Anyone else sick of hearing about the US election yet? My OZ friends are all getting social media reminders to vote today, and they've never even been to the US...well, it's all over soon, but let's do some cute in the mean time!
House Sparrow - Passer domesticus
In the temple at Dier-el-Bahari
The sparrow is one of the limited number of species distinctly benefiting from human settlement. Where humans are, sparrows are, often en masse. Go just a half-mile into the wilderness beyond a settlement, and you'll be hard-pressed to find even one individual. Other closely-related passerines ("songbirds") like finches and thrushes can survive where humans live, but none have adapted to the point that they're rarely found in the "wild" any longer, and few other avian species have thrived as well as sparrows in settled lands.
The sparrow is perched on a wall at the temple at Dier el-Bahari, most well-known for Hatsheput's tomb. It's next to an engraving of Horus, depicted as a Lanner falcon (Falco biarmicus) carrying a Shen ring, a symbol of eternal protection.
Egyptian birds for the most part seen in the Nile Valley. Charles Whymper, 1909.