Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2004, Side 240

238 A HISTORY OF COLONIZATION AND CURRENT STATUS OF THE HOUSE SPARROW
(PASSER DOMESTICUS) IN THE FAROE ISLANDS
Introduction
The house sparrow (Passer domesticus)
is a companion of man, and aided by in-
troductions and other human activities, it
has successfully colonized many regions
worldwide (Long, 1981; Summers-Smith,
1988). Before the start of its colonization
of the Faroe Islands in the late 1930s, the
house sparrow was considered a very rare
vagrant, in fact having been recorded only
once (Andersen, 1901; Salomonsen, 1935;
Williamson, 1945). Today it occurs abun-
dantly all over the Faroes and is confined
to and breeds, or has bred, in virtually all
built-up areas. In the British Isles, Scandi-
navia, and elsewhere in Western Europe, the
house sparrow has decreased in numbers
since the 1970s (markedly in the 1980s),
especially in urban areas (Hansen, 1985;
Summers-Smith, 1999; Hogstad and Øien,
2001; Lindell, 2002). As to the Faroes, the
population has undoubtedly fluctuated and,
at least for a period of time, probably de-
clined in numbers; though in the absence
of systematic counts the evidence is mostly
circumstantial.
In this paper we report on studies of
house sparrows carried out in 2001 and
2002 when each year effectively all built-
up areas (i.e. settlements) were censused
during the breeding season and the number
of pairs estimated. During the course of
the field-work, we also interviewed local
people about the history of the house spar-
row in the respective settlements. These
amendments to the previously published
data (see Jensen and Kampp, 1997) form
an improved basis for a comprehensive de-
scription and a tentative discussion of the
history of the house sparrow’s colonization
of the Faroes.
Material and methods
Human habitations, in thefollowingreferred
to as settlements, are to be found on all 18
islands except for Lítla Dímun and range in
size from a single farmstead or small village
to the capital Tórshavn (15,000 inhabitants
in an area of 8.72 km2). Mostly they form
discrete units (the Faroese bøur, or infields)
but in a few places settlements merge as
e.g. along Skálafjørður (Eysturoy), around
Tvøroyri (Suðuroy), and around Tórshavn
(Streymoy). All but two (Vatnsoyrar and
Kambsdalur) of the settlements are situated
by the sea.
The field-work was carried out intermit-
tenlly between early April and mid-June
and included 101 settlements in 2001 (all
censused by SAB) and 1 18 in 2002 (mostly
censused by KE and LMJ). In a few in-
stances, we had to rely on information from
local people, mostly stating that there were
no house sparrows to be seen in the respec-
tive settlements. The census work usually
started at dawn and continued until early
afternoon, with a break at mid-day when
the activity of the house sparrows was
markedly lower. The time spent in each
settlement varied considerably depending
on the circumstances (area, complexity of
habitation, numbers of birds, and weather)
from 15 minutes at a single farmstead to
one hour in a small settlement and one
day in the towns. Tórshavn was divided
in 23 sub-areas that were surveyed over a
number of days. On some occasions, the