Jon Sullivan<p>Here’s a house sparrow that we saw in the Canterbury town of Culverden, NZ, on our undergraduate ecology field trip last month. One of the students, William Harland, is a fantastically skilled photographer and got this great photo of it and uploaded it to <a href="https://mastodon.nz/tags/iNaturalist" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>iNaturalist</span></a>. This is long-billed syndrome and happens when the beak doesn’t stop growing. This house sparrow surprisingly seemed to be managing to feed.</p><p><a href="https://inaturalist.nz/observations/260356186" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">inaturalist.nz/observations/26</span><span class="invisible">0356186</span></a></p><p><a href="https://mastodon.nz/tags/birds" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>birds</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.nz/tags/HouseSparrow" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HouseSparrow</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.nz/tags/nz" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>nz</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.nz/tags/mutation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>mutation</span></a> $<a href="https://mastodon.nz/tags/deformity" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>deformity</span></a></p>