A recent discussion on the Frontiers of Identification list is of
interest:   http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/FRID.html  .
        A technical paper "Comprehensive DNA barcode coverage of North American
birds" has attracted wide attention because it suggests more splits
might be made in the N. American bird species list. For us
non-specialists a popular journalistic report from Reuters provides an
initial toe-hold:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070219/sc_nm/environment_species_dc;_ylt=Akp4A0Q5Qr7YU.T1bMYD6iUPLBIF
and something meatier is at
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/ru-nbb021207.php  . The
full text is here:
www.barcodeoflife.org/barcode/batsbirds/literature/MEN1670_final.pdf  ).
        The fifteen candidates suggested for splits include few jaw-dropping
surprises. It is not hard to notice field differences between our winter
wren and that of the West, for example, and the suggested splits seem to
occur mostly among subspecies well-recognized for over a hundred years.
        Especially interesting is that popping up in the middle of this
discussion is a query from Geoff Malosh offering photos of a puzzling
gull in Pittsburgh. It shows characteristics of both Thayer's gull and
Iceland gull, and coincidentally the paper says that DNA among the eight
large gulls studied overlaps by 99.8%. Thayland's and Icers are among
them. So there may be evidence for some lumping as well. Thank goodness.
        Most readers will have shrugged and returned to their feeders by now,
and those who are still reading are unlikely to be satisfied with
half-baked interpretations from me---so have a look at the paper, and
the discussion, and the pix of the Pittsburgh gull.
Bill Whan
Columbus




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