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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jalid" data-source="post: 2883124" data-attributes="member: 71011">This is somewhat odd. Lijfeld and Bjerke published a description of what happened when flammea and cabaret bred in the same area. It is not their observations or results that can be contradicted, but their taxonomic significance. Contra statement at page 713, interbreeding of flammea and cabaret has been recorded and published. But the single cases away from the core areas of both are not of great taxonomic importance.  In page 726, discussing about exilipes and flammea: "In reality, however, very small percentage is truly intermediate". It depends, of course. When the main migration of taiga breeding flammea goes past, there is no much intermediate looking birds (or Arctics). But when Arctic is more common, there really are lots of difficult-looking birds.The Iceland situation is described much more thoroughly in this article than I remember reading before.But "Further questions" are still essentially same than 10 years ago... or 20 years ago. Redpolls are nice birds but we are learning only slowly, when genetic studies have not helped us.</blockquote>