Subject: Fwd: Renton GBBG comment, ID-F response
Date: Feb 2 14:56:22 2004
From: Phillip Pickering - philliplc at harborside.com


> Structurally it's prefect, and I see
> nothing to suggest it's any type of hybrid.


My opinion aside, if that were true why would some of those
who are intimately familiar with GBBG have expressed such a low
comfort level with the structure? (both on the list and in personal
comm.) If it were structurally perfect that wouldn't happen, at
least not to anywhere near the extent it has. The series of photos is
excellent, and there's no reason to suspect that they are misleading
anyone.

I bring this up (again, sorry) to amplify the point that there are
both multiple positive and negative opinions out there about
this bird - and it seems that, at least for some in Washington, the
tendency might be to give more weight to the positive and be less
attentive of the negative, when in the case of a potential first state
record such as this the exact opposite should be true. Even if you
don't agree with them, the fact that others who are familiar with
GBBG are questioning it at all should be disconcerting for such an
extralimital bird, particularly if you take seriously Tony Leukering's
argument about intergrades potentially being more prone to
wander out of range than pure birds.

As for myself, in extensive photo study (pushing 300 photos of well
over 200 birds) I have not been able to find a GBBG that shows a
structure similar to the Washington bird. Compared to their body bulk
GBBG seem to invariably have proportionately larger heads, eyes, and
bills, seem to almost invariably be more attenuated in the rear and have
much flatter bellies, and seem to almost invariably have a steeper, less
gradual culmen downcurve. If 200+ birds can be considered an
adequate sample, at the fine level necessary to confirm it IMO as
a whole the bird does not appear to be within the normal structural
range of variation of pure GBBG *at all*. The structure is that odd.
As Alvaro said, it doesn't really fit anything, which for me sounds a
fire alarm that, even though the patterning is close to GBBG, there
is still a very high probability of it being an intergrade.

Respectfully,

Phil Pickering
Lincoln City, Oregon
philliplc at harborside.com