On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, Kelly Mcallister wrote:
> > The most authoritative information recently published of which I know
> > (citations available), suggests that Common Goldeneyes claimed as breeders
> > in Washington in fact are misidentified Barrow's, and that the people
> > doing the identification are unaware of the progression of the latter's
> > appearance through the breeding season, and the great difficulty in
> > separating the two females furing the summer months.
>
> Well, I have challenged Steve Zender on this issue and he is a good biologist
> so I have taken his assessment at face value. I can't remember how
> he decided they were Common Goldeneye rather than Barrow's. Rather
> than using the subtleties of bill size, head shape, and plumage,
> it seems to me that he described seeing nothing but Common Goldeneye
> males early on in the breeding season and assumed that the females
> seen later with broods were also Common Goldeneyes.

You can name names; one of the publications that says that Common
Goldeneyes are rare breeders is the Breeding Birds of Washington State
(Smith, Mattocks, and Cassidy 1997). (However, all errors are the fault
of Smith and Mattocks.) In an early draft of the volume, Common
Goldeneyes were modeled as breeders in the northeast, but a few reviewers
felt they were so rare, the data should be presented as points only. The
subsequent 7 or 8 reviewers of revised editions did not object. However,
the feeling that Common Goldeneyes are rare is based partly on lack of
data in general for the northeast, combined with the difficulty of
positively IDing females, and the usual duck problem of pairs courting in
one place and building nests far away from where they pair off. (I.e., if
you have insufficient or possibly unreliable data, you take the
conservative route.) The Birds of BC, Volume 1 (Campbell et al. 1990)
shows a few breeding records along the WA border, but most are
"occurrence" records.

>
> With the help of Tweeters to communicate the need, I suspect that
> some really keen observers will eventually tour the northeast corner
> and bring back some definitive descriptions that will settle the question
> in many of our minds. As for me, I may not get further east than
> Wenatchee for a while.
> Kelly McAllister


Agreed, except photos of mom and chicks are even better.

Kelly Cassidy
University of Washington, Seattle