Bob Boekelheide, continuing this great discussion, wrote:

>Your comments raise some really neat questions. ... [snip] ...
>Leading to the next, inevitable, question: should the AOU "lump?" I
>don't know, but if the gull species we see now are reunited following
>Pleistocene separation, kind of like the Black-throated Green Warbler
>complex, then we're witnessing a wonderful experiment in speciation.

This verges on a question that occurred to me as I drove in my car the
other day: What is the definition of a "superspecies?"

By asking this, I'm hoping any one of several Tweets who are truer
ornithologists than I can refresh my brain. My general impression of the
term has been that it covers situations similar to the one under
discussion, where there is perhaps a cline between recognized forms and a
whole series of interbreeding forms in between. Certainly not a situation
that lends itself to easy categorization.

>I did not know that these birds have been called "Puget Sound Gull,"

I didn't either. I like both terms, as well as "Columbia Gull" -- though
the latter term reminds me of the region sometimes called "Columbiana"
after the river that drains the vast interior. This is largely a coastal
species. Bioregionally speaking, I would vote for "Olympic Gull" -- but
what do Tweets north of our invisible political border think?

BTW, the only term I've ever heard around town for these birds is the
dismissive, "hybrids."

-- Janet Hardin
wings at olympus.net
Port Townsend, WA
Home of a Thousand Gulls