Easy lifer

Along with thousands of my fellow birders, I got a life bird this evening while sitting at home at my desk. The latest AOU checklist supplement splits the Blue Grouse into the Sooty Grouse of the Pacific forests and the Dusky Grouse of the Rocky Mountains. The long reign of the splitters continues! I especially like it when they resurrect forms like these that were once recognized as distinct but then got lost in the great waves of 20th Century lumping and the birding fixation on the Full Species Only. My first encounter with the Sooty was at treeline on Mt. Dana in Yosemite in the fall of 1980; the Dusky first showed itself to me in Yellowstone on a June evening 1982.