{"id":3236,"date":"2011-09-18T13:33:53","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T19:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=3236"},"modified":"2011-09-19T10:54:24","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T16:54:24","slug":"the-next-junco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/3236","title":{"rendered":"The Next Junco"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Baird's Junco, Baja California Sur, April 2006. Photo copyright Dave Krueper. Click to enlarge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the entrance to that “intellectual space” in which researchers debate taxonomic limits in the genus Junco<\/em>, there stands a gate bearing an inscription in fourteenth-century Tuscan:<\/p>\n

LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA VOI CH’INTRATE
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Just as Virgil guided Dante through the Inferno<\/em>, I wish that I could offer you safe passage through the many circles of biological complexity centered on the single hellish question of how many junco species there really are.\u00a0 But there’s no such thing as safe passage.\u00a0 There’s no getting around it: the juncos are devilishly complicated.<\/p>\n

Most birders in North America focus on telling the different junco forms apart by sight, which is appropriate, since most North American juncos sing a single high-pitched musical trill that is pretty much the same whether it comes from a Slate-colored, a Pink-sided, an Oregon, or a Gray-headed Junco:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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