

Johann Jakob Kaup Johann Jakob von Kaup (10 April 1803 – 4 July 1873) was a German naturalist. A proponent of natural philosophy, he believed in an innate mathematical order in nature and he attempted biological classifications based on the Quinarian system. Kaup ...

in 1829. ''Petronia'' is a local name for the rock sparrow from the

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

area of Italy. Seven

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

are recognised: * ''P. p. petronia'' (Linnaeus, 1766) – Madeira and Canary Islands, south Europe to west Turkey * ''P. p. barbara'' Erlanger, 1899 – northwest Africa * ''P. p. puteicola'' Festa, 1894 – south Turkey to Jordan * ''P. p. exigua'' ( Hellmayr, 1902) – central Turkey to the Caucasus, north Iran and north Iraq * ''P. p. kirhizica'' Sushkin, 1925 – Caspian Sea to Kyrgyzstan * ''P. p. intermedia''

Hartert Ernst Johann Otto Hartert (29 October 1859 – 11 November 1933) was a widely published German ornithologist. Life and career Hartert was born in Hamburg, Germany on 29 October 1859. In July 1891, he married the illustrator Claudia Bernadine E ...

, 1901 – Iran and north Afghanistan to northwest China * ''P. p. brevirostris'' Taczanowski, 1874 – Mongolia, south central Siberia and north and central China Some species have once been classified under Petronia, specifically from the related genus Gymnoris (''

Petronia superciliaris The yellow-throated bush sparrow (''Gymnoris superciliaris''), also known as the yellow-throated petronia, is a species of bird in the sparrow family Passeridae. It is found in south-central and southern Africa in its natural habitats of subtrop ...

Petronia dentata The Sahel bush sparrow (''Gymnoris dentata'') or bush petronia, is a species of bird in the family Passeridae. It is found in Africa from Mauritania to Guinea and east to Eritrea and the south-western Arabian Peninsula in its natural habitats of ...

Petronia xanthocollis The yellow-throated sparrow or chestnut-shouldered petronia (''Gymnoris xanthocollis'') is a species of sparrow found in southern Asia. Description It has a finer bill than typical sparrows of the genus ''Passer'' and unlike them has no st ...

'') and Carpospiza (''

Petronia brachydactyla The pale rockfinch or pale rock sparrow (''Carpospiza brachydactyla'') is a small sparrow found in the Middle East and Central Asia. It is the only member of the genus ''Carpospiza''. Some authorities include it in the genus ''Petronia''. Other ...

'').

Description

The rock sparrow is similar in size to a

house sparrow The house sparrow (''Passer domesticus'') is a bird of the sparrow family Passeridae, found in most parts of the world. It is a small bird that has a typical length of and a mass of . Females and young birds are coloured pale brown and grey, a ...

but with a larger more conical bill. It is around in length, with a strong whitish

supercilium The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also ...

and weaker crown stripe. It has a patterned brown back and wings, streaked underparts, and a diagnostic, but hard-to-see, yellow throat spot. ''Petronia petronia'' are monochromatic, with a distinctive yellow patch on their upper breast that starkly contrasts the earth tones of their plumage. This

carotenoid Carotenoids (), also called tetraterpenoids, are yellow, orange, and red organic compound, organic pigments that are produced by plants and algae, as well as several bacteria, and Fungus, fungi. Carotenoids give the characteristic color to pumpki ...

-based trait is present in both sexes, and plays an important role during the breeding season, signalling both attractiveness and social status. This bird has a loud wheezy song.

Distribution and habitat

It is a rare vagrant north of its breeding range. There is just a single record from Great Britain, at

Cley Cley next the Sea (, , is a village and civil parish on the River Glaven in English county of Norfolk, north-west of Holt and east of Blakeney. The main A149 coast road runs through the centre of the village, causing congestion in the su ...

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

on 14 June 1981. This gregarious bird is also found in human settlements in suitable country.

Behaviour

Breeding

It nests in crevices in rocks or walls, laying four to five

eggs Humans and human ancestors have scavenged and eaten animal eggs for millions of years. Humans in Southeast Asia had domesticated chickens and harvested their eggs for food by 1,500 BCE. The most widely consumed eggs are those of fowl, especial ...

. Rock sparrows exhibit a variety of mating patterns, most notably monogamy and sequential and simultaneous

polyandry Polyandry (; ) is a form of polygamy in which a woman takes two or more husbands at the same time. Polyandry is contrasted with polygyny, involving one male and two or more females. If a marriage involves a plural number of "husbands and wives" ...

; however, social monogamy is the most abundant mating pattern. The frequencies of these various mating patterns most likely vary with numerous ecological and social factors. Many studies have shown that both males and females prefer a mate with a larger yellow patch. It has also been shown that male brood defence behaviours increase with greater female ornamentation. Males also differentially allocate parental investment according to female ornamentation; this behaviour is not observed in females. In alpine colonies of ''Petronia petronia'', females perform most of the provisioning. In Asian colonies, both males and females contribute equally to the care of the young. Males of larger sizes feed their young at higher rates, which suggests that larger males occupy better territories and/or are better fathers. Studies have found a positive correlation between male yellow breast patch size and nestling tarsus length, which suggests that more ornamented males are also better parents. Females increase the number of non-feeding visits to their nest as the season progresses, suggesting that because females have lesser opportunities to lay other clutches, it is most advantageous to support the survival of their current offspring. A positive relationship between the number of deserting females and the number of available males has been recorded.

Food and feeding

The rock sparrow mainly forages on the ground. It eats seeds throughout the year and berries in autumn. In the spring its diet includes invertebrates, particularly caterpillars and grasshoppers. These are also fed to the young.

References

Sources

External links

Rock sparrow
at Madeira Birds

at Oiseaux
Ageing and sexing by Javier Blasco-Zumeta & Gerd-Michael Heinze
(PDF; 1.1 MB) {{Taxonbar, from=Q736313

rock sparrow The rock sparrow or rock petronia (''Petronia petronia'') is a small passerine bird in the sparrow family Passeridae. It is the only member of the genus ''Petronia''. It breeds on barren rocky hills from the Iberian peninsula and western north A ...

Birds of Eurasia Birds of North Africa Birds of Macaronesia