Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!gatech!unmvax!nmtsun!john
From: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: What is this bird??
Message-ID: <3215@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Date: 21 Sep 89 23:11:40 GMT
References: <3791@helios.ee.lbl.gov> <48214@oliveb.olivetti.com> <48269@oliveb.olivetti.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: Zoological Data Processing
Lines: 44

Michael Mammoser (mjm@oliven.olivetti.com) writes:
>...Any other interesting hybrids out there?

Thanks for the descriptions of Glaucous-winged x Western
gulls, Blue-winged Teal x Northern Shoveler and Snowy Egret
x Little Blue Heron.  Plumages like this can make strong men
weep.

In the late 70's I photographed a duck at the Palo Alto Duck
Pond that was probably an American x Eurasian Wigeon,
according to local expert Ted Chandik.  The head was like
EW, rufous with a yellow crown stripe, while the body was
like AW, with rusty flanks.

Another screwball duck I photographed was at Bosque del
Apache NWR in central New Mexico in late March 1988.  This
bird was clearly a male Blue-winged x Cinnamon Teal.  The
body ground color was a rusty color, much darker than BWT
and only a shade lighter than a CT, but covered with small
round dark spots all over like BWT.  The bird had the BWT's
strong white crescent between the bill and eye, and the head
above the eye had a strong bluish tinge, but the rest of the
head was cinnamon-colored.

This business of Glaucous-winged x Western gulls really
bothers me.  I have a database of all the Christmas Bird
Counts from 61-62 through 87-88, and when I look at the
occurrence of this form, it looks like it's spreading
rapidly on the west coast.  In the 69th CBC there are no
records of this hybrid.  In the 79th, there are records in
two counts in Washington (Grays Harbor and Olympia), one in
Oregon (Eugene), and none in California.  The 87th, however,
has records all over northern California (including the Bay
Area and Monterey area) and even two in Los Angeles.

But I'm afraid it's not the BIRD that spreading, just
information on how to identify it!  This is one of the
big problems in interpreting field data, and in my line
of work it bites me all the time.
-- 
John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, New Mexico
USENET: ucbvax!unmvax!nmtsun!john  CSNET: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu ``A lesson from
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