At 19:28 05/07/2002 +1000, Edwin Vella wrote:
For many, the Western Shrike-tit is regarded as a seperate species to the
Eastern (Crested) Shrike-tit and according to one of the Taxonomy lists. I
have the Western Shrike-tit firmly on my life list along with the Western
Fieldwren (that is a different bird to the Rufous Fieldwren). Regarding
the Western Shrike-tit, its call is "very" different to the Eastern
Shrike-tit, I can't see anyway the populations can interbreed and there
are plumage differences. It is a very good "tick" to get. There appears to
be no agreed taxonomy and the current one is debatable! But ofcourse it is
upto you and your opinion on how you treat this species.
There is an agreed taxonomy. The standard taxonomy is still Christidis &
Boles published in 1994, and this is the list being used by Sean.
Schodde certainly separates Western Shrike-tit and Western Fieldwren. The
former is probably fairly widely accepted. There is still a lot of debate
about the Western Fieldwren. Ron Johnstone at the Museum of WA says that
the crown of the fieldwren gets more rufous the further that you head north
in WA. i.e. it is clinal and he doesn't agree that it is a separate
species. My understanding is that Christidis (& Boles?) are updating their
taxonomic list and that this will be published later this year.
I agree that the call of the Western Shrike-tit is different. But this is
not sufficient to make it a separate species. The calls of Magpie-larks
and Grey Shrike-thrush (to name two) vary greatly around Australia. The
latter has different colorations also.
So certainly keep a record of the different sub species that you have seen,
but in order to have a standard comparison, use Christidis & Boles (1994)
until it has been updated. This is the list used for birders' totals
posted on Tony Palliser's web site.
___________________________________________________________________
Frank O'Connor Birding WA http://members.iinet.net.au/~foconnor
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