The Desert Sparrow is a bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 of the sparrow

Sparrow

The sparrows are a family of small passerine birds, Passeridae. They are also known as true sparrows, or Old World sparrows, names also used for a genus of the family, Passer...

 family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Passeridae. It is found in desert and sandy areas of northern and central Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, with a distinct subspecies

Subspecies

Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

 in areas of Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan , formerly also known as Turkmenia is one of the Turkic states in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic . Turkmenistan is one of the six independent Turkic states...

, and Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....

 sometimes called the Asian Desert Sparrow or Zarudny's Sparrow (Passer (simplex) zarudnyi).

The Desert Sparrow is not afraid to come near humans and sometimes builds nests in muddy walls. The Mozabite

Mozabite

The Mozabite people are a Berber ethnic group living in M'zab in the northern Sahara. They speak Tumzabt. Most of them are Ibadi Muslims. Nearly all of them read and write Arabic, though they use the Zenata dialect of the Berber language, for which they have no surviving written form.Mozabites...

 Berbers build their homes with holes in the walls to welcome these birds, which they call "bar-rode," and if one sings all day in the house, they say this is a sign of good news. The Tuareg, who call the bird "moula-moula," also say that this bird brings good news when it comes to stay near the camp.

This bird is becoming scarcer.

External links

• Desert Sparrow at the Internet Bird Collection