>From Russell Rogers, Seattle WA, rrogers at halcyon.com

Dennis,

I am a little confused about the subspecies that breed in Washington.
Jewett list _P. i. fuliginosa_ in the Olympics and _P. i. olivacea_ east of
the Cascade crest and in the Blue Mountains. Hudson and Yocom (1954) say
that the subspecies that nest in the Blue Mountains is _P. i.
schistacea_. They state that "Jewett, et al., refer the breeding fox
sparrows of eastern Washington to the race _olivacea_. My question is do
Jewett, et al., and Hodson and Yocom just have a differance in opinion or
are there actually two subspecies in eastern WA?

The new Birds of Oregon state that _schistacea, fulva, and megarhyncha_
nest in eastern Oregon, but don't give any clues as to which one might be
in the Blue Mountains. They don't make any mention that _olivacea_ is
found anywhere in the state. I don't have a copy of Gabrielson and
Jewett's Birds of Oregon.

On Wed, 14 Dec 1994, Dennis Paulson wrote:

> 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
>
>
>