Green’s Dictionary of Slang

sprig n.2

also spriggie, spriggy
[var. of sprag n.2 , but cf. obs. Scots sprig, ult. from sprug; reinforced by the often repeated story that George Sprigg, secretary of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria was responsible for originally importing the House Sparrow to Australia; thus W. Gordon Sprigg: ‘Away back in the [eighten] sixties the Melbourne Acclimitisation Society decided to introduce into Victoria the hedge sparrow. At that time my father, the late Mr. George Sprigg, was director, or curator, of the Zoological Gardens in the Royal Park [...] Instead of the hedge sparrow the authorities in London (presumably in error) shipped over the common house sparrow, which has not altogether proved an unmixed blessing, and the wags of that day dubbed the little strange a ‘Sprigg.’ a sobriquet which has stuck to it down the years’]

(Aus. esp. Victoria) a sparrow.

Show quotations
[Aus]Herald (Melbourne) 22 Nov. 2/8: [E]ven if it were admitted [...] that the plea only proved that there were other evils requiring extermination besides sparrows, the contention of the ‘sprig’ champions must be more seriously taken exception to.
[Aus]Warragul Guardian (Vic.) 17 Mar. 3/4: Sparrows are stated to have been introduced into Victoria by Tramway-manager Sprigg. Hence their designation by small boys as ‘sprigs’.
[Aus]Punch (Melbourne) 7 Apr. 4/1: It was a brother of Gordon Sprigg who introduced sparrows into Australia – hence the Australian boys’ familiar term for sparrows is ‘spriggies’.
[Aus]Register (Adelaide) 4 June 12/7: Birdnesting boys, when they find a sparrow’s nest, pull it to pieces, and smash the eggs, saying ‘It’s only a sprigs’.
[Aus]Punch (Melbourne) 22 Nov. 11/4: A pert Australian answered him. ‘Garrt, can’t yeh see? We’re goin’ shootin’ spriggies!’ But the English did not know a spriggie was a sparrow, so, the joke was lost on them.
[Aus]Maryborough Chron. (Qld) 10 Apr. 4/4: If the ‘sprigs’ have increased from three birds in 1917, to two hundred in 1918, what will be there grand total in 1919, even allowing for a large number slain by shanghai.
[Aus]Argus (Melbourne) 6 May 4/5: On the subject of ‘sprig’ as a name applied to the sparrow [...] Mr. Wilson Kerry [...] writes: – ‘I am afraid that Mr. W. Gordon Sprigg’s theory will not bear examination. A reference to Dr. Joseph Wrights’s ‘English Dialect Dictionary’ will show that ‘sprig’ is used for ‘sparrow’ in parts of Scotland – Roxburgh, for example’.
[Aus]Queenslander (Brisbane) 5 Apr. 6/3: No place, one could not but feel, for such a man-about-town as the ‘spriggie’.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 30 June 20/3: ‘Anyhow, you’re not in Noo South now; in Vic. spadgers are spriggies’.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 24 Aug. 10/4: One cocky broadcast poisoned wheat over his ploughed ground and collected bucketfuls of dead spriggies.
[Aus]S.J. Baker Aus. Speaks 256: sprigg (a sparrow).