Subject: White-breasted Nuthatch question
Date: Aug 16 17:54:56 1994
From: Alvaro Patricio Jaramillo - jaramill at sfu.ca


Hello fellow Tweeters,

This last weekend I had the fortune of heading into the Okanagan Valley in
the British Columbia interior for the first time in my life. Since I am
a recently transplanted easterner I saw several lifers and "phylogenetic
species lifers." The bird that most impressed me, however, was the my old
friend the White-breasted Nuthatch. Apart from the long bill of the Okanagan
birds, their call was so unlike the "yank" call of the eastern birds that
when I first heard them I thought it was a funny Steller's Jay call. None
of the field guides seem to mention the odd call of the "Ponderosa Pine
White-breasted Nuthatch". So what is the point of of all this? Well, from
the basic reading I have done it looks like there is another subspecies of
the White-breasted Nuthatch in the coastal mountains of Washington and
Oregon (Sitta carolina tennuis, or something similar). My question is what
do these guys sound like and do they come into contact with the Ponderosa
Pine birds anywhere in Washington or Oregon? I have the feeling that we
may have a nice cryptic species there, if it was an _Empidonax_ flycatcher
or a parid it would have been split a long time ago!


Al "looking for another tick" Jaramillo
jaramill at sfu.ca
Vancouver, BC