Mike in the Wild

Besides the ever-present rock pigeon, house sparrows might be the most common bird that the majority of people see in their everyday lives.  It's impossible to enjoy a lunch al fresco at your favorite restaurant without one of these persistent birds begging for crumbs.  But as widespread as this animal is in North American cities, it's not a native.  In fact it's not even a sparrow as Americans know them. The house sparrow was introduced to the continent first in the nineteenth century, and after several additional introductions spread from as far north as Canada into South America.  It's in a family of birds known generally as Old World sparrows, as opposed to the many more species in an entirely separate family often referred to as New World sparrows.  In this latter group are a wide-ranging variety of birds that include towhees, juncos and many with a last name sparrow but with descriptive first names like green-tailed, rufous-crowned or black-throated....