The view from the kitchen window of my second-floor apartment isn’t all that grand.

Just a look at part of a parking area and an alley on one side and the back corner of the building beside my building. Protruding from the side of that building is a short section of a vent pipe three or four inches in diameter.

Since early spring, a male house sparrow has made that pipe its home. At wasn’t long before I realized that I never saw a female around the site. Apparently, that pipe was just a bachelor pad.

I don’t recall having seen the little bird for the last week or two, either entering the pipe or perched at its favorite spot on a powerline in front of my window. Perhaps the recent hot weather has pushed it into the more comfortable sanctuary of some trees on the other side of the block.

Of course, a house sparrow sighting is far from remarkable. Who hasn’t seen one of these ultra common birds hundreds of times?

As a species, they are among the most numerous birds in North America preferring to live near humans. But many folks might not realize that house sparrows are an alien species, not even native to North America.

They were actually introduced on this side of the Atlantic to New York City in 1851 when 50 birds were released. The intent was they would help combat a heavy infestation of linden moth caterpillars. Within 50 years, they had spread to most areas of the country.

House sparrows are sometimes called “English sparrows” because of their foreign origins and have long been considered an invasive species because they compete with native birds for nesting sites and food.

Another introduced bird species is the European starling, which is also quite numerous and considered invasive. The introduction of starlings is a rather curious event.

The first starlings were released in Central Park, in New York City, in 1890 by a group of Shakespeare fans. Supposedly those folks wanted to have all the birds that Shakespeare mentioned in his plays here in North America.

I’m not sure if any other Shakespeare-inspired introductions were successful, but the tiny flock of New York starlings spread and multiplied tremendously as starlings are one of our most numerous birds and are found throughout the country.

Unfortunately, they are also an invasive pest as their staggering numbers often cause crop damage or spread disease.

Rock doves, or common pigeons, are another non-native species that have flourished in North America. These birds were domesticated long ago for food and other purposes.

They were brought to North America in the 1600s by European settlers. Pigeons thrive around humans, and large flocks of them are found in virtually every city in the country where they use buildings, bridges and other human structures for nesting sites.

Not all introduced birds and animals have turned out to be highly invasive pests.

The ring-necked pheasant is a popular gamebird for hunters. A native of Asia, ring-necked pheasants were first successfully stocked in the 1880s.

They thrived on the open agricultural lands of most northern states, creating widespread hunting opportunities in those regions. Unfortunately, changing farming methods and development over the past 50 years have caused dramatic declines in pheasant populations in much of their range.

Here in Pennsylvania, most of the wild birds in the southeastern part of the state had disappeared by the early 1980s.

Brown trout are another non-native species that is greatly loved by anglers. That wasn’t always the case, however. Brown trout are native to Europe and the British Isles and were first brought to North America in 1883.

By the 1920s, brown trout had been stocked in many streams, but many fishermen weren’t early fans of the European import. Brown trout often displaced the native brook trout in many streams and were generally harder to catch.

Some folks considered browns inferior to eat compared to brook trout. Nowadays, however, brown trout are highly respected by fly fishermen because of their selective feeding habits and ability to withstand the heavy fishing pressure on much of our better trout water.

While doing some research on non-native species, I learned that two quite common critters are, in fact, imports.

One of those is the honeybee. North America has about 4,000 species of wild bees, most of which are solitary insects that rarely sting.

Honeybees are actually a domesticated insect that lives in large colonies. They were domesticated from wild honeybees in Europe for access to honey and wax and then brought to North America by some of the early settlers.

I was somewhat surprised to learn that most of the earthworms in the northern regions are non-native.

During the last Ice Age, native earthworms were wiped out in all the northern half of the continent that was covered by dense glaciers. Earthworms were introduced to those regions by European settlers in the 17th century from the soil in some of the plants they brought over with them.

Like so many of the other introduced species, earthworms are now prolific. They are also about as close to a universal fishing bait as you will find.

As a young fisherman, I often picked nightcrawlers from the lawn in the middle of the night with a flashlight in my mouth or spaded up red wigglers from our backyard garden for an upcoming fishing trip. I had no idea those squirmy fish catchers were alien species.