[cobirds] Seen Any Woodhouse's Scrub-Jays?

COBirders,

 

As per the July 2016 update to the A.O.U. Check-list… Fifty-seventh Supplement to the American Ornithologists’ Union Check-list of North American Birds… The Auk: Ornithological Advances 133:544–560…

re: Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay and California Scrub-Jay

 

22. [p. 446] Aphelocoma woodhouseii is treated as a species separate from A. californica. Revise the account for A. californica as follows: Change the English name to California Scrub-Jay. Restrict the Resident part of the distributional statement to that for the californica group, and change the Casual part of the statement to: Casual in southwestern British Columbia and eastern Washington. Replace the existing Notes with the following: Notes.—Formerly considered conspecific with A. woodhouseii, but treated as separate on the basis of differences in ecology, morphology, genetics, and vocalizations; although the two species do interbreed, the hybrid zone is narrow, and there is evidence for selection against hybrids (Gowen et al. 2014). See notes on A. coerulescens. Following the account for A. californica, insert the following new species account: Aphelocoma woodhouseii (Baird). Woodhouse’s Scrub-Jay. Cyanocitta woodhouseii Baird, 1858, in Baird, Cassin, and Lawrence, Rept. Expl. and Surv. R.R. Pac. 9: 584– 585. (central line of Rocky Mountains to table lands of Mexico [¼ Fort Thorn (ten miles west of Rincon, Dona Ana County), New Mexico].) Habitat.—Woodland (especially pinyon, juniper, oak associations) and scrub; also gardens, orchards, riparian woodland, and tropical deciduous forest (southern Mexico) (Subtropical and Temperate zones, upper Tropical Zone in southern Mexico). Distribution.—Resident [woodhouseii group] from southeastern Oregon, southern Idaho, southern Wyoming, western and southern Colorado, and extreme western Oklahoma south to eastern California (from White Mountains to Providence Mountains), southern Arizona, in the Mexican highlands to northeastern Sonora, Jalisco, central Guanajuato, Mexico, Distrito ´ Federal, and Hidalgo, and east to western and central Texas; and [sumichrasti group] from Tlaxcala south to Oaxaca (west of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec), Puebla, and west-central Veracruz. Casual [woodhouseii group] in southeastern California, southern Manitoba, northern Wyoming, Illinois, Indiana, central Kansas, and the Texas Panhandle. Notes.—Genetic and behavioral data (Peterson 1991, 1992; Peterson and Burt 1992; Gowen et al. 2014) suggest that A. sumichrasti (Baird and Ridgway, 1874) [Sumichrast’s Scrub-Jay] may be a separate species. See Notes under A. californica and A. coerulescens.

 

Read more here: http://www.aoucospubs.org/doi/pdf/10.1642/AUK-16-77.1

 

Bill Maynard

Colorado Springs