In response to Al Jaramillo's comments about bird species concepts (or
birding species concepts), wouldn't it be a great idea if someone took the
National Geographic field guide concept one step farther and published a
"Field Guide to Geographic Variation in North American Birds?" Working in
a museum, I get to see this variation in our series of skins, and I cherish
the birds that people salvage for the collection, so we can continue to
learn about distribution patterns (e.g. of White-crowned Sparrow or junco
subspecies [distinct populations if you prefer]) as well as have material
for the study of evolutionary changes over time (as, possibly, in NW
crows).

A lot of species taxonomy is yet to change, I'm sure, with more DNA
studies and careful looks at overlap zones. Although I'm in favor of the
splitting that seems to be the order of the day (phylogenetic species-the
birdwatcher's species concept-seem to make sense), we shouldn't get carried
away in that direction either. Flickers come to mind-if you look closely
at them here you find an amazing number showing introgression, even
Washington breeding birds with Yellow-shafted characters (especially red on
the nape). Sapsuckers are another case; although recognized as different,
it seems to me there is a tremendous amount of hybridization between
Red-breasted and Red-naped sapsuckers in the Washington Cascades. Has
anyone else looked at this recently? There are quite a few published
papers on the subject.

From years of looking at gulls in the Northwest, it's hard for me
to rationalize keeping Western and Glaucous-winged as separate species.
Although realistically only 10% or fewer of the ones we see overall are
hybrids, at some times and places (e.g., Green Lake in Seattle in winter)
it seems like a much higher percentage are.

While I'm thinking of gulls, gull enthusiasts ought to be tuned in
to brown-eyed Herring Gulls. We have specimens of gulls collected in Puget
Sound that look exactly like adult Herring but have brown irises. Our best
guess is that they are Herring-Glaucous-winged hybrids, but ????