Subject: Fwd: Renton GBBG comment, ID-F response
Date: Feb 2 16:53:56 2004
From: Kathy Andrich - chukarbird at yahoo.com


Hi Everyone,

This may be a redundant question but have any of the
people who commented on this gull been nationaly or
internationally known gull experts? What would they
think or would they have time to peruse the photo's
and comment?

I may in left field asking this, as I am not sure who
is expert, but have read many comments about this
gull's possible parentage and wonder, is all the
measuring of photo's, etc. necessary?

Then again I noticed shortly after begining birding
how people like to "discuss" the fine points of birds
they are looking at.

By the way I did go once to look for the gull but it
was out to lunch, probably at the landfill.

Kathy

Kathy Andrich
Roosting in Kent
chukarbird at yahoo.com


--- Phillip Pickering <philliplc at harborside.com>
wrote:
> > 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


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