[texbirds] New cryptic bird species discovered in Texas: Martin’s Sparrow, not an albinistic Spizella after all.
- From: "Collins, Fred (Commissioner Pct. 3)" <Fred_Collins@xxxxxxxx>
- To: "1 Texbirds (texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)" <texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 13:33:06 +0000
New cryptic bird species discovered in Texas: Martins Sparrow, not an
albinistic Spizella after all.
This past winter while on a birding trip through north central Texas Dennis
Shepler and I (Fred Collins) came upon a bird which we identified as a Field
Sparrow with an aberrant white wing patch. It was in a uniquely named community
of Fairy in Hamilton County. Once we discovered the town we could not resist
visiting the place and putting together an e-bird list for Fairy, our own fairy
tale, so to speak. The list is only nine species but it was interesting
birding. The bird of note was the odd Field Sparrow which Dennis managed to
photograph. The bird was deceiving for at times it appeared larger than it
actually was and the white wing patch threw us off as well. The picture is
below.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/olddawgler/12075735903/
The town has some colorful history for such a small place. While it only has
about a dozen homes, it has a rather large and sprawling Baptist Church complex
in front of it which is a historical marker for a Methodist Church. It appears
the once all Methodist town was converted more recently to Baptist. It also has
a large cemetery with a historical marker. The cemetery has many victims of the
1918 influenza epidemic, a Texas Ranger, as well as veterans from the Civil
War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. A third marker describes
the origins of the community. The place was originally known as Martins Gap.
Frontiersman Jim Martin was killed by Indians and buried at the place in the
1860s. The gap, referring to a pass between two isolated hills, bore his name
for 20 years. The community was founded as a town in 1873 by one Captain Battle
Fort, a Confederate veteran and a lawyer. A post office established in 1884 was
named Fairy to honor Mrs. Phelps, Forts daughter.
Well I was hooked, how outrageous; a Captain named Battle Fort, names his
daughter Fairy. Imagine having to endure a name like Fairy Fort! I later dug
into the history a bit and found that Fairy was indeed a tiny woman, less than
4 feet tall when an adult. She, along with her father, taught school and she
was noted for standing on top of a stool to deliver capital punishment to her
young men students as old as 18. Over time she became a beloved community
teacher, so the honor of having the post office named for her was a genuine
gesture. But I was curious why a fairly well-to-do fellow like Captain Fort
would settle in this place. Turns out he had links to Martin and Martin was the
first to find this little white winged sparrow!
Martin was a frontiersman whose grandfather was Nathaniel Hale Pryor
(17721831) who had been on the Lewis and Clark Expedition and had known and
worked with Sam Houston in Indian Territory. Martin had heard stories of
collecting specimens in the new frontier and how prestigious the effort was
among important people in Washington and New York. So while he was scouting new
places he often acquired bird and mammal specimens as well as Indian artifacts.
Martin liked the gap in Hamilton County and spent a great deal of time in that
area. He sent some of his specimens and artifacts to John Cabell Breckinridge
who was a director of the new Smithsonian Museum. Martin had met Breckinridge
while scouting for the Second Cavalry in Texas. Breckinridge would resign in
1861 and join the Confederacy and would eventually become the Confederates
Secretary of War. Breckinridge Texas is named in his honor. Because of the
outbreak of the Civil War and Breckinridges untimely departure, the Martin
specimens were inadvertently placed in the storage trunks with Breckinridges
personal belongings and placed in storage in the museum. There they languished
for more than 150 years!
Recently while preparing for an exhibit about the original Smithsonian
directors the trunk was opened for part of the display. The staff of the
Smithsonian discovered that it contained specimens that had never been
catalogued. Among these specimens were two small white-winged sparrow skins as
well as one entire bird preserved in alcohol, 100 proof Tequila to be exact.
It turns out the Smithsonian currently has an old Texas birder as the head of
its genetic lab, Mike Brannof. Houston area birders may remember that he and
his brother David were the young high school boys that discovered the colony of
nesting Henslows Sparrows on Mykawa Road near the end of the Hobby Airport
runway in the late 1970s. While head of the lab he has been trying to run the
DNA fingerprint of every animal in the Smithsonian Collection. The lab is very
much intrigued with the idea of getting a DNA bar codes from very old
specimens. It has immense challenges, so the discovery of this old misplaced
specimen in Tequila was too good to pass up. Besides it was an old Texas
specimen from an Indian fighter.
About this time, by shear serendipity, I had an e-mail exchange and mentioned
to Mike our Fairy tale and the white-winged sparrow. He told me the story of
his newly discovered white-wing specimens and their intentions of running DNA
analysis. I sent him the photo of our living bird and he confirmed it matched
his 150 year old specimens. How interesting we thought that this plumage
aberration would manifest itself in a population for 150 years. Such
coincidence! For sake of conversation we referred to the birds as Martins
Sparrows. Mike was delighted by our discovery because the only reference for a
location was the hill gap from a Martin letter posted in Fort Griffin in 1859.
Mike and the Smithsonian had no idea where Martins hill gap might have been.
Imagine my complete surprise when a couple of weeks later I got another e-mail
from Mike which said that the sparrow was not a sparrow at all. It was an
almost unbelievable example of convergent evolution. He told me that they were
preparing a paper on the bird and wanted to include Dennis picture and wanted
more information on the Hamilton County site. They would be sending a group to
investigate the area and search for additional specimens.
He provided me the following information from his press release on this
remarkable bird and its discovery through historic sleuthing and serendipity
with birder networks.
Smithsonian lab announcement: Using allozymes and mtDNA sequences from the
cytochrome b gene, we report that the Martins Sparrow has a level of genetic
structuring observed in no other bird. Moreover, the mtDNA sequences are, with
two minor exceptions, diagnostic genetic markers, even though they are among
the more slowly evolving coding regions in this genome. A major unexpected
finding was the concordant split in molecular phylogenies indicating the
sparrow-appearing bird is most closely related to the most primitive of birds
and perhaps pre-birds. This is another striking example of how molecular
genetic assays can detect phylogenetic discontinuities that are not reflected
in traditional morphologically based taxonomies.
Since this species represents an entirely previously unknown lineage of bird
evolution and its name has been confounded by uncertain relationships. It will
be listed before the passerines but as incertae sedis. Likewise it represents
a new family and genus of bird. We have therefore decided to name it in honor
of the date of the collection of the first known specimen by frontiersman Jim
Martin and christen the new species Aprilus foolei.
Good birding for the balance of 2014. Fred Collins and Dennis Shepler.
Fred Collins, Director
Kleb Woods Nature Center
20303 Draper Road,Tomball TX 77377
Harris County Precinct 3
Steve Radack Commissioner
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