www.thefilemyrs.com > Birding > California 2006 > Species List
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Species List
Species identified by one or more trip participants.
Birds (192 Species
Pied-billed
Grebe Horned Grebe Western Grebe Clark's Grebe Black-footed Albatross Pink-footed Shearwater Buller's Shearwater Sooty Shearwater Black-vented Shearwater Leach's Storm-Petrel Black Storm-Petrel Ashy Storm-Petrel American White Pelican Brown Pelican Double-crested Cormorant Brandt's Cormorant Pelagic Cormorant Great Blue Heron Great Egret Little Blue Heron Snowy Egret Cattle Egret Green Heron Black-crowned Night-Heron White-faced Ibis Roseate Spoonbill Brant Mallard Cinnamon Teal Northern Shoveler Ruddy Duck Turkey Vulture Osprey White-tailed Kite Northern Harrier Cooper's Hawk Red-shouldered Hawk Swainson's Hawk Red-tailed Hawk Golden Eagle American Kestrel Prairie Falcon Peregrine Falcon California Quail Gambel's Quail Common Moorhen American Coot Black Oystercatcher Black-necked Stilt American Avocet Black-bellied Plover Semipalmated Plover Killdeer Piping Plover Snowy Plover Long-billed Dowitcher Marbled Godwit Whimbrel Long-billed Curlew Greater Yellowlegs Lesser Yellowlegs Spotted Sandpiper Wandering Tattler Willet Ruddy Turnstone Black Turnstone Surfbird Red Knot Sanderling Western Sandpiper Least Sandpiper Wilson's Phalarope Red-necked Phalarope Red Phalarope South Polar Skua Pomarine Jaeger Parasitic Jaeger Long-tailed Jaeger Heermann's Gull Ring-billed Gull California Gull Glaucous-winged Gull Western Gull Yellow-footed Gull Bonaparte's Gull Laughing Gull Sabine's Gull Gull-billed Tern Caspian Tern Elegant Tern Royal Tern Common Tern Arctic Tern Forster's Tern Black Tern Black Skimmer Pigeon Guillemot Craveri's Murrelet |
Cassin's
Auklet Non-established
Exotics |
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Subspecies (from Art McMorris) Savannah Sparrow: in addition to the nominate (I don't know which subspecies - there are many, and most aren't field-identifiable), we saw Belding's Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis beldingi) in the Salicornia at Bolsa Chica on our first day. Orange-crowned Warbler: we saw the pacific coast (Vermivora celata lutescens) on the mainland, and the Channel Islands (V. c. sordida) on Santa Cruz Island. Brant: we saw Branta bernicla nigricans - Black Brant. This has been considered a separate species in the past (Branta nigricans), and there are persistent rumblings that it may be restored to full-species status in the future. Juncos: we saw "Oregon"
Juncos (Junco hyemalis), but beyond that, I can't say much. There
are 8 subspecies in the oreganus group, and based on range and plumage,
I could only narrow it down to 5 of them: oreganus, shufeldti, montanus,
thurberi, and pinosis. These all look similar, and are migratory
(although I don't know the timing); we could have seen any one, or more
than one, of them. Subspecies (from Todd McGrath) All the Allen's seen were likely the island form (S. s. sedentarius). They have been colonizing the mainland are are now common from N San Diego to Ventura and well inland. The other form is highly migratory and virtually gone by Sept. As for sage sparrows, the latest DNA research shows that the form you saw is likey more closely related to the belli populations, with nevadensis (which breeds to the east at the edge of CA and in the great basin) being assigned tot he inland form. If this complex is split, the birds you saw would likely be assigned to Bell's rather than Sage, but the research is still unpublished. Further thoughts from Art McMorris (9/27/06) We had great looks at Sage Sparrows (Amphispiza belli) at Maricopa, and several of us got photographs. Since one of our targets was the local subspecies Bell's Sage Sparrow (Amphispiza belli belli), which some authorities consider to be a separate species from Sage Sparrow, I did some checking to figure out just what we saw. Besides the Sibley and National Geographic guides I consulted James Rising's The Sparrow of the United States and Canada and John Martin and Barbara Carlson's Birds of North America monograph on Sage Sparrow. There are 5 subspecies of Sage Sparrow: belli (the dark, coastal-California resident), canescens (breeding in central California; short-distance migrant), nevadensis (Great Basin form, longer-distance migrant), clementeae and cinerea. The latter 2 can be eliminated because they are resident on San Clemente Island and in Baja California, respectively. The plumage characters we saw (and referring back to my and Karl's photographs) identify the birds as A. b. canescens. These characters include: Streaked brown back,
contrasting with darker, gray crown. This combination of characters agrees with canescens and disagrees with either belli or nevadensis. Also, location, habitat and date are all right for canescens and wrong for both belli and nevadensis. So I'm pretty confident that canescens is what we saw. The only point of confusion is the question of which subspecies are most closely related to each other. Some authorities consider belli to be a separate species, Bell's Sparrow, and group canescens with nevadensis as Sage Sparrow, Amphispiza nevadensis. But what Todd McGrath told us is that "The latest DNA research shows that the form you [we] saw is likey more closely related to the belli populations, with nevadensis (which breeds to the east at the edge of CA and in the great basin) being assigned tot he inland form." If this holds up, and the complex is eventually split by the AOU, then we could check off "Bell's Sparrow" on our checklists.
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