Subject: [Tweeters] Five Woodpecker Day
Date: Jun 3 12:51:51 2009
From: Kevin Purcell - kevinpurcell at pobox.com


I think this is useful comment from Matt so replying back to the
list ...

On Jun 3, 2009, at 12:13 PM, Matt Bartels wrote:

> Hi Kevin -
> Unless the knowledge of the distribution has changed, I think you
> may be off in this.

I seem to have misplaced the Wenas Valley and Yakima county. For some
reason I thought Wenas was in Kittitas County. My mistake :-)

But the distribution maps perhaps aren't perfect either. Checking the
birdweb distribution maps against the location both are "out of
range". But we all know that the birds define the range not a 6 year
old map.

> Check out the article by Michael Schroeder that appeared in WOS
> News & WA Birder. [ http://wos.org/issue105.pdf]

That is a very good article. And his range map does differ from
birdweb though there are no county markings on it.

> When Washington Birder worked through the county level
> distributions, Dusky was not included in the Yakima Co list -- I
> think the "Blue Grouse" populations down there are believed to be
> mostly Sooty, possibly hybrids.

Agreed.

> As I understand it, the 'confusion zone' referred to a little
> ambiguously in the Birdweb blurb is more of an Okanogan issue, with
> some of the confusion range stretching down into parts of Chelan &
> Kittitas.

That's what the birdweb range maps show: overlap in Kittitas, Chelan
and Okanogan.

> I don't have the field experience to back this up though, so if
> there's more info out there from some of the Yakima birders who
> really know the birds, that might help a lot.
>
> Hope this helps,

It does.

> Matt

So the "Spanish Inquisition" question is: how was the bird IDed? By
field marks?

Is it really a Dusky Grouse? That would be interesting!

Or is it a Sooty?

Or a hybrid? (the latter we won't know).
--
Kevin Purcell
kevinpurcell at pobox.com