Tweeters:

Kelly's remarks caused me to take a look at our copy of Rising and Beadle's
sparrow book. Interesting. It sure isn't strong on accuracy of its range
maps, disregarding topography rather blatantly, just as Kelly said. But
then, Rising isn't a westerner and perhaps hasn't witnessed our topography
and its importance. The maps in the NGS and Peterson guides seem better in
this regard, at least for the species I just sampled.

I also noticed that he has chosen to split the Sage Sparrow into two
species, Sage (Amphispiza nevadensis) and Bell's (A. belli) Sparrows, a
split the A.O.U Check-list Committee has NOT made, at least not yet. If
they do, however, then it should be noted that Rising has not anticipated
the split correctly, because, of the three subspecies, he has place the
subspecies canescens (from the southern San Joaquin Valley and Mojave
Desert, California) with the Sage Sparrow (nevadensis) when it is
morphologically and genetically much closer to Bell's (belli, the coastal
form) and will be part of that (i.e. Bell's) species if the split does
occur (see AOU Check-list, 6th edition, "Notes" on page 614 and paper cited
there).

That is, the old and new alignments are:

Current taxonomy: Sage Sparrow with three subspecies, nevadensis,
canescens, and belli.

Taxonomy after possible split: Sage Sparrow containing only the former
nevadensis subspecies. Bell's Sparrow containing canescens and belli
subspecies.


Returning to the "maps" topic, I found Rising's maps of the Juncos
misleading. On pages 226 and 242 he gives the ranges of Dark-eyed (blue)
and Yellow-eyed (red) Juncos, and "Zones of intergradation" (purple). The
later implies that the Dark and Yellow-eyed species intergrade in the
purple intergrade locations on the map. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Dark- and Yellow-eyes don't intergrade anywhere. The intergrade
areas on the map refer to where subspecies groups of DARK-EYED JUNCOS (e.g.
"Oregon" and "Slate-colored" Juncos) intergrade. It would have been better
if Rising had labeled these on the map because the map is confusing as it
stands. Also it should be noted that the Breeding Bird Survey map (page
236) included within the text for "Oregon Junco," is really a combined map
for the "Pink-sided" AND "Oregon" types together. Again, it would have
been better if he had labeled it as such because one at first gets the
impression that it is for the "Oregon" type only. There is no separate map
for the "Pink-sided" form.

Richard (Dick) E. Johnson, Curator
Conner Museum of Natural History
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-4236
johnsonre at wsu.edu



> Re: Rising's and Beadle's Sparrow book. I've heard the taxonomy and
>descriptions are good.. The Breeding Bird Survey maps are fine+ADs- they are
>derived directly from the BBS data. However, the authors' distribution
>maps, based partly on the BBS data, are poor. The authors do not appear to
>recognize the relationship between topography and the BBS data. For
>example, Lincoln's Sparrow breeds primarily in the mountains in the Western
>US, as you can see from the BBS data. But the distribution map shows them
>essentially absent from the Cascades in Washington as breeders, but present
>through most of the Columbia Basin. The Grasshopper Sparrow is shown
>breeding through eastern WA, but also through most of the Cascades and SW
>Washington. Etc. They authors apparently used a coarse, connect-the-dots
>method to make their distribution maps, which can only partly be excused by
>map scale.
>
> Kelly Cassidy
> Seattle
> lostriver+AEA-seanet.com