Slate-colored Fox Sparrows
Sparrows
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Slate-colored Fox Sparrow (Passerella iliaca schistacea group} is the Rocky Mountian taxon of the genus Passerella. It is currently classified as a subspecies group within Fox Sparrow.
Distribution:
It is found from the interior of northwest British Columbia to Nevada and eastern California (Rising 1996).
Description:
It is a tiny-billed bird with a gray head and mantle, brown wings, brown breast streaks, and a russet tail. It shows no geographic variation (Zink 1994).
Classification:
According to Rising, "five or six subspecies of Slate-colored Fox Sparrows [here meaning a schistacea-megarhyncha complex] have been recognized, but most of these are poorly differentiated" (Rising 1996). A two subspecies arrangement recognizing the rather distinctive altivagans (the northern form) as its own subspecies, and the rest of the population in the southern portion of the range as the nominate race (schistacea) might be more reasonable. P. i. altivagans looks somewhat like one would expect a schistacea-iliaca intergrade to look; it is in fact so distinct from the other Slate-coloreds that it "has been put with the Red Fox Sparrows, but vocal and biochemical evidence indicates that belongs [in the schistacea complex]" (Rising 1996).
Breeding / Nesting:
As with Reds and Sooties, Slate-coloreds also prefer to build their nests on the edges of wet habitats but are much less picky about in which plant they build.
Call / Song:
Their call note is sharp klink according to Rising (1996), or "a sharp smack, like Sooty and Red populations" according to Sibley (2000).
References
- Rising, J. D. (1996). A Guide to the Identification and Natural History of the Sparrows of the United States and Canada. London: Academic Press.
- Sibley, D. A. (2000). The Sibley Guide to Birds. New York: Chanticleer Press, Inc.
- Zink, R. M. (1994). The Geography of Mitochondrial DNA Variation, Population Structure, hybridization, and Species Limits in the Fox Sparrow (Passerella iliaca). Evolution 48: 96-111.
- Zink, R. M. & Kessen, A. E. (1999). Species Limits in the Fox Sparrow. Birding 31: 508-517.
(Source: Wikipedia.org)
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