Life histories of North American wood warblers, Part 1 (of 2)Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Science
Life histories of North American wood warblers, Part 1 (of 2)
Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Birds -- North America; Passeriformes; Wood warblers
In my paper published in 1911, after stating the different hypotheses
proposed in order to explain the relations existing among the
Golden-winged, Blue-winged, Brewster's, and Lawrence's Warblers I added,
half in jest, that the only hypothesis left for a new-comer in the field
was this: that the Golden-winged and the Blue-winged Warblers themselves
were merely two forms of one species. Curiously enough, not long after
this I found that this very opinion had been expressed, and in a most
unexpected quarter: in a letter dated Edinburgh, Sept. 15, 1835, Audubon
wrote to Bachman that he suspected the golden-winged warbler and the
blue-winged warbler were one species! That Audubon at that early date,
ignorant (as he was assumed to be) of the existence of Brewster's and
Lawrence's warblers, and but superficially acquainted with the
golden-wing, should suspect that two birds so diverse as the blue-wing
and the golden-wing were one species seemed incomprehensible, and in the
light of what we now know about these birds, his surmise seemed to
presuppose an almost superhuman faculty of prevision.
As a possible explanation of Audubon's letter I have only this to offer:
in the winter of 1876-77 Dr. Spencer Trotter discovered in the
collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia a specimen
of Brewster's warbler without a label, the third specimen known up to
that time; on the bottom of the stand was written in the autograph of
John Cassin, "J. C., 20 October, 1862," and also a badly blurred legend
"Not from Bell." An appeal to J. G. Bell elicited the response that he
remembered shooting a peculiar warbler in Rockland Co., N. Y., about the
year 1832--a warbler something like a golden-wing, but lacking, although
in high plumage, the black throat of that species; a great many years
afterward, he sold this specimen in Philadelphia but knew nothing of its
ultimate fate. Dr. Trotter justly inferred that the Philadelphia Academy
specimen was in all probability the very bird shot by Bell.
Now as Audubon was intimately associated with Bell, is it not possible
that he had examined this example of Brewster's warbler? In that case,
seeing that this bird's characters were in part those of the blue-wing,
in part those of the golden-wing, he may have inferred the interbreeding
of these two birds, and so (rather unwarrantably, it is true) their
identity. If this be not the explanation of the passage in Audubon's
letter to Bachman I have no other to suggest.
When Audubon came to publish his account of the Golden-winged Warbler in
1839 (Ornithological Biography, 1839, 5, p. 154) he said not a word
about its connection with the Blue-winged Warbler.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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