I know it's going to seem like I'm out to disprove everything
Phil says, but I'm really not. I am very interested in the notion
of quantifying the "feel" of a bird, the gizz. Most birders who've
been at it for a while get to where the can make an ID seemly from
nothing and it's hard to explain that to others. I really understand
where Phil's coming from.

But any claim based on numbers should be replicable, that's one of
those fussy science rules. So I got out my calipers and measured
birds in Enticott & Tipling, Grant and Olsen & Larsen. I got pretty
much the same numbers Phil got. Then I measured the best of Denny
and the best of Sullivan and I did not get the numbers Phil got.
I got numbers which were the same as the ones for the Black-backed Gull
reference sample.


E&T08 0.14 DENNY01 0.12
E&T09 0.15 DENNY02 0.15
GRANT294 0.13 DENNY03 0.12
GRANT297 0.15 DENNY04 0.13
GRANT300 0.14 SULLIVAN01 0.13
GRANT302 0.15 SULLIVAN02 0.16
GRANT303 0.16 SULLIVAN12 0.14
GRANT305 0.15 SULLIVAN16 0.13
GRANT308 0.16 SULLIVAN19 0.13
GRANT309 0.14
L&O130 0.13 AVG 0.14
L&O137L 0.13 STDV 0.01
L&O137R 0.15
L&O138 0.15
L&O140 0.14

AVG 0.14
STDV 0.01

--
Mike Patterson
Astoria, OR
celata at pacifier.com

Half-a-bee, philosophically must ipso-facto half not-be.
But half the bee, has got to bee Vis-a-vis its entity...
d'you see?
But can a bee be said to be or not to be an entire bee
When half the bee is not a bee due to some ancient injury?
-Monty Python

http://www.pacifier.com/~mpatters/bird/bird.html