North Coast Diaries

Today's your birthday?

As is so often the case on the North Coast of Oregon in late-June and early-July, it is raining. Not one of those thorough rains that you can hear on the roof, that comes in a winter storm or a summer thundershower. No, just a thick drizzle that cuts the visibility down to a couple hundred meters, that creeps under your rain gear, that collects on your optics no matter how well protected.

It makes for an inside day, no matter how much the extra daylength of the summer solstice screams at you to go out.

Dave Bailey reports a possible Sand-verbina Moth (Copablepharon fuscum ) out at the Necanicum yesterday. Probably never officially recorded in Oregon. The first of the south bound shorebirds are on the move.

But the rain will probably keeping me indoors aside from a trip to the store to buy the fixings for a birthday cake and maybe a gallon of milk.

We're gonna have a good time....

Sigh.....

Word on ID-frontiers has it that the British Ornithological Union (BOU) has chosen to go along with the split of big Canada Geese from small Canada Geese. I laid out the split in Goose chase way back in December 2004, but here are the basics. The American Ornithological Union (AOU) split Canada Goose based on genetic studies. All the large forms are, according to the AOU checklist, now to be referred to as CANADA GOOSE and all of the small forms will be collectively called CACKLING GOOSE. The smallest of the large form geese, Lesser Canada Goose, and the largest of the small form geese, Taverner's Goose, are very difficult to sort out in the field. One may actually have to refer to them as unidentified "Canada Goose Complex" or perhaps unidentified "white-cheeked goose".

Anyway, the BOU has followed the split, but not the nomenclature, opting for Greater Canada Goose for the big ones and Lesser Canada Goose for the small ones. This is especially curious since genuinely vagrant Canada Geese are rare in Europe, though the introduced "lawn carp" varieties have apparently established feral populations. One would think that this would be a case of following the lead of the those in the nation of origin. But no.

Calling the small forms Lesser Canada Goose is especially problematic given that the smallest of the big Canada Geese was formerly known as Lesser Canada Goose. It would seem to break the rule of priority (not that priority is ever really inforced in standard English naming, that's more of a Latin binomial thing). Calling the small forms "lesser" is not only a bad idea, it's an unimaginative one that does little to celebrate the ecology of the two forms. Not that the AOU name choices are any great shakes.

Naturally, the tone of the discussion on ID-frontiers is decidedly critical of the decision made by the BOU, while not being wholely supportive of the AOU's naming decisions. And I have to agree with those who have pointed out that keeping Canada Goose as the name of the larger form creates an ungainly before and after schism. Giving each of the newly split forms a new (or partly new) name would make sense. That's probably where the BOU was going with Greater and Lesser.

A compromise (probably too undignified for academics and not particularly imaginative) would be Big Canada Goose and Small Canada Goose. Honking Goose has been suggested as an appropriately descriptive companion to Cackling Goose by some. Since all the small forms breed in extreme northern Canada, Tundra Goose would certainly be appropriate for them. As for the big ones, I don't know, Plains Goose, Pothole Goose, Fairway Goose.

The geese don't care what we call them, just as long as we keep the lawns mowed and the Coyotes under control.

The Blue Moth of Saddle Mountain

We finally had a weather window suitable for climbing Saddle Mountain today (June 15). The temperature was on the cool side 49°F at 09:00, only 67°F at 13:00. We didn't start seeing any butterflies until afternoon.

Among the leps we found was the odd, blue butterfly mimick Cœnurgina cœrulea which I call Cerulean Moth around non-latinite.

Other species:
 Pale Swallowtail    3 
 Anise Swallowtail   2
 Margined White      28
 Spring Azure        1
 Moss's Elfin        1
 Painted Lady        12
 W Meadow Fritillary 4
 Satyr Anglewing     1
 
 Cinnabar Moth
 Caenurgia caerulea
 Rheumaptera subhastata
 Mesoleuca gratulata
 
 Townsend's Chipmunk
 California Groundsquirrel
 Northwestern Gartersnake


Birds seen (in taxonomic order):

 Turkey Vulture                      3
 Calliope Hummingbird                1 [1] 
 Rufous Hummingbird                  7 [2] 
 Northern Flicker
 Olive-sided Flycatcher              1
 Pacific-slope Flycatcher
 Warbling Vireo
 Steller's Jay
 Common Raven                        1
 Violet-green Swallow
 Chestnut-backed Chickadee
 Brown Creeper
 Winter Wren
 American Dipper                     1
 Golden-crowned Kinglet
 Swainson's Thrush
 American Robin
 Varied Thrush
 Orange-crowned Warbler
 Yellow-rumped Warbler               1 [3] 
 Hermit Warbler
 Wilson's Warbler
 Western Tanager                     1
 White-crowned Sparrow
 Dark-eyed Junco
 Red Crossbill

Footnotes:

 [1]  at least 1; possibly 2
 [2]  mostly juveniles
 [3]  Audubon's, lots of singing

Total number of species seen: 26

A rose by any other name

The discussion over the past day or so on ID-frontiers has centered on "what is a subspecies?"  This is an interesting topic because it really sits at the edge of the divide in the world view on how we define biological units.  Birders who worry about their lifelists fall rather cleanly into two camps on the issue, those who hate all the lumping and splitting preferring listing stability, and those who look forward to the next AOU checklist, because it could mean a "free" new species.

But I find the whole discussion more interesting at the ornithological level, because it sorts out the "classical" biologists from the "quantum" biologists.  Students of 20th century physicists will recognize the distinctions.  Classical models tend to use standard mathematical tools and produce discrete, well defined results.  Quantum models depend on randomness and produce statistical likelihoods.  Einstein's theory of relativity is a classical model.  The standard model for subatomic particles is a quantum mechanical model.

In biological taxonomy the analogs are the biological species concept (the classical model) and phylogenetic species concept (the quantum mechanical model).  First some definitions:

Biological Species Concept (BSC) - defines species based on reproductive isolation.   Species are more or less reproductively discrete units.  Reproductive isolation may be mechanical, geographic or temporal.  In general, any two individuals that are capable of reproducing under natural conditions to produce viable offspring are considered species even if they come from different looking populations.

Phylogenetic Species Concept (PSC) - defines species based on diagnosable forms.  Species are groups of individuals with a unique evolutionary history that can be represented by morphological, ecological, behavioral and genetic characters.  Present day reproductive isolation is not a requirement, but historical isolation of some sort is generally presumed.

So, the definition of a species is fuzzy at the start.  The biological species concept is pretty much useless for species capable of asexual reproductions and is inconsistently applied in sexual species (Fox Sparrow types have a zone of hybridization and can't be split, but Glaucous-winged/ Western Gulls, which also have a significant hybrid zone, can).  The phylogenetic species concept says diagnosable characters make the species, but without clearly defined boundaries on what counts and how many characters are needed, could conceivably lead to every local population being arguably diagnosable as a species (my White-crowned Sparrows sing differently than yours).

This makes subspecies definitions even more nebulous.  From a BSC viewpoint, subspecies definitions are all about diagnosable characters to define regional populations. The PSC concept, because it favors calling diagnosable units species resists the term subspecies except as an investigative waystation on the road to research into possible full species designation and looks for other terms to describe intermediate forms (intergrades, clines, ring species, etc).  As a consequence, most discussions about subspecies bring us back to the original divide.  Are you BSC or PSC?

Now I have to admit I'm a PSC kind of guy. Understanding the evolutionary history of a species (and the ecological framework that drives that history) is far more useful than knowing what name to put on the toetag. One can make the argument that subspecific designations within a BSC model can get you to the same evolutionary history, but that would only be genuinely true if one adopted a consistent application of PSC-like methodologies and rules for identifying subspecies. There really has been little or no effort to connect the dots between diagnosable subspecies within a BSC species framework, most are still just descriptive entities without genetic connection. And as often as not, when the dots are connected the species gets split even from a BSC viewpoint....

My favorite case in point- During the great AOU lump of 1973 Bullock's Oriole and Baltimore Oriole were combined into a single species called Northern Oriole. They are clearly diagnosable forms, but interbreed in the midwest. By BSC standards they should be a single species, but when the evolutionary history of these species was charted using genetic markers, it turned out that they were not closest relatives. There were other oriole species more closely related to Bullock's Oriole. Evolutionary history did not support the BSC view of reproductive isolation as the determining factor for species designation and Bullock's and Baltimore Oriole have been split again.

Ultimately, it's all about people. Any system says more about the human need to tidy up the universe and try to make some kind of sense of things than it does about the real nature of things. The big Canada Geese were just as big and the small Canada Geese just as small before the AOU split them. The only thing that's really changed is what we choose to call them and how we model their geneology.

As seems the case with so many human issues, Shakespeare had prescient insight into things taxonomic when he wrote, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

May Lowdown

According to the weather folks, May was one of the coldest and wettest on record. Unsettled conditions made it difficult to time visitations to migrant spots. We also missed a week of bird banding because of the weather.

In spite of all that, we found some interesting stuff.

BROWN PELICANS returned to the north coast just about on time. Troy Guy managed to get radios on three SOOTY SHEARWATERS which are now being tracked up and down the coast. It also looks like we may have a small breeding colony of GREAT EGRETS on the lower Columbia near Svensen Island, though we have yet to officially confirm it.

SORA continue to be conspicuous at the Astoria Mitigation Bank. The BLACK OYSTERCATCHER survey turned up at least 25 birds with one pair on eggs. There are plenty of TUFTED PUFFINS on Haystack Rock. COMMON MURRES still seem to be heavily impacted by BALD EAGLE predation.

The Brownsmead BARN OWLS managed to fledge at least 3 three owlets. BARRED OWLS have been reported from 3 locations. PILEATED WOODPECKERS are unusually easy to find this season. A CALLIOPE HUMMINGBIRD was seen on Saddle Mt.

Non-type-3 RED CROSSBILLS have been reported up and down the coast this year. Our best guess is that they are type-4. Three GRAY-CROWNED ROSY-FINCHES were found late in the month on Saddle Mt. We will be checking for evidence of breeding in June.

In butterfly news, a steady influx of PAINTED LADIES has been evident all month. MOSS'S ELFIN and probable ACMON BLUES were seen on Saddle Mt. The blues are presumed to be Acmon based primarily on range, but the taxonomy is tricky enough that further data collection will be necessary.