Michael Price wrote:

>I was up in Cypress Bowl above W VCR a few weeks ago and had at least 2
>singing males but not enough time to see what race they were. Al Jaramillo
>went up a week later onto Mt Seymour in N VCR and found two territorial
>males that appeared to be intermediate between a 'Sooty' Fox and one of the
>grey-headed races. Dennis, Is this likely to be 'altigavens' or--and I hope
>I get this right--'cascadiensis'?

Curiouser and curiouser is all I can say. 'Slaty' Fox Sparrows in southern
BC should be P. i. olivacea, the race that breeds in the Cascades. The
'Sooty' Fox Sparrow P. i. fuliginosa is supposed to breed on the southern
mainland, as well as the Gulf Islands, according to Munro & Cowan's Birds
of BC (1947; I finally thought to check that publication). So I guess
either one, or intergrades between them, might be in the mountains above
Vancouver. From the most recent study of Fox Sparrows (Robert Zink in
Systematic Zoology, don't have the reference right here), the interior
Slaty Fox Sparrows hybridize rather seldom with the coastal Sooty Fox
Sparrows way up in northern BC. And of course his work will be used as the
evidence for the AOU to split the Fox Sparrows into at least 3 species, so
if hybridization were occurring around Vancouver, it would be very
interesting indeed.

P. i. altivagans is probably not in this picture. It breeds in northern
interior BC and is sort of intermediate between the 'Slaty' types and the
'Rusty' types (including P. i. zaboria, which winters down here rarely).
>From the literature it occurs primarily, if not entirely, east of the
Cascades. It's an uncommon migrant in WA, from the specimen record.

Well, I sure hope this beats limericks as a hot topic....if you think we
have problems with digressions, you should try bene, the environmental BB
to which I subscribe. If you deviate 5 degrees from what some consider the
primary function of the list, people start threatening to unsubscribe. A
very serious bunch, for some reason, perhaps because of the 1994 elections.
I think we have a good blend of science, environmentalism, recreation,
psychology, and art in our group, with the common denominator (usually) of
birds.

Dennis Paulson, Director 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