They are. We’ve got loads of 'em.
Ah, right. Thanks. (I’m posting on my phone and couldn’t figure out how to look that up mid post, and so didn’t know how much I needed to explain. Answer: nothing 
)
Yeah, introductions are a problem. I probably feel the same way about grey squirrels. But these little guys are indigenous here, and always fun to watch.
j
The myth is that Sparrows and Starlings were both introduced by the same guy, who wanted every bird mentioned in Shakespeare to be in America. Probably untrue, but a good tale.
The guy in question, Eugene Schieffelin, probably does deserve the blame for starlings and he enthusiastically supported the introduction of house sparrows. But in the latter case those introductions had already started in the 1850’s. The Shakespeare stuff likely is iffy, though not impossible - just that it would not have been a primary motivator.
Bit of personal trivia, I have a battered used hardbound copy of the first edition of Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to Western Birds, copyright 1941, that my mother must have bought for me some time in the 1970’s (when I absolutely was not a birder, that didn’t happen until decades later - I wasn’t even when I was taking ornithology in college). In it Peterson mentions that the European Starling had ‘now reached the Rockies and might eventually penetrate the Far West’. How right he was 
.
Pardon my ignorance, but what’s “The Shakespreare stuff”?
I’ll pay for that information with a little exchange - where I was brought up (the far north west of England) the word for that bird is: Spuggy.
j
So Shakespeare mentions starlings in Henry IV:
He said he would not ransom Mortimer,
Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer.
But I will find him when he lies asleep,
And in his ear I’ll hollo “Mortimer.”
Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak
Nothing but “Mortimer,” and give it him
To keep his anger still in motion.
Sparrows in Hamlet:
Not a whit. We defy augury.
There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now;
If it be not now yet it will come.
The readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows,
what is ‘t to leave betimes? Let be.
So the notion was that an American romantic and amateur ornithologist, the aforementioned Eugene Schieffelin, decided whimsically that every bird Shakespeare mentioned should be imported to North America. The source of this notion was a naturalist writing more than a half-century later who apparently had no actual cite to prove it. It’s not impossible that it’s still true - Teale may have had a since lost informant/source that told him that was one of Schieffelin’s motivations. It was exactly the sort of romantic nonsense you’d expect from a 19th century amateur ornithologist. But Teale also might have pulled it out of his ass because it was exactly the sort of romantic nonsense you’d expect from a 19th century amateur ornithologist and it made for a good story 
.
Thank you for that- ignorance fought.
Here’s a hijack that I’ll apologize for in advance, but it involves one of very few newspaper articles that has made me cry with laughter.
So: he didn’t introduce the grey heron then?
The Guardian, an excellent British newspaper, many years ago ran a column in which a learned Professor of English explained the following lines from Hamlet:
“I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw."
A handsaw, the good professor explained, is a heron.
I never actually saw that article, so I can’t comment on his arguments. I saw the next week’s column. It turned out that the Guardian was the paper of choice for erudite plasterers, and you would be surprised how many of them wrote in to point out that a hawk is what you use to hold plaster, and a handsaw is, uh, a handsaw. And you need both to build lath and plaster houses of the type so popular in Shakespeare’s day.
The handsaw = heron theory is still out there - maybe it’s correct; but watching an editor wrestle with the bleeding obvious explanation of the lines was hilarious. Who knew that professors of English don’t hang around in builders merchants?
j
Huh, I always just figured that that line was two completely different things, implying that you’d have to be stark raving north-north-west to not know the difference between a bird of prey and a woodworking tool. Sort of a cow tools type of thing.
And while sparrows might be introduced, doesn’t North America have a variety of other Little Brown Birds that are nearly indistinguishable from them, anyway?
Many, many. But New World sparrows (141 species) and Old World sparrows (43 species) are not closely related. New World sparrows are more closely related to Old World buntings…which look a lot like sparrows . Then there are the finches, the sparrow-larks and others. There just seems to be an awful lot of convergent evolution pushing towards little brown(ish) birds as a highly adaptive shape/form.
But what’s this about not being able to tell them apart? Are you saying it is hard to distinguish an Old World Yellow-browed Bunting from a New World White-throated Sparrow at 20 yards out? Are you mad, man? They are completely and utterly different!
Not today, but a while ago, this guy. For some reason, Canberra has peafowl.
Stunning! (Click on that pic, y’all)
Well, I didn’t see it, but my camera did.
Bear sauntering across our front yard at 1:15 AM:
Neato! We could have bears here in theory, but I’m just as glad that I’ve never seen one in the yard.
He left a big “present” in the back yard. Damaged the neighbor’s fence getting in.
All the good spots in the woods must have been taken.
OR, the old adage has just been aggressively disproven. Now I don’t know what to believe anymore .
At Point Lobos, a squadron (pod, pouch, or scoop) of pelicans enjoying having Gibson Beach all to themselves.
Wow! That’s quite a sight.
My favorite spot on the CA coast, though I don’t go as often as I should.
Over Roussillon in Provence, unusual clouds formations.
Click through for the full image.
j
Don’t you just love clouds?
I just walked home from getting some dinner, barely beat the rain. This is what the sky looked like:
