[birding] E.E. Wilson Y-b Sapsucker -- the H question

[Joel Geier]

Hi folks,

After some good feedback from Steve Shunk I went back out to try to get
some dorsal photos of the E.E. Wilson sapsucker. 

I'm getting a little bit better at pointing the camera in the right
direction, so today's photos at:

http://www.oregonbirds.org/birdphotos.html

are almost passable. But it's still a little pocket camera with
autofocus, and the bird likes to forage high up, so this is still not
likely to impress anyone used to working with an SLR camera and a real
zoom lens (alas, I busted the last one I owned many years ago, and won't
buy another until there are no kids' dental bills to worry about). The
photos are at full resolution but cropped to save bandwidth.

Doug Robinson came by with more impressive-looking camera equipment, so
hopefully his photos came out a little better.

Steve pointed me to some interesting info on Red-naped x Yellow-breasted
Sapsuckers at:

http://www.royalalbertamuseum.ca/natural/birds/projects/sapsuck.htm

including this field scoring sheet:

http://www.royalalbertamuseum.ca/natural/birds/projects/_pdf/score_sheet.pdf

With my cruddy photos I can't rule out some trace of Red-naped ancestry,
but the bird seems to be strongly on the Yellow-bellied end of the
spectrum. 

Happy birding,
Joel

--
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis