> --from Macklin Smith
> Al Jaramillo's remarks on the Siberian Accentors, vis a vis the
> difficulty in sexing them, make me want to add just a few comments
> and a query. The bird we observed, which Mr. Kime believes to be
> a female, was less bright in its buffy tones than the supposed male,
> he says. The supposed female had gray flank streaks, not red, while
> the other bird is said to have black streaks--neither bird showing
> the reddish streaks illustrated in most bird books. Since I only
> saw the one bird, this comparison is a matter of hearsay, but I am
> guessing that the hearsay is pretty reliable. I know the supposed
> female has been photographed, but don't know if the supposed male
> has been. The bird we saw seemed to me very strongly streaked with
> rufous on the mantle and scapulars. It also had very fine, very fine
> black streaks or even dots across the lower breast, much finer than,
> say, the streaks on a Lincoln's Sparrow. Al's provocative comments
> certainly make me want to examine specimens at the U of Mich bird
> room, which I'll try to do tomorrow. Apparently (from Al's use of
> "less" and "more" as well as from difficulties in determining age)
> the field identification as to age and sex is more difficult than
> we may know--which then makes one wonder if the specimens are
> correctly labeled.... Anyhow, I'll look. The query is this: the
> name of the bird means singing together? Do both sexes indeed sing,
> and if so do they do a call-and-response sort of routine? By way
> of anecdote, Mike Toochin of Vancouver, whom I consider a very
> competent birder, reported to me having heard the supposed male
> bird singing around the time that the supposed female was under
> observation, but from a different direction, whereas no one has
> reported the supposed female as singing or calling, to my knowledge.
>
I looked up bits on song mainly in BWP (Birds of the Western Palearctic).
The two best studied accentors in the Western Palearctic are Dunnock and
Alpine, both of these have females songs. The females sing infrequently and
the song is not as complex as that of the males. The other three species in
the book, Radde's, Black-throated and Siberian are not well studied and
nothing is mentioned regarding females songs. I imagine that the females also
sing, but that it has not been confirmed. Dueting is not mentioned for any
of the species.

Nick Davies of Cambridge University has done a lot of work on Accentors,
mainly Dunnock but more recently Alpine as well. His team has found that
dunnock have a really odd mating system, where female territories may overlap
male territories. These birds with overlapping territories will form pair
bonds ranging from straight monogamy to polyandry (1 female, >1 male)
polygyny (1 male, >1 female) and polygynandry (>1 female, >1 male). Given
the unusual mating system, I don't find it surprising that females may sing.
So if we assume that Siberian Accentors behave like Dunnock then the females
probably sing.

BTW- I talked to Mike Toochin and he reasoned that what he heard may not have
been a full song, and his description (high trills in series of 3 or 4) are
consistent with the calls (not song) of this species. In any case, its
difficult to speculate on this given that so little is known about the
species in general.

As far as I know there have been no reports of the Salmon Arm Accentor since
Sunday, maybe it has gone.

Al Jaramillo
jaramill at sfu.ca
Vancouver, B.C.