Greetings All,
As promised, I reached out to Marshall Iliff, who is the eBird project manager
responsible for maintaining the master reporting taxonomy for eBird. I
expressed concern about the utility of the "melodia/atlantica" sub-heading for
the birds found in Oregon this winter. His feedback was essentially this:
Melospiza melodia melodia is the widespread nominate subspecies found
throughout most of eastern North America with a range that extends as far west
and north as Alberta. Populations that were once treated as subspecies,
including those in the northwestern most corner of the range (formerly M. m.
juddi) are no longer considered viable subspecies by most taxonomies, thus they
are all being treated as M. m. melodia in the eBird taxonomy as well. I sent
Marshall some photos of the Oregon birds and he had no issue with calling them
melodia. He noted that M. m. atlantica, while limited in range, is virtually
identical to M. m. melodia and the two are probably only separable when lying
side-by-side in museum trays, hence the "melodia/atlantica" sub-heading. Being
that the Oregon birds are almost by default melodia and that the group of
melodia-like birds consists of only two currently accepted subspecies, the
"melodia/atlantica" sub-heading is essentially one in the same with the
"melodia group" sub-heading that I proposed to Marshall.
The bottom line is that it makes the most sense to use "melodia/atlantica" as a
means for identifying birds like those seen at Sauvie Island, near Eugene and
at Brookings this winter as "melodia-like" in appearance. It is important to
remember that not all "out-of-towner" Song Sparrows seen west of the Cascades
fall under this heading and I would recommend that any bird being reported as
such to eBird or elsewhere be supported by photos. If you are not a
photographer, but have seen one of widely-reported and photographed birds I
would say it's fine to report the bird to this subspecies pair.
I hope that this clarifies the situation to nearly everyone's satisfaction. I
know that some of the eBird reviewers are rightfully concerned about wading
into the review of subspecies, which in too many cases are being assigned based
on geography rather than the characteristics one needs to see to identify them
(often not discernible in the field). As a general rule, it's best to avoid
reporting birds to subspecies unless you have the expertise and/or the photos
to defend your claims.
Dave Irons
Beaverton, OR
Statewide eBird Review Coordinator for Oregon (along with Shawneen Finnegan and
Daniel Farrar)
