Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 13:47:45 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Phil Davis Subject: Re: Wigeon -v- Widgeon Redux In-Reply-To: <20040302164137.61891.qmail@web60503.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Dear "Curious in Crownsville": To answer the rest of your specific question, I did not check each of the biannual AOU checklist list supplements, but here is what happened with major AOU Checklist edition publications: Third edition, revised (1910) - Mareca penelope = European Widgeon; Mareca americana = Baldpate Fourth edition (1931) - same as above Fifth edition (1957) - Mareca penelope = European Widgeon; Mareca americana = American Widgeon Sixth edition (1983) - Anas penelope = Eurasian Wigeon; Anas americana = American Wigeon So, as you noted, it was 1983 when the spelling was changed from the prior "widgeon." This is also when the genera was changed from Mareca to Anas. Hope this helps ... Phil (with too much time on his hands - not really! ) in Davidsonville At 08:41 03/02/2004 -0800, Lynette Fullerton wrote: >Looking in "older" field guides (by which I mean >before 1982, which was the date of the first field >guide where I found it spelled without the d) you'll >find it spelled widgeon. Does anyone know when the >'d' was dropped? ================================== Phil Davis Davidsonville, Maryland USA mailto:PDavis@ix.netcom.com ================================== ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================