Spanish Sparrow - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The Spanish Sparrow is a close relative of the House Sparrow in the genus Passer and the sparrow family Passeridae. Its taxonomy is greatly complicated by the "biological mix-up" it forms with the House Sparrow in the Mediterranean. In most of the Mediterranean, one or both of the two species occurs, with only a limited degree of hybridisation. On the Italian Peninsula and Corsica, the two species are replaced by the Italian Sparrow, a puzzling type of sparrow apparently intermediate between the Spanish Sparrow and the House Sparrow. The Italian Sparrow has been classified as a hybrid with the House Sparrow, the same species as the Spanish Sparrow, the same species as the House Sparrow, and as a separate species. The Spanish Sparrow also hybridises freely with House Sparrow in parts of northern Africa (northeastern Algeria, Tunisia, and northwestern Libya), forming highly variable mixed populations with a full range of characters from pure House Sparrow to pure Spanish Sparrow. On the Mediterranean islands of Malta, Gozo, Crete, Rhodes, and Karpathos, there are more apparently intermediate birds of unknown status.

The Spanish Sparrow was first described by the Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck as Fringilla hispaniolensis, from a specimen collected at Algeciras, in southern Spain. The usual English name refers to the description of the species from Spain. The name "Willow Sparrow", referring to the moist habitat of this bird, is sometimes used, especially when the Italian Sparrow is considered the same species.

Two subspecies of Spanish Sparrow are usually recognised, the western nominate subspecies hispaniolensis, and the eastern transcaspicus, described by Austrian ornithologist Viktor von Tschusi zu Schmidhoffen in 1902 from Ýolöten, Turkmenistan. Birds in Anatolia and Cyprus are usually considered to belong to P. h. transcaspicus, but birds as far east as Ceylanpınar have been noted as intermediates, and the difference between the two subspecies may be clinal.