MD Osprey, BRCF, and Birdwg01:

We have posted the minutes of the Maryland / District of Columbia 
Records Committee (MD/DCRC) 2007 Skins Workshop on our web page here ...

         http://www.mdbirds.org/mddcrc/pdf/rcskins2007.pdf

Our workshops are held annually at the Smithsonian Institution to 
examine bird specimens of taxa that are planned for review by the 
committee. Workshop sessions are about half a day long and, in later 
years, we typically write-up and post our findings for the benefit of 
future committee members and for other birders, both local and 
non-local. Our studies are not exhaustive but are intended to either 
focus on specific characteristics or issues, or to provide our 
members with a general familiarity with unusual taxa and to 
compliment the available literature.

In the early days of these workshops, when Claudia Wilds was our 
Chair, some of the MD/DCRC workshops coincided with meetings of the 
AOU Committee on Committee on Classification and Nomenclature. Since 
2001-2002 our minutes have become more detailed and since 2003 we 
have also included specimen photographs with our findings.

The 2007 minutes are rather lengthy but most of the page space is 
taken up by photographs. The PDF file is over 1MB.

Taxa examined at the 2007 workshop included the following:

         Black-bellied Whistling-Duck (focus on the hallux)

         Cape Verde Shearwater and "Scopoli's" (Cory's) Shearwater 
(focus on size, bills, and underwings)

         Southern Lapwing (focus on subspecies)

         Tropical Kingbird vs. Couch's Kingbird (focus on bill shape, 
back coloration, and tail shape)

         "Snowy-bellied Martin" complex (Caribbean/Cuban/Sinaloa Martins)

         Hoary Redpoll vs. Common Redpoll (focus on classification 
and taxonomy, ID characteristics, and the two Greenland forms)

         Bridled Tern vs. Sooty Tern (focus on underwings)

All of our previous workshop minutes are posted on our web page at 
the URL in my signature block. One of our members suggested that we 
could use an index of the taxa that the committee studied at the 
previous workshops. I generated two versions, one that lists the taxa 
studied at previous workshops in taxonomic order with links to the 
corresponding set of minutes; the second index is a chronological 
listing of the workshop minutes and taxa examined. Some of the 
earlier accounts are rather basic, but others are more detailed. The 
two indices are found here ...

         Taxonomic order: http://www.mdbirds.org/mddcrc/pdf/rcskinstax.pdf

         Chronological order: 
http://www.mdbirds.org/mddcrc/pdf/rcskinschron.pdf

Hope this helps ...

Phil


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Phil Davis, Secretary
MD/DC Records Committee
2549 Vale Court
Davidsonville, Maryland  21035     USA
301-261-0184
mailto:[log in to unmask]

MD/DCRC Web site:  http://www.MDBirds.org/mddcrc/rcindex.html
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