Relationships With Humans
The Cape Sparrow is an abundant and familiar bird of human habitations and cultivation in most of southern Africa. It is not believed to be threatened, and is listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List. It is an agricultural pest, especially to grain cultivation and vineyards. When vineyards in the southwest Cape started letting weeds grow between vines to conserve moisture around 1956, the Cape Sparrow moved in. Cape Sparrows quickly exhausted the seeds and started eating the grapes. The Cape Sparrow is now a serious pest in vineyards, but in these areas has such a low reproductive success that populations cannot be maintained without immigration.
The Cape Sparrow has been featured on several coins of the South African rand, and on stamps from Lesotho and the Central African Republic.
Read more about this topic: Cape Sparrow
Famous quotes containing the words relationships with and/or humans:
“She has problems with separation; he has trouble with unity—problems that make themselves felt in our relationships with our children just as they do in our relations with each other. She pulls for connection; he pushes for separateness. She tends to feel shut out; he tends to feel overwhelmed and intruded upon. It’s one of the reasons why she turns so eagerly to children—especially when they’re very young.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“Here we also see: what this divinity lacks is not only a sense of shame—and there are also other reasons for conjecturing that in several respects all of the gods could learn from us humans. We humans are—more humane.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)