Hi all,

Being the original poster of the "Junkadee" photos (at least on to
Tweeters, I must say that I think Mike Patterson and Michael Hobbs
are correct in calling this individual a leucistic junco: simply a
minor genetic aberration, rather than a highly unlikely interspecific
hybrid. Thanks for your posting & the humerous "hybrid" name
combinations!

Mark


>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Scott R" <scray at wolfenet.com>
>To: "tweeters" <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
>Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 2:51 PM
>Subject: RE: hybrid in CO
>
>> It's very difficult to imagine a chickadee and a junco breeding
>> together. Although both species breed in similar habitats,
>> they are so extremely different in their habits.
>> What are the other possibilities?
>
>Scott and Tweeters:
>
>Start with the form of the bird. This bird appears to be the same shape
>and size as a Dark-eyed Junco. The beak and legs look like a junco's.
>The behavior and posture look like a junco's. Everything about the bird,
>except for the coloration of the plumage, appears to be a Dark-eyed Junco.
>
>So, in fact, it is almost certainly a Dark-eyed Junco.
>
>If you look at the diagram of feather groups on a Song Sparrow on page 84
>of Sibley's "Birding Basics", you can see that only a very few feather
>groups are "wrong" for Dark-eyed Junco. This bird appears to have an
>anomaly such that the auriculars, lores, throat, and breast are
>essentially white. It is hard to tell if the malars are dark, or if they
>are only partially black, to provide the line of separation demarking the
>throat from the white face. The upper breast feathers are black providing
>the black band. There is a small white spot where the nape meets the
>mantle.
>
>This is probably not fundamentally different than a crow or robin with
>white markings, something that is quite common
>(see http://www.scn.org/earth/tweeters/images/piedcrw1.html and
>http://www.scn.org/earth/tweeters/images/piedcrw2.html)
>
>I've only seen a Dark-eyed Junco x Black-capped Chickadee hybrid once - it
>was being eaten by my Basset Hound X Siamese Cat hybrid pet :)
>
>== Michael Hobbs
>== Kirkland, WA
>== http//www.scn.org/fomp/birding.htm
>== hummer at isomedia.com


--
Mark Egger
Seattle, WA

megger at attbi.com