Re: [cobirds] atypical Blue-winged Warbler song type

Hi Eric,
Thanks for sharing your observation of this Blue-winged's song. Having lived along the Mason-Dixon line of Blue-winged x Golden-winged cross breeding, I've learned that calling any of these "pure" can be problematic. One of my last experiences before moving here was with a Golden-winged singing BOTH it's own song and Blue-winged's. I and many other New Jersey birders observed this bird quite closely and there were no visible signs of Brewster's or Lawrence's features - just the vocalizations.

So what's a lister to do?

The idea of "pure bred" anything is subject to all kinds of debate. The more we learn more about bird distribution and behavior, the muddier our understanding of what a species is. Colorado is a hotbed for species intermingling as it is located on the eastern edge of many western birds' ranges and the western edge of many eastern species'. Steve Mlodinow has done interesting fieldwork with hybrid Black-throated Green x Townsend's Warblers (see Colordao Birds spring 2014 vol. 48 no. 2). Likewise, Christian Nunes has studied several hybrids within the Dark-eyed Junco complex including White-winged x Pink-sided. All you really need is one odd duck to light up the COBirds listserv on the topic of hybrids  :)

Anyway, northern migration is all but complete, birds are tending nests making who-knows-what kind of new hybrids and with the solstice just around the corner, it seems like a fine time to initiate high conversation on COBirds.

Happy summer COBirders!

Peter Burke

Editor, Colorado Birds

Colorado Field Ornithologists

935 11th St. Boulder, CO 80302

(973) 214-0140

CFO  Flickr   LinkedIn

On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 9:38 AM, Eric DeFonso <bay.wren@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi folks,

As I mentioned the other day, I was surprised to hear the song of the Blue-winged Warbler in Welchester Grant Tree Park. This was a lifer for me, and as I walked around the park waiting to hear that bee-BUZZZZ that I'd gotten familiar with over the years in commercial sound recordings, it was almost a disappointment to instead hear something more akin to a Golden-winged Warbler song. If not for the fact that there were zero other warblers singing in the area at the time, I might have overlooked this quiet, buzzy song. At any rate, I made sure to get a look at the bird in the act of singing just to make sure it was what I was told it would be. (And it was.)

Yesterday I took a little time to investigate this, and found only one example of a Blue-winged song that resembles the recording I made below. It was a recording made by Andrew Spencer in Arkansas back in 2007, and in his notes on xeno-canto he too mentions that although the bird appeared phenotypically pure, the song was more like a Golden-winged song. 

The link to my recording is here:

https://soundcloud.com/bay-wren/bwwa-song

And the link to Andrew's sample on xeno-canto is here:

http://www.xeno-canto.org/33468

Note that neither of these songs resembles the so-called Type I or Type II songs usually recognized for the species (the territorial bee-buzzz song or the nesting trill-buzz song, respectively).

I'll be sharing my recording on xeno-canto soon.

Thanks,

Eric DeFonso

Boulder, CO

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