not my record: What would you make of this rather dark Stonechat | Hokkaido, JP | aug 2023 (1 Viewer)

[HouseCrow]

I try to make sense of the Stonechat taxa in Eurasia but I have some trouble doing it. What would you make of this bird?
(As stated above: I am not the recorder, just one of the many lay users/reviewers at inaturalist) Recorder: orthoptera-jp)

origin record: Stonechats and Bushchats (Genus Saxicola)



Amur Stonechat and Siberian Stonechat are the regular Stonechats in Japan. Somehow inaturalist AI suggests African Stonechat.

I have only added a screenshot-crop as I have not asked permission to use the photo


Hope to hear from you
cheers,
G erben

 

[Grahame Walbridge]

I try to make sense of the Stonechat taxa in Eurasia but I have some trouble doing it. What would you make of this bird?
(As stated above: I am not the recorder, just one of the many lay users/reviewers at inaturalist) Recorder: orthoptera-jp)

origin record: Stonechats and Bushchats (Genus Saxicola)

Amur Stonechat and Siberian Stonechat are the regular Stonechats in Japan. Somehow inaturalist AI suggests African Stonechat.

I have only added a screenshot-crop as I have not asked permission to use the photo


Hope to hear from you
cheers,
G erben

Gerben, its a worn male Amur Stonechat (S. stejnegeri) that has not yet commenced its post breeding moult. Any warm fringes to the upperparts (present in fresh plumage) have been worn off and the orange tones to underparts are likewise reduced as a result of wear.

ML108788381 Amur Stonechat Macaulay Library

Amur breeds Hokkaido to C Honshu.

Siberian does not occur in Japan.

Grahame

 

[MacNara]

Stonechats only pass through my area of Japan on migration (both ways), so we don't get the full plumage.

I get the impression that after splitting into several species, there is now a tendency to go back to treating African Stonechat (S. torquatus) as the base and some at least of the others as sub-species. But this is just an impression!

I think in Japan 'Amur Stonechat' S. stejnegeri is regarded as the basic species, and 'Siberian' has been dropped (as a Japanese breeding species). To me - with no special knowledge of these birds - the reason for this is not clear.

It would be great if Adam Bowley were to find this thread and give us an update on the current situation.

 

[HouseCrow]

Thanks for the ID Grahame< good to know. Are you sure maurus is not on the JP list?
Thanks to you too Mac. I figured it might be something like that.
I've reported back to the recorder at Inat.

 

[Grahame Walbridge]

Thanks for the ID Grahame< good to know. Are you sure maurus is not on the JP list?
Thanks to you too Mac. I figured it might be something like that.
I've reported back to the recorder at Inat.

Gerben, AFAIK, there are no confirmed records of maurus in East Asia, including Korea and Japan. That is not to say its not hypothetically possible but it would only occur as an extreme vagrant. Further, proof of occurrence might well require an mtDNA sample.

Grahame

 

[HouseCrow]

Ah, ok, an unexpected answer. I thought maurus would at least end up a (rare)vagrant both in western europe and in East Asia.
Thanks again Grahame.

 

[MacNara]

I think part of the problem is that Japan is very slow at accepting splits, and also at changing English names. I don't know what the official procedure is (and I don't plan to find out), but an experienced foreign birder I know told me he has quit the Japan Wild Bird Society because he's fed up that it's years late in producing an updated species list for the country.

Mark Brazil's 'Birds of East Asia' from 2009 has S. Maurus, Siberian Stonechat. (I don't have his Japan-only book, so I don't know what it says.)

Below, I attach scans of the page for 'Nobitaki' ノビタキ in the three most recent Japanese guides I have, as well as Japanese Wikipedia viewed today. As you can see, S. torquatus seems to be general, and Wiki uses S. torquata, which is also used in the oldest book I have from 1982 (where the bird is simply Stonechat). But two of the recent guides have gone for African Stonechat, and one for Common Stonechat, while WikiJ goes with Siberian.

I think Grahame is right that there is only one species in Japan (ex v rare possible vagrants), currently named 'Amur Stonechat' in most western classifications, with the binomial S. stejnegeri.

But if you are working in Japanese, you probably wouldn't know this.

I admit myself that I am increasingly finding splits confusing, and since my records are only for me (I don't use e-Bird or things like that) I sometimes can't be bothered to update names (unless both species, or three as with Arctic Warbler, are possible for me).

These books are two photo guides from 2014, and an excellent illustrated guide from 2017. I'm not aware of any later guides, though there may be.

Hope this helps - and may also partly or completely explain the iNaturalist ID for the bird in HouseCrow's original post.

 

[MacNara]

By the way, I've also just checked 'Birds of the World' online which is now run by Cornell University, and is linked with eBird, the Macaulay photo site, and Merlin ID software.

They have all the splits, including Amur Stonechat, and they use distribution maps from eBird for each new species. But the text for all of the split species is identical, and refers to S. torquatus, Common Stonechat.

Since they bought 'Birds of the World' Cornell seem to have done very little to update it.

 

[HouseCrow]

It is most def a confusing mess. Thanks for the extra work Jef. I only have the older east asia Brazil guide. I have not checked that yet, but i suspect the idea of sib stonechat in japan stems from older sources indeed.

Cheers
Gerben

 

[MacNara]

In post #3 I said:

I get the impression that after splitting into several species, there is now a tendency to go back to treating African Stonechat (S. torquatus) as the base and some at least of the others as sub-species. But this is just an impression!

Now, I realise that I got things quite back to front.

It seems that Japanese ornithologists have stuck with S. torquata/torquatus for the single-species bird from way back, calling it simply Stonechat or Common Stonechat.

This is not strictly wrong. WIkipedia summarises:

Common stonechat is the name used for the Saxicola species Saxicola torquatus when this is treated in its broad sense.

It is, however, now more widely considered to be a superspecies consisting of several related but distinct species,[1] which are outwardly fairly similar but genetically distinct and replacing each other geographically without significant hybridisation:

• African stonechat Saxicola torquatus in the strict sense
• European stonechat Saxicola rubicola
• Siberian stonechat Saxicola maurus
• Amur stonechat Saxicola stejnegeri
• Madagascar stonechat Saxicola sibilla

In recent splitting, S. torquatus has been allocated to African Stonechat out of five subspecies upgraded to full species level, and it seems that some Japanese writers have simply left the binomial as S. torquatus, but updated the English name to African Stonechat as though this applied to the whole complex without knowing what they are doing. Hence the confusion. If you look at the third photo (illustrated guide) in my post #7, you will see that the map shows the worldwide distribution of 'African Stonechat' and if you could read Japanese you could see that there is no discussion of any subspecies.

Mark Brazil back in 2009 in 'Birds of East Asia' changed the species title for the whole of his region to Siberian Stonechat, S. maurus, hence the idea that this species is in Japan. But I think this was when Siberian Stonechat had, but Amur Stonechat had not, been given species status, since Brazil gives the local subspecies as S. maurus stejnegeri. (As I said, I don't know what he did in his later Japan-only volume.)

Japanese Wikipedia has fallen in the middle of the two stools, since it keeps S. torquata, but updates the English species name to Siberian Stonechat, which is neither the old thing or the new. But this obliquely might also lead some people to the idea that - if you supposed WikiJ got the English name right, but the binomial wrong - S. maurus in the strict sense is found in Japan. But it isn't . I'm not going to try to edit the WikiJ page!

Hope these remarks help to clarify, rather than confuse further.

To repeat myself:

I think part of the problem is that Japan is very slow at accepting splits, and also at changing English names. I don't know what the official procedure is (and I don't plan to find out), but an experienced foreign birder I know told me he has quit the Japan Wild Bird Society because he's fed up that it's years late in producing an updated species list for the country.

MacNara

 

[HouseCrow]

It does summarize and solve the issue i would think, so yes: thanks.
Unfortunately i am stuck in an eternal first year of Japanese language learning. i don't think I will ever be capable of reading more than just the basics..although i am trying.

Cheers
gerben

 

[Mike Earp]

Mark Brazil back in 2009 in 'Birds of East Asia' changed the species title for the whole of his region to Siberian Stonechat, S. maurus, hence the idea that this species is in Japan. But I think this was when Siberian Stonechat had, but Amur Stonechat had not, been given species status, since Brazil gives the local subspecies as S. maurus stejnegeri. (As I said, I don't know what he did in his later Japan-only volume.)

In Birds of Japan (2018), Brazil includes Stejneger's Stonechat Saxicola stejnegeri but includes the following taxonomic note:

Formerly within Siberian Stonechat S. maurus, but included within Common Stonechat S. torquatus by others.

 

[MacNara]

In Birds of Japan (2018), Brazil includes Stejneger's Stonechat Saxicola stejnegeri but includes the following taxonomic note: Formerly within Siberian Stonechat S. maurus, but included within Common Stonechat S. torquatus by others.

Thank you Mike. That's a diplomatic note. It doesn't make clear that some have accepted a split, but others haven't. Common Stonechat and Siberian Stonechat aren't two different species within either of which Amur Stonechat might be included as a subspecies. Using 'Common Stonechat' does not recognise the split (or thinks it's too soon). And it doesn't make clear that S. torquatus is now African Stonechat.

It's not a terrible thing to be ambivalent about the split. See my post #8 above where 'Birds of the World' recognises the split in the names, but not at all in the descriptions. I wonder whether vagrant Siberian or European Stonechats would be recognised if one or two turned up in Japan given that they wouldn't be breeding and in that plumage.

The reason I don't have Birds of Japan (2018) myself is that I am conducting a one-person boycott.

The book covers only Japan but doesn't have the Japanese names for birds in the species accounts, or a Japanese index. This feature would have made it much easier for visiting birders to interact with Japanese birders they meet, which would be an excellent thing in my opinion from both an ornithological and sociological point of view. If you were looking at a bird you didn't know, then a Japanese in the same spot who didn't have much English could look up the Japanese name in the index and tell you what it was. And this might lead to intercultural beer-drinking in a good case.

All the Japanese books I have include English names (even if not always correct).

Birds have names in kanji (Chinese characters) but these are almost never used; rather the katakana syllabary is used. Putting the Japanese names in both katakana and roman lettering would have been simple, but it wasn't done.

I understand why names were not given in all languages in 'Birds of East Asia' since there would be at least four languages to cover (although it wouldn't have been that difficult with modern technology). But I really can't accept that it wasn't done in the Japan-only book.