Sam’s first sparrow paper has just been published in the open access journal Avian Research, which means that it’s freely available (here). In our paper we have looked at the history of the house sparrow introduction into Australia in the 1860’s. A great effort was made to introduce sparrows in an effort to use them to fight the insect pests that were perceived to be causing significant damage to the ability of the farms to feed the early colonists. One of the most surprising findings of the historical research that we conducted was that although it is commonly believed that the sparrows came out from England, we found clear evidence that the first birds to arrive and breed in Australia in fact came from India.