Identification Criteria for Some Emberizid Sparrows
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Certain Emberizid sparrows that occur in northeastern United States and southeastern Canada can be difficult to identify especially in their juvenal plumages and sometimes in their first basic plumages.Generally, these birds have streaked crowns and backs and variably streaked breasts, depending on plumage.Using selected measurements or combinations thereof, I have found that five of these similar species can be reliably separated from one another.These species are Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis), Lincoln's sparrow (Melos?iza lincolnii), Swamp Sparrow (M.georgiana), Song Sparrow (M.melodia), and White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis ).METHODS I used the collections of the New York State Museum (NYSM) in Albany; American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City; and Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) in Cambridge, Massachusetts for specimens to measure.Specimens were predominantly from New York State (60%), but included also some from New England (23%), Ontario and Quebec (4%), and the Maritime Provinces (13%).I limited mysclection in order to minimize geographic distribution and size variations that might result therefrom.I gathered also some limited data on live individuals of three species at Island Beach State Park, New Jersey.I recorded tail length (TL) and wing chord (WC, unflattene.d and unstopped) to the nearest 0.5 mm using a steel rule graduated to 1.0 mm.Similarly, I recorded a measurement I termed "tail tip" (TF) by measuring the distance from the tip of the outermost rectrix to the tip of the longest rectrix in the tail.I recorded two measurements of the bill using a divider: exposed culmen from the tip of the bill to the base of the horny sheath (=bill length or BL); and bill depth (BD) measured at the base of thebill representing the side profile of the bill, as described on pages 6-11 and Figures 6-6B and F, respectively, of North American Banding Techniques (1977).Both were measured to the nearest 0.1 min.Normally, bill depth is measured with a vernier caliper.For convenience and expediency, especiallywith live birds, I used a divider; however, on two series of specimens, I took duplicate measurements with divider and caliper to compare results.Several additional measurements were taken but are not presented here either because they were not useful due to Jan.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".