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From: dmark@acsu.buffalo.edu (David Mark)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: US mainland endemics: ANSWERS
Message-ID: <36159@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 14 Sep 90 15:38:54 GMT
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In article <683@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> sandee@sun16.scri.fsu.edu (Daan Sandee) writes:

   [some material about US mainland endemics deleted]

>and
> Greater Prairie-Chicken. I understand it is extirpated from its former
>    range in Canada, but I may be wrong.
>

Steve Willner (willner%cfa183@das.harvard.edu) in an email note today,
added:

> OK, I think I've got the third one: California Condor.  Though I would
> have expected past records from Mexico, it's an endemic now.

Well, California Condor is pretty-much endemic to the San Diego zoo now,
:-)
but there are Mexican records within the last hundred years or so.

But I'm not sure what one does with historical range contractions.
As of a couple of years ago, there had not been a Bachman's Sparrow record 
outside the US in almost 20 years-- shall we call it an endemic?  There were 
lots of spring overshoot records at Point Pelee and elsewhere in Canada in the 
60s, but the decline of Ohio populations has apparently cut off that supply.
The last Bachman's Sparrow record for Canada may pre-date the last
Greater Prairie Chicken record.

>I missed Carolina Chickadee. Ignoring the conditions of the trivia quiz,
>I would prefer to call a species endemic if its *normal* range is entirely
>within the U.S. 

That is very reasonable, but not the usual definition of 'endemic', I think.


David Mark
dmark@acsu.buffalo.edu