>>In the recent issue of Winging It, there was an article on St Maries Idaho.

>>Bill and Nancy LaFramboise
>
>The answer could be either "yes" or "no."
>Unfortunately, the grapevine spreads the word of taxonomic decisions that
>are being considered by the American Ornithologists' Union Check-list
>Committee, and the intense interest among birders for what's to be split
>and lumped carries these intended decisions to the four corners of
>Birderdom well before they are official. Van Remsen, a member of both the
>AOU committee and the American Birding Association's check-list committee,
>has cautioned birders not to count their species before they're hatched, as
>sometimes the AOU committee changes its mind before publication. The
>decisions must be published, either in the new AOU Check-list which is on
>its way, or in a supplement published in the Auk.
>
>Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798

When Dan Svingen and I wrote that little diddy, we talked about "Spotted"
Rufous-sided Towhees, and that's how it was in our final draft. Somewhere
in ABA-land it was edited to Spotted Towhee. Dan and I were ready to put
down our binoculars for a weekend as punishment for that faux pas, but since
we had it right in our draft, we went birding instead. I guess the
grapevine entangles Winging It! as well.

Kas Dumroese
Moscow, Idaho
dumroese at uidaho.edu