Photo/Illutration A sparrow feeds a great tit chick in the garden of a home in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward on Aug. 24. (Provided by Yasuhiro Maesaka)

Sumitoshi Tamura sprayed water to scare off a sparrow approaching a nesting box in the garden of his home in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward in August.

He knew a Japanese great tit laid eggs in the box in July, and the parent birds began feeding the hatchlings in August. So, he suspected that the sparrow came to the bird box to steal food from the hungry chicks.

But as Tamura, 75, watched closely during the many hours he stayed home due to the coronavirus pandemic, he realized that the sparrow--and one more sparrow to be exact--flew to the box to feed the fledglings.

The sparrows scuffled with the adult great tits when they bumped into each other as if fighting over the parental rights. The sparrows fought with each other as well, to assert their access to the offspring.

Yasuhiro Maesaka, a friend of Tamura’s who began shooting images of wild birds 14 years ago, said the parent birds looked calmer, compared with the sparrows, when he visited Tamura’s house, which is near JR Asagaya Station, on Aug. 24 to observe the two species.

Setting up a tripod, Maesaka, 80, kept taking pictures of the birds for about three hours that day through a telephoto lens.

“As sparrows and great tits are so common, I do not normally shoot them,” he said. “But what is unfolding here is something I have never seen.”

It is rare for a bird to feed chicks of another bird species, according to Keisuke Ueda, head of the Wild Bird Society of Japan.

Still, Ueda said there are a handful of reports on birds feeding chicks of other birds, perhaps having something to do with their inborn nature.

Tamura put the box in place more than 10 years ago. Great tits have made it a home for their chicks from two years ago.

The four chicks that hatched this summer have already left the nest. 

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