Ive been particularly keen to look at the Jackdaws here. On range they should be Eastern
soemmeringii but actually none of the individuals on this post (all photographed in Corbu, near Constanta on the Black Sea coast) look like this subspecies is supposed to: soemmeringii are supposed to have blackish underparts which contrast with the grey nape, whereas these birds have grey underparts, with the wings contrastingly black.
Underparts clearly much paler than the wings.
Underparts rather dammpled from some angles
Ive been particularly keen to look at the Jackdaws here. On range they should be Eastern soemmeringii but actually none of the individuals on this post (all photographed in Corbu, near Constanta on the Black Sea coast) look like this subspecies is supposed to: soemmeringii are supposed to have blackish underparts which contrast with the grey nape, whereas these birds have grey underparts, with the wings contrastingly black. 
Underparts clearly much paler than the wings.
Underparts rather dammpled from some angles
7 comments:
Great images with Jackdaws!
Chris Rudy Offereins paper on 'Eastern' Jackdaws placed Romania in an 'integration zone' between nominate monedula and soemmerringii there does seem to be some of those that have absent neck patches and relatively faint collars as well as having the greyer underparts indicative of monedula.
Hi Sara and Alan. Glad you both have enjoyd the jackdaw pics. What you say about the range according to Offereins makes more sense than the map I had seen (a french paper which showed birds here to be soemmerringii!). I guess the question is what the definitive source actually is for the ranges of these subspecies.
I hope to get more pics so will load them up.
Chris
BWP states monedula is North West Romania in the Carpathians and soemmerringii south and east, again doesn't quite match with what you're finding, I wonder if the differences in these integration zones are clinal. There must be cross-race breeding as well, so much still to learn..
Went back and re-read Rudy Ofereins paper and noted that he highlights western populations of soemmerringii as having "more dark-grey underparts resembling most monedula".
HI Alan. Thanks for this further info. Interesting. The BWP data suggest that birds where I took the pics (right at the far SE corner of Romania)should be soemmerringii, which clearly they don't quite look like. The Franch map which Ive seen matches BWP. The Ofereins take on the subspecies' distributions matches more my observations, but is rather at odds with BWP. Altogether it seems that birds in core areas of each subspecies may be rather different, but there are areas where birds are not so clear and so drawing dividing lines on maps to show their ranges is difficult without more work. As you say, much more to learn...
Thanks again; most interesting
Hi Chris,
The article of Offereins can be found here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~calidris/monedula.htm
Albert de Jong
Post a Comment