Great Sparrow (Passer motitensis)
About the Great Sparrow
The great sparrow (Passer motitensis), also known as the southern rufous sparrow, is found in southern Africa in dry, wooded savannah and towns. This is a 15–16 cm long sparrow superficially like a large house sparrow. It has a grey crown and rear neck and rufous upperparts. While in the past some authorities considered this species and several related species of 'rufous sparrow' on the African mainland to be the same as the Iago sparrow of Cape Verde, they do not appear to be so closely related as thought. A few currently recognise only some of the rufous sparrows as separate from the great sparrow, but the Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International recognise the Socotra sparrow, Kenya sparrow, Kordofan sparrow, and Shelley's sparrow as separate species.
No audio on this page yet
We only publish recordings we may use commercially, because this site is supported by ads. xeno-canto lists 11 recordings for this species: 1 CC BY-NC-SA. None of them permits commercial use, so there is no player here — the page is kept as a profile so the bird is not missing from the guide.
As soon as someone uploads a freely licensed recording, we mirror it and the player appears here.
Listed as recorded in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa in the xeno-canto catalogue.
Related species you can hear
- Eurasian Tree SparrowPasser montanusrecording
- House SparrowPasser domesticusrecording
- Italian SparrowPasser italiaerecording
- Kenya SparrowPasser rufocinctusrecording
- Northern Grey-headed SparrowPasser griseusrecording
- Spanish SparrowPasser hispaniolensisrecording
This species has no recording here yet — these relatives do, so you can hear what the family sounds like.