>Hi Tweeters, I again have a question regarding Fox Sparrows. Which races
>occurr in Washington in the winter? (Actually, it's the same question as
>before). I saw one at Magnusson on Sunday,
>which I have gone back to look at again. The coloration suggests
>either the Rocky Mountain form, schistacea, or the California form,
>stephensi (Large-billed Sparrow). The head and nape are uniformly gray,
>and the rufous tail and rump feathers contrast sharply with the gray
>nape/back. I did not get to see the bill, but intuitively it seems much
>more likely to be from the Rockies (schistacea) than from California
>(stephensi). Just for fun, there was also the expected fuliginosa at
>both Magnusson and ML Fill. There was no streaking in the face, so I
>ruled out the Eastern race.
>
>____________________________
>Mike Smith
>Univ. of Washington, Seattle
>whimbrel at u.washington.edu

Well, fox sparrows are even more complicated than juncos in this part of
the world. Two subspecies breed in Washington. One is a mountain form,
widespread from the Cascade crest eastward: Passerella iliaca olivacea.
This is a gray-headed race, looks about like the schistacea illustrated in
the NGS guide but darker (so are schistacea and stephensi, by the way; the
book has them too pale). The head and back are about the same color
gray-brown, the rump and tail distinctly rufous in comparison. To my
knowledge there are no winter records of this race from WA. The other
breeding race is on the tip of the Olympic Peninsula, where an outlier of
Vancouver Island populations of P. i. fuliginosa breeds. This is a very
dark race, brown all over. It also is common throughout the coastal
lowlands in winter.

But from the north also come birds from numerous other races, paler than
fuliginosa: unalaschcensis, altivagans, insularis, sinuosa, annectens, and
townsendi. It's hopeless to try to distinguish them in the field; they vary
slightly in size, bill length and color, and the darkest of them grade into
fuliginosa. There are relatively few specimens of these critters from east
of the Cascades, but they occur. It would be especially interesting to know
which of them migrates down the east side; altivagans is the most likely,
as it breeds in the interior of BC. And which subspecies is (are)
represented among the small number of fox sparrows wintering east of the
Cascades? Jewett et al., in Birds of WA, list no winter specimens east.

The one that *can* be distinguished is the very different P. i. zaboria,
from interior AK and Yukon, which looks much like the eastern fox sparrow
(iliaca in NGS). There are a couple of specimens of this form from WA, and
others have been seen; it is the one for which it is worth keeping your
eyes peeled (where does that expression come from, anyhow?). This may be
more enticing if, as some of you may have heard, the Fox Sparrow might be
divided into 3 species, corresponding to the very different plumage types.

I'll add, for those who have asked about the value of dead (yuk) birds,
that we (and I) would know none of this information if it weren't for
museum collections, and good series of specimens at that. It's not trivial
to be concerned with the distribution of subspecies, as it gives us a lot
of information about migratory patterns within *species*. Among some groups
of birds, especially emberizines (sparrows, juncos), there may be numerous
subspecies represented in the Northwest, some of them more or less
recognizable in the field, and it is a challenge to detect some of this
variation.

Dennis Paulson phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416