Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 18:11:07 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Elliot Kirschbaum Subject: Re: Western Kingbird at Fort McHenry In-Reply-To: <003701c34e02$40a2ad50$a87021a2@DOWNSTAIRS> Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit on 7/19/03 10:30 AM, Les Roslund at lroslund@BLUECRAB.ORG wrote: > The recently posted pictures of the two young kingbirds sure show > them looking a lot like mom. Does this mean that Mr Western was > filling the role of foster father - and that his gene pool is not > involved with these youngsters? > If so, it seems mighty nice of him to show up and help with the > feeding and defending - but since he was far out of normal Western > territory and had no family of his own, he apparently had time to help > out with the family of someone else. > I suspect there is no evidence to suggest that Mr Western drove off > the father of these chicks in order to have the joy of helping to > raise the family. I think that Gail is correct, and that there is no way to be sure of parentage without a sample for DNA analysis. However, at least one source indicates that extra pair fertilization is very common in Eastern Kingbird. My own guess is that the young are Eastern Kingbirds and not hybrids, but I have little basis for that opinion, except: 1. There is no observable indication in the young that they are other than Eastern Kingbirds, 2. I have not yet seen any documentation of EAKIxWEKI hybridization proven by DNA analysis; and 3. The indication of frequent extra pair fertilization in EAKI cited in Rowe, D. L., M. T. Murphy, R. C. Fleishcer, and P. G. Wolf. 2001. High frequency of extra-pair paternity in Eastern Kingbirds. Condor 103:845-851. I have not yet read this article. Anyone know where I might get a copy? Elliot Kirschbaum Baltimore, MD USA mailto:ekirschb@bcpl.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================