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 ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]