Category

House Sparrow

House sparrows were introduced from England to North America in 1850 to help control an outbreak of caterpillars devouring foliage in Brooklyn, New York. Over 100 sparrow releases in the U.S. followed, including one in Galveston in the late 1860s. By 1912, the bird had spread across Texas, and had reached the Pacific by the 1960s. Throughout, critics condemned the sparrow for its lethal competition with native birds, especially cavity-nesters such as purple martins, eastern bluebirds, and tree swallows.

Interviews

Narrator: Keith ArnoldTitle: Backyard BirdsDuration: 00:03:16Date: November 19, 2020Dr. Arnold is an ornithologist and an emeritus professor at Texas A&M University. He is a founder of the Texas Breeding Bird Atlas and the Texas Bird Records Committee, a long-time editor for Texas Christmas bird counts, and a prolific author (including contributing the guide, Birds of Texas). Here he describes the pattern of urbanization occurring throughout much of Texas, and how it is changing the bird life of the state, bringing in house sparrows, starlings, cardinals and blue jays, at the expense of grasshopper sparrows, dickcissels and others.Narrator: Jesse GranthamTitle: Smart and ExoticDuration: 00:02:53Date: October 25, 2003Jesse Grantham is a botanist, ornithologist, and former manager of the Audubon Society's coastal sanctuaries program in Texas. Here he explains his childhood love of Eastern bluebirds, purple martins and other cavity-nesting birds, and his reluctant efforts to control the exotic house sparrows and European starlings that threatened their rival native birds.