Hello, Birders. I appear to have erred in my assessment of the warbling-vireos at Barr Lake, Adams County, July 2. Which is cool, for two reasons. First, it is good to make mistakes and to recognize them as such; that's how knowledge, learning, and wisdom are attained. Second, the situation, as I now understand it, at Barr Lake is more interesting than previously reported.
The rest of the story: So, I went back and actually listened to the audio and looked at the spectrograms. First, here is a Barr Lake warbling-vireo singing a song that I consider to be a good match for Eastern Warbling-Vireo: http://www.xeno-canto.org/184975 But here now is a Barr Lake warbling-vireo singing a song that I consider to be a good match for Western Warbling-Vireo: http://www.xeno-canto.org/184977 The birds were within 750 meters of each other, i.e., within 1/2 mile of each other. It's interesting that these occurrences are consistent with observations from Tony Leukering several years ago. Tony tells me that he detected an Eastern Warbling-Vireo in precisely the same location as "my" Eastern Warbling-Vireo from July 2nd--by the wooden footbridge at the main entrance to the park. Steve Mlodinow also has detected both Eastern and Western warbling-vireos in this area. If I told you, I'd have to kill you, but...there there are murmurings about splitting the Warbling Vireo into two species of warbling-vireos. Observations from places like Barr Lake, where the two taxa appear to co-occur, are of particular relevance to understanding species limits in the Warbling Vireo, or warbling-vireo, complex. DNA is needed. Ted Floyd Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado On Thursday, July 3, 2014 6:05:56 AM UTC-6, Ted Floyd wrote: > > Hello, Birders. > > I had an errand yesterday, *Wednesday, July 2,* at *Barr Lake, Adams > County.* Convenient place for a birder to have an errand, eh? > > The very first bird I saw was a *Cackling Goose.* Photo here: > http://tinyurl.com/Cackling-Barr-Lake Cathy Sheeter tells me there have a > few here this summer. To which I say: What's up with that? > > The only nuthatch I saw and heard was a good match for *Rocky Mountain > Nuthatch.* And what, pray tell, is a Rocky Mountain Nuthatch? Well, > Colorado's own peripatetic Steve Mlodinow has a handy primer in this > month's *Birding* magazine, published by the American Birding > Association, on how to separate the Carolina, Rocky Mountain, and > Slender-billed nuthatches, two taxa of which occur regularly in Colorado. > Here is a link to a PDF download of Steve's article: > > http://aba.org/birding/2014-MAY-JUN/14-3_08Mlodinow-R4.pdf > > All four of the vireos I saw and heard were good phenotypic matches for > *Eastern > Warbling-Vireo.* Here's audio of a Rocky Mountain Nuthatch with a descant > from an Eastern Warbling-Vireo: > > https://soundcloud.com/ted-floyd/wbnu-ls101522 > > Barr Lake is a great venue for appreciating the East-meets-West aspect of > Colorado birding. > > Complete eBird checklist here: > http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S18972990 > > Ted Floyd > > Lafayette, Boulder County, Colorado > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/6e5d7518-a02c-4831-885d-bde43ca21947%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
