an interesting development, and equally interesting as to what the genotype proves to show. As to the phenotype, Aaron brought to my attention last Saturday the field images and I provided this breakdown at that time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. bright pink bill 2. rusty cap set off from pale face 4. pale gray, unstreaked nape stand back from the computer screen and the bird comes across as a Field Sparrow, at least from the front. then there's the 1. prominent lateral throat stripe, 2. a stipling in the crown that appears to be faint streaks, 3. and the heavily streaked back 4. whitish-gray supercilium which are Clay-colored characters the auriculars are mostly gray (matching the gray nape) with a warm upper border (matching the crown) ... typical Field Sparrow. However, the auriculars are also bordered by a pale supercilium and submalar setting them off to a degree stronger than normal in Field and more akin to Clay-colored. Barest hint of a median stripe is a strike against Clay-colored and within variation range for Field. The weak, but clearly present white eye-ring may be within variation for Field but is more typical of Clay-colored. and then there is the song Field = a descending, accelerating, multi-pitch whistled sequence Clay-colored = a steady, monotone, raspy buzz Your bird = an accelerating, two-pitch raspy buzz in any ID one asks whether the observed discrepancies from the norm are within the range of variation for the species. There are a couple of characters here that are, to my knowledge, completely outside the range for either species 1. lateral throat stripe outside of Field 2. bright pink bill, rusty cap outside of Clay-colored and when the variation falls intermediate between two species (in this case including vocalizations), one finds the hybrid explanation as likely as anything else. Not a conclusion I come to lightly. I am aware of a Dayton area record from the late 90's where David Dister observed a Field Sparrow singing a Clay-colored song. However, that's not the case here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- cheers Vic Fazio Lawton, OK ______________________________________________________________________ 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]