[texbirds] Re: [texbirds] New cryptic bird species discovered in Texas: Martin’s Sparrow...
- From: Stenmead@xxxxxxx
- To: Fred_Collins@xxxxxxxx, texbirds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 09:56:52 -0400 (EDT)
Such well written documentation and photos of both the Flamingo chick and
Martin's Sparrow from such well known and experienced birders, I'm sure the
Texas Rare Bird Committee will accept these findings! Exciting news!
Stennie Meadours
San Leon
In a message dated 4/1/2014 8:33:55 A.M. Central Daylight Time,
Fred_Collins@xxxxxxxx writes:
New cryptic bird species discovered in Texas: Martinâs 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 Martinâs 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, Fortâs daughte
r.
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 (1772â
1831) 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 Confederatesâ Secretary of War. Breckinridge Texas is named in his
honor. Because of the outbreak of the Civil War and Breckinridgeâs untimely
departure, the Mar
tin specimens were inadvertently placed in the storage trunks with
Breckinridgeâs 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 Henslowâs 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 Martin
âs 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 Martinâs âhill
gapâ
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 Dennisâ
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: âUsing allozymes and mtDNA sequences from
the cytochrome b gene, we report that the Martinâs 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.â
âSince 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 âincertae sedisâ. 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.â
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
Edit your Freelists account settings for TEXBIRDS at
//www.freelists.org/list/texbirds
Reposting of traffic from TEXBIRDS is prohibited without seeking
permission
from the List Owner
Edit your Freelists account settings for TEXBIRDS at
//www.freelists.org/list/texbirds
Reposting of traffic from TEXBIRDS is prohibited without seeking permission
from the List Owner
Other related posts:
- » [texbirds] Re: [texbirds] New cryptic bird species discovered in Texas: Martin’s Sparrow... - Stenmead
