A few comments...

>
>I'll quote from Rising and Beadle's book, 'A Guide to the Identification and
>Natural History of the Sparrows of the United States and Canada' (and the
>Oscar for the longest book title in the natural history category goes to...):
>

OK

>(begin quote)

...

>...Cassiar Juncos breed east of the coastal ranges from central Yukon
>southeast to north-central and eastern British Columbia and west-central
>Alberta. These birds represent a stable population of apparent hybrids
>(intergrades?--m) between Slate-colored and 'Oregon' juncos (J.h. oreganus),

Your insertion is quite appropriate--what is a stable population of apparent
hybrids? That statement makes no sense! Please emphasize that this is a
population of birds intermediate along a continuum between eastern birds
and western birds. They aren't hybrids. I'm not even sure they are
intergrades?

In a gross simplification--what is occuring is a change in certain gene
frequencies from here to there. We may perceive subspecies only because
the environmental features that select for the frequencies in the population
change at sufficiently high rates at the "subspecies" boundaries.

And then perhaps only because the gene combinations produce birds that
are readily separable from others with slightly different combinations.

>and they are intermediate in coloration between the two.

...

>...Most of the Slate-colored Juncos wintering in coastal British Columbia
>appear to be J.h. cismontanus.
>(end quote)
>
>>From the above, I'd suggest it's reasonable that most of the coastal
>sightings of male 'Slate-colored' Juncos are of 'cismontanus' intergrades
>rather than nominate 'hyemalis' birds as would be implied in the
>identification as 'Slate-colored', and that even birds which seem on plumage
>alone to be of the nominate race are, in this part of North America, more
>likely to be carrying some 'oreganus' genes than not.

We're not really sure what are 'oreganus' genes vs. 'cismontanus' genes
vs. 'hyemalis' genes. They are called Slate-colored Juncos because back
when the species boundaries were being drawn is was decided to put
cismontanus in that group. And on that basis it is still proper
to call them Slate-colored or better yet Cassiar Juncos, if you want a
common name, but not hybrids!

>
>Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
>Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
>mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
> Aphra Behn (1640-1689)


--Jerry <tangren at wsu.edu>
WSU-TFREC, Wenatchee WA