Jack,

That's what most of us here believe, that is, that they are not good species
and that with White settlement and the opening of the forests whatever
geographical barriers existed two-hundred years ago have long since been
eliminated, and with it any pretense to maintainence of distinct breeding
populations. A careful study of all known breeding season crow specimens
from Western Washington was evaluated by David W. Johnston ca. 1960 (his
monographic treatment was published as _The Biosystematics of American
Crows_ in 1961 by the University of Washington Press). He concluded that the
"Northwestern Crow" was but a subspecies of the "Common Crow" (_Corvus
brachyrhynchos caurinus_), commenting that "only the extreme examples of
these crows from British Columbia or Alaska exhibit the combined ecologic
and morphologic characters which make them distinctive when compared with
more southerly populations" (pg. 37). He did not systematically analyze
patterns of distribution of vocalizations and in those days DNA comparisons
were not routine, so I suppose his conclusion might some day be reversed.
However, it seems to most of us here in Western Washington that the burden
of proof of the "two crows theory" should be on the shoulders of those who
claim that they are separate species, not the other way around. I have no
idea why the AOU committee has chosen to ignore Johnston's monograph.

Gene.

At 03:53 AM 1/5/99 -0800, you wrote:
>On Mon, 4 Jan 1999 21:40:11 -0800 (PST), Eugene Hunn wrote:
>
>>Not so, Jack, we're befuddled in Puget Sound by being surrounded by a
>>variable population precisely intermediate between the "Northwestern" and
>>the "American Crow." When I go east of the Cascades I have absolutely no
>>difficulty telling the "Interior Song Sparrow" from the "Coastal Song
>>Sparrow," likewise.
>
>Sorry. Poorly worded response on my part. I did not mean to denigrate
>anyone's ID skills. What I meant to say is that the source of all the
>confusion in the Puget Lowlands must be due to a separate population of
>crows which are smaller than the inland races of Am. Crow but not
>identifiable as NW Crows because I know that there are people who live there
>who are quite capable of telling the two species apart. Is there
>hybridization taking place in the PS area, Gene?
>
>
>---------------------------
>Jack Bowling
>Prince George, BC
>jbowling at direct.ca
>
>
>