[NatureNS] A "different" robin (long)

Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2007 17:56:25 -0300
From: iamclar@dal.ca
To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca, John Sollows <nhungjohn@ns.sympatico.ca>
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Hi John et alia:

Each spring and fall we get reports of "Newfoundland robins," but there really
isn't such a thing. I have gone over this situation before on naturens, so many
may want to tune out. Possibly the local notions about "Newfoundland robins"
come from comments in Robie Tufts' first (1961) edition, which was carried over
unchanged into the last (1986) edition. This in turn was based on the first
description of the bird based the first couple of specimens were obtained from
Newfoundland. According to recent information, however, it doesn't nest on the
island with any frequency; most are like ours.

If there is a "real" subspecies _nigridius_ of black-backed Am. Robin, its "core
range" is on the Ungava Peninsula, and especially farther north. However,
black-backed individuals breed more widely, even in NS, as Tufts noted. I once
had a male feeding young on my street in Halifax.

Some recent recent accounts have "black-backed robins" as merely darker
individuals in a "cline" in darkness from south to north in eastern Canada.
That's not to say that black-nacked individuals don't occur and that they are
not of interest in seeing, for example, if they winter here (few if any do) and
whther numbers arrive among the first in spring (they don't seem to).

So John, male robins in general have black heads, so if they also have gray
backs, they're local or probably migrants of the same subspecies that nests
here. Your individual in which "the change in colour from body to head was very
gradual," however, may have been (if blackish on the back) a "black-backed." 
Another good mark of "black-backed" birds is their very darkly streaked throat;
it's often hard to see any white.

Cheers, Ian

quoting John Sollows <nhungjohn@ns.sympatico.ca>:

> To:  All
>
> From:  John Sollows,
> date:  April 7/07
>
> We have had fits and starts of robins around fopr the past two or
> three weeks.  (Should have been more systematic about the first
> sighting, but such is life!).  All the birds seen so far had black
> heads, distinctly set off from the rest of the body.  The
> "Newfoundland" robin?
>
> This overcast morning about 8:45, a somewhat different bird appeared:
>  The change in colour from body to  head was very gradual, and there
> was a more pronounced greyish streak over each eye.  Different
> subspecies?
>
> We saw the bird through a window, at a distance of about ten feet,
> below some rose bushes, to the north of us.


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