Two male house sparrows were in such a brawl last week my friends and I wondered if they were somehow stuck on each other, like elk with locked antlers. They were rolling around in the gutter, beaks clasped on each other in a seeming death match. My friend Sam picked them up to separate them. They just flew across the street and continued fighting.

I’m sure it was a battle for a mate or maybe who gets to move into the best lamppost in Park Slope. This is why people hate it when sparrows show up in their bird houses: they’re really aggressive about kicking out any bird they perceive as an intruder, going as far as destroying eggs and chicks of native birds.And how they invaded North America.

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