Talk:Sombre greenbul

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I'm confused after reading Zimmerman et al.[edit]

Zimmerman, Turner, and Pearson in Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania (1999) specifically say this bird is conspicuous, in contradiction to the article. They also refer to it as the Zanzibar Sombre Greenbul and call the populations in their area A. i. insularis and possibly A. i. fricki, not A. i. hypoxanthus. Taxonomic disagreements? —JerryFriedman 14:09, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't see many, and although Feb is not a good time since it's late summer, they were nothing like as obvious as Common Bulbul (but that's OR anyway). SASOL says they are inconspicuous though, so it is sourced. Take out any reference to its conspicuousness? The area you mentioned is out of the SASOL range, so I don't know about the races there. Jimfbleak 16:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

the confusion could be taxonomic, or because hypoxanthus, although northern from the SASOL viewpoint, may not be the most northern ssp. Jimfbleak 16:06, 9 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Avibase lists four generally accepted subspecies: importunus, oleaginus, hypoxanthus, and insularis. That's more or less south to north, though I might have the first two reversed. I'm going to take out "northern" about hypoxanthus till we can get a good description of its range (though we could guess it's something like Zambia and southern Tanzania).

Also, as you suggested, I'm going to take out the reference to conspicuousness, since we don't know whether the subspecies are different or the authors have different standards of conspicuousness. Zimmerman, Turner, and Pearson mention the incessantly repeated policeman's-whistle call, so maybe they mean conspicuous in sound rather than sight (if that's good English). I wish we had a source that covers the species as a whole, not just from the point of view of southern Africa or Kenya. —JerryFriedman 04:29, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]