Don't believe everything you read in bird books. Just because there are only five subspecies of a bird recognized, doesn't mean there aren't infinite variations in-between. Take Turdus Migratorius, for example. (First, why turdus? Couldn't they have come up with a better name? And Migratorius? Well, I can tell you that they don't all migrate.)
I don't normally pay attention to when they arrive, because I have a winter population and a summer population. I'm guessing the summer population arrived around the 7th of March this year. The difference between the summer population and the ones who don't migrate, is that breast coloration on the summer population is a much brighter orange. The scientific name for the species is Turdus Migratorius. I would call natives Poopus Migratorius just to distinguish the two, but I'm no scientist. There are Western and Atlantic Canada subspecies and different hybrids, so who knows? But many things are possible.
My next post is about this year's Harbinger of Spring.
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