On Thu, 15 Dec 1994, Steve Hampton wrote:
> Are there ornithologists that propose lumping all the large
> gulls (Herring, Western, Thayers, Iceland, Gl-W, Glaucous,
> others) into a single species? Sometimes I wonder if a
> plausible case could be made. It seems now that gull types
> qualify as individual species under standards far more relaxed
> than other species. Are their calls all the same?
>
There are some here on BirdChat more taxonomically inclined than I who
can answer the specific point of your question. While we await their
response I can offer a slightly different perspective. In watching the
pendulums of science swing it appears to me the fashion in systematics
right now is that splitting is in and lumping is out. Much of this is a
response to Ernst Mayr's dominating influence in 20th century
systematics. Many view the Mayrian school as old guard and a new guard,
the cladistic school, is battling for supreimacy. Much of this has more
to do with the sociology of scienitsts than it has to do with real advances
in scientific understanding of natural systems. There is no longer any doubt
about the fact that cladistics has made a real contribution to systematics,
but it is arguable as to how extensive this contribution is or will be.
Cladists are riding the crest of the wave right now and have made splitting
the fashion. In contrast, anyone arguing for lumping will appear to be old
fashioned. All this of course without definitive knowledge of species or
speciation, as is manifest by the fact that there is no universally agreed
upon definition of a species. We have seen here on BirdChat that among us
are supporters of the biological species concept (BSC), the species
concept of the Mayrian school, and the phylogentic species concept (PSC),
the leading species concept of the cladistic school. Yet both of these
species concepts have flaws, and there are a dozen or more alternative
species concepts as well. Thus any attempt to lump or split the gulls
mentioned above should be taken as a working hypothesis rather than a
fact. Also there is no apriori reason to believe that the pendulum will
not swing yet again.

What does all this mean to the amateur birdwatcher? My opinion is any
morphology that can be clearly discerned in the field should be paid
attention to by birders - regardless of the current trend in avian
systematics and regardless of the ABA listing rules. The individual
birder will learn a lot more about variation in plumages, morphologies,
geographic distribution of populations, etc. by taking note of every
population that is visibly different than they ever will by adhering to
ABA counting rules. I had much rather see birders maintain their own
personal lists of these various morphological types (regardless of
whether they are called species, subspecies, races, etc.) than to try to
force all individual birds into someone else's (perhaps) arbitrary
species definitions.

Are you looking for, *and listing*, subspecies of Fox Sparrow, Dark-eyed
Junco, Nashville Warbler, and White-crowned Sparrow (as examples)? If not
you are missing out on much of the fun of being in the field. To you, is
a Fox Sparrow equal to one life tick and nothing more regardless of which
subspecies it is? If so ask yourself why. Is it because the ABA only
acknowledges a count of one for a Fox Sparrow? Do you submit your life
list, regional, state and other lists to the ABA for publication? If the
answer to this last question is yes then you *are* obligated to abide by
the ABA listing rules. But if your answer is no then it doesn't matter
how you count life birds!!! This is very important to understand. If you
are not participating in the ABA competitive listing game then it just
doesn't matter to anyone but *you* what your rules are for counting birds.

Several times a year there comes up on BirdChat a question about whether
or not an individual bird or a species is countable and it always
resolved to the view that you are entitled to set your own parameters for
inclusion of birds to your personal list -- unless you submit your list
to the ABA for publication. ABA standardizes the rules so when comparing
the published lists one can compare apples to apples and not to oranges.

My life list is still governed by the Mayrian biological species concept
and pretty much falls within the guidelines of the ABA rules. (I don't
submit my lists to ABA for publication because I'm not a proponent of the
competitive listing game -- I think it leads birders down the wrong path.)
But, I intend to change my list to one where each clearly discernable form
that can be seen in the field is listed separately. By doing this I will
have a much better accounting of just how much of world avian diversity
I've sampled with my own eyes. In addition to leading one to a better
understanding of birds this strategy can also resolve other problems. For
example, right now there is a Cinnamon Teal in Connecticut. I was asked
last night by a birder who has never seen the bird whether I thought she
should go see it. In all probability it is an escape thus not countable
by ABA rules. Behavior governed by ABA listing rules would prevent many
birders from "wasting" the time and money to go see this bird. But,
according to my system the answer would be yes, go see the bird. Escape
or not it is still a Cinnamon Teal - a beautiful bird - if you've never
seen one and you truely love birds then go get some experience with this
species. The only reason *not* to see the bird would be that THE LIST,
not the love birds, is your primary motivator. Then whether or not you
count the Cinnamon Teal on your life list is completely up to you. I
told this birder to go enjoy this teal, she said she would and hopefully
she will.

Many birders seem to be eagerly awaiting the prospects that the PSC will
create many new species to list. Why? Why wait for someone else to tell
you it is ok to go see these birds? The birds don't change, if you can
tell the difference between Rosy Finches after an "official" split then
you can tell them apart before such a split. So go out and study the
morphological variation in Rosy Finches irrespective of current taxonomic
fashion. This is what the top birders have been doing all along and is
why they get so many new "arm chair" life species. A final consideration,
there is no reason to look forward to the PSC dominating systematics as
far as some species are concerned. This will be the case whenever
"species" differences can not be discerned in the field. My understanding
is that many potential new species of Red Crossbill can only be
determined by careful study of the bird in hand -- that you can not be
certain of which form you are seeing in the field with optics. For
species like this it will not matter much to the birder whether or not
these birds have been lumped or split except that you may have several
new species to "get" with no certain way of knowing whether you "got"
them.

==========================

From: Joe Morlan <jmorlan at slip.net>
Subject: Re: Hybrid Western x Glaucous-winged Gulls

> Forwarded from the Washington State (+B.C.) email group "tweeters"
> ==========================
>
> Date: Thu, 22 Dec 94 10:13:26 -0800
> From: Dennis Paulson <dpaulson at ups.edu>
> To: Multiple recipients of list <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Re: hybrid gulls

> I'm impressed that Chris Hill took the time to look that closely at a flock
> of over 100 "Larus vulgaris," and he touched on a subject that probably
> puzzles many.
>
> About this particular hybrid pair; my rule of thumb (or of alula) has been
> that the mantle color varies with the wingtip color, so that westerns, with
> their essentially black primaries, have a dark gray mantle (but in this
> region not so dark as many field guides show for western), and
> glaucous-wings, with their gray primaries, have a much paler gray mantle.
> This is pretty straightforward, but there is a caveat: in neither species
> is the mantle and primary color the same. It is rare to find a
> glaucous-wing with wingtips as light as its mantle, contrary to the
> illustration in the NGS field guide. I think this is most likely in summer,
> when the wingtips have faded more than the mantle and approach it in
> coloration, but even in a bunch of wings from AK (where there should be no
> western influence) from summer, there are obvious slightly darker gray
> spots at the wingtips corresponding to the black tips in other gull
> species. The more proximal parts of the primaries are about the same color
> as the mantle, whereas in westerns the entire wingtip, including the
> outermost primaries, is always darker than the mantle--*not* the same
> color.

This reminds me of the point I was trying to make in an earlier thread on
BirdChat in which I expressed the opinion that wingtips somewhat darker
than the mantle was not necessarily indicative of hybridization between
Western and Glaucous-winged gulls, but rather a matter of normal variation
within Glaucous-winged.

Chris Corben replied with the question "How can we test this?" which is
an excellent question. Looking at Glaucous-winged Gull specimens
collected well away from the range of Western or Herring Gulls would be
the best way to evaluate the extent of individual variation within
Glaucous-winged Gull. Dennis Paulson's observation that normal
Glaucous-wings from Alaska have wingtips darker than the mantle should
settle the question. His refinement that the bases of the wingtips
(anterior portion) are paler than the tip and are the same as the mantle
in Glaucous-winged Gull is an important caveat.

I also previously discussed the problem of immature hybrids in which I
expressed the opinion that the bird in the Nat. Geo. guide labeled a 1st
winter hybrid, would not strike me as odd and I would identify such a
bird in the field as a Glaucous-winged Gull. Real hybrids usually have
much darker wing-tips than that (including the bases).

> If one accepts the assumption that mantle color varies with wingtip color,
> then there shouldn't be hybrids with primaries much darker than the mantle.
> A typical hybrid should be rather inbetween--dark gray wingtips, mantle
> about intermediate between western and glaucous-wing. The birds that Neil
> Fergusson described as having "jet black wing-tips, but sporting a mantle
> of the same color as a glaucous-winged" by my definition could not be
> hybrid GWGU x WEGU. Mantle and wingtips do vary somewhat independently in
> hybrids, but not enough, in my opinion, to produce birds colored like this.
> There are no such birds among the many, many specimens of this group in
> the Slater and Burke museums. By my criteria these should be herring,
> Thayer's, or possibly herring x glaucous-winged hybrids. This last type is
> apparently not all that rare in this area and may be manifested by a bird
> that looks like a herring but has brown eyes! At least that's what we're
> calling such birds; if they're not HEGU x GWGU hybrids, something else is
> going on.

On the Oakland, California CBC on Sunday, I noticed a gull on the parking
lot at Golden Gate Fields race track which I called a Herring Gull at
first. It had a mantle the same as Glaucous-winged Gull, but much darker
(blackish or charcoal gray) wing-tips including the bases. Closer
approach revealed an all dark eye, eliminating Herring Gull. The
underwing tips appeared pale and so the next logical choice was
Thayer's. Unfortunately this gull was about the same size as a male
Glaucous-winged Gull and had a large bill. We agreed the wing-tips were
much too dark for a pure Glaucous-winged, but other than wing-tip color
there was nothing wrong with the bird for Glaucous-winged.

We ended up reporting it as a Western X Glaucous-winged hybrid, which
satisfied me at the time. However if Dennis' observation above is
correct, it might have been a Glaucous-winged X Herring.

[deletions]

> Like Thayer's, glaucous-wings and westerns vary in eye color from dark
> brown to light brown, even yellowish. Some of this is probably due to
> hybridization (westerns tend to have paler eyes than glaucous-wings). A
> good mark for "typical" western is a white head retained through the
> winter. I don't know if the fact that so many of our birds that look as
> dark as typical westerns have smudgy heads in winter indicates more
> hybridization than we realize or just variation in this population. It
> really seems as if there is a cline from glaucous-wings (which get darker
> to the south) to westerns (which also get darker to the south), but there
> *is* a break between paler and darker populations in WA, and hybrids are
> still a minority on the outer coast where the two come together, so there
> isn't complete interbreeding by any means.

I have never seen a Glaucous-winged Gull with a clear yellow eye, like a
Herring, but certainly agree that the eye color of Thayer's is quite
variable. The one Glaucous-winged that I have seen that did have a
yellow eye, we finally identified as Herring X Glaucous-winged, but it
had some black spotting mixed with gray spotting on the wing-tip.

I have often wondered about dusky head shading on Western Gulls in
winter. When I look at those closely it usually turns out that they are
either 1) not adult or 2) not really Western Gulls. They often show
other anomalies (especially pale underwings) suggesting hybridization
with Glaucous-winged.

[deletions]

> Well, only one more comment. I wish I could add these essays to my list of
> publications! I think a lot of people are doing a lot of their writing on
> e-mail now, at least some of it of lasting value, but destined to remain in
> the memory banks of main frames rather than be out on the printed page and
> accessible to everyone. I guess it's just another one of our many class
> systems. There are ways to search for old e-mail messages, and most
> bulletin boards are archiving them, but I wonder how much will actually be
> stored over the years. And just think how much we write that *isn't* worth
> storing, yet it'll be there too.

I think some of these discussions could be reprinted as
"Point/Counterpoint" in _BIRDING_.

> 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

Joe Morlan
Albany, CA

=================

From: Matt.Stone at COAT.COM

Subject: Publishing of e-mail discussions (was Re: Hybrid Western x
Glaucous-winged Gulls)

Re: Joe Morlan's response to Dan Victor's re-posting of Dennis Paulson's
message from Tweeters (whew!):

> > Well, only one more comment. I wish I could add these essays to my list of
> > publications! I think a lot of people are doing a lot of their writing on
> > e-mail now, at least some of it of lasting value, but destined to remain in
> > the memory banks of main frames rather than be out on the printed page and
> > accessible to everyone. I guess it's just another one of our many class
> > systems. There are ways to search for old e-mail messages, and most
> > bulletin boards are archiving them, but I wonder how much will actually be
> > stored over the years. And just think how much we write that *isn't* worth
> > storing, yet it'll be there too.
>
> I think some of these discussions could be reprinted as
> "Point/Counterpoint" in _BIRDING_.
>

This ties in quite nicely with an idea which I've been kicking around.
I have thought for a while that there might be a need for some sort of
a newsletter (electronic, of course) associated with birding on the
internet. I'm a bit unfocused right now, so forgive me if I wander.

The initial idea sprouted from my confusion in trying to follow the
BSC/PSC debate which seems to crop up every six months or so. Not
having formally studied biology, I am at something of a disadvantage
trying to follow the arguments. I have been wishing for some sort of
primer on the issues which I could read so that I could get a handle
on what is going on. I realize that the BIRDCHAT archives probably
have the information that I want, but as with so many other things I
have been hoping that someone would drop the answers into my lap ;-).

As a community, I think that it's a good idea if we attempt to raise
the understanding of the topics being discussed on this list, and I,
for one, am in need of some remedial education in certain areas...

So, in the interest of educating the list, we should share information
more formally in certain cases. This may mean providing background and
references for certain threads (as I wished for with the BSC/PSC stuff),
or collating and republishing the consensus on a discussion like this
thread (on hybrid Western x Glaucous-winged Gulls). I'm willing to bet
that discussions of this caliber, if properly organized, would be picked
up by _Birding_ or _Winging It_ or some other publication. And formal
publication would address Dennis Paulson's concern about losing some of
the valuable information which is being posted on these lists. I also
am not limiting this to BIRDCHAT, we could have "correspondents"
gathering information from all of the electronic birding forums.

Just a few thoughts, any reactions?

Now, don't go looking to me to do this, to quote Ratbert (Dilbert
17-Dec-94) "I'm more of an idea rat".

Seriously, I would be happy to discuss this further with anyone who is
interested.

matt

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew J. Stone _____. \\ Internet: Matt.Stone at coat.com
Burlington Coat Factory ->> \ ___>>.
Etna, NH, USA // --- \ Home: Hartland, VT, USA

===================

From: CORBEN at DELPHI.COM
Subject: Re: Hybrid Western x Glaucous-winged Gulls

Dennis Paulson wrote:

>It is rare to find a glaucous-wing with wingtips as light as its mantle,
>contrary to the illustration in the NGS field guide. I think this is most
>likely in summer, when the wingtips have faded more than the mantle and
>approach it in coloration, but even in a bunch of wings from AK (where
>there should be no western influence) from summer, there are obvious
>slightly darker gray spots at the wingtips corresponding to the black tips
>in other gull species. The more proximal parts of the primaries are about
>the same color as the mantle ......

But, at least in the Point Reyes area, it's common to find Gw's in which
the wingtips LOOK as pale as the mantle. It may be obvious in the hand that
there is a contrast between pale and darker portions of the primaries, but
it isn't necessarily apparent in the field, where the textural differences
between the primaries and mantle feathers make comparisons difficult. To
illustrate this point, I recently saw a Gw which I initially thought had
primaries the same color as the mantle (except for their tips, of course -
this bird was in definitive Basic plumage). Later I saw this bird with its
wings outstretched. Then I could see that there was indeed a contrast
between the bases of the primaries and the darker, more distal portions,
and it seemed then that the paler bases were closer to the mantle in color.
The point is that this contrast was SUBTLE, only visible because we were
watching the bird from close range with tripod-mounted scopes, and because
the wing was spread. On the other hand, the contrast was well-defined, and
in pattern recalled that seen in other gull species.

I see lots of Gw Gulls which look similar in primary color to that bird,
though I don't usually get to see them well enough to pick up the pattern
on the primaries; they are certainly not rare around here.

Joe Morlan wrote:

>Dennis Paulson's observation that normal Glaucous-wings from Alaska have
>wingtips darker than the mantle should settle the question. His
>refinement that the bases of the wingtips (anterior portion) are paler
>than the tip and are the same as the mantle in Glaucous-winged Gull is an
>important caveat.

Yes, but let's make sure we are talking about the same degree of contrast
here. Dennis regards birds with primaries the same color as the mantle as
rare, while I would say such birds are common. Is this because the
contrasts which Dennis is talking about are subtle, such that I am likely
to overlook them in the field? If so, is this the same level of contrast
that Joe is referring to?

Dennis Paulson wrote:

>The birds that Neil Fergusson described as having "jet black wing-tips,
>but sporting a mantle of the same color as a glaucous-winged" by my
>definition could not be hybrid GWGU x WEGU. Mantle and wingtips do vary
>somewhat independently in hybrids, but not enough, in my opinion, to
>produce birds colored like this.

But I've seen a lot of birds like this! They are much less common than
birds with intermediate colored primaries, but I would expect to see a
couple of examples in any decent sized flock around here. I have been
recently trying to get to grips with distinguishing such birds from
Thayer's Gulls. Usually, I think this is fairly obvious, with the Thayer's
looking slightly smaller, more delicate headed, finer billed and having a
head pattern more like Herring Gull, with streaks instead of the more
scaley look typical of Gw and Gw X Wn hybrids. But some have given me a lot
of trouble, so I have wondered about Gw X He hybrids.

The birds I call Gw X Wn with black primaries and pale mantles look mostly
like Gw Gulls, with the typical scaley-headed look, heavy bills and bulky
build. In overall appearance, they are much closer to Gw than to He Gulls.
They might not be the same as birds which Dennis Paulson described thus:

> ....or possible herring x glaucous-winged hybrids. This last type is
> apparently not all that rare in this area and may be manifested by a bird
> that looks like a herring but has brown eyes! At least that's what we're
> calling such birds; if they're not HEGU x GWGU hybrids, something else is
> going on.

I wonder what IS going on?!

Chris Corben
PO Box 128
Olema CA 94950
415-663-8336
corben at delphi.com