4 March 2006 - North Lake, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, California. Today I took my ornithology class on a walk in Golden Gate Park. Common Ravens have increased in the park over the years and are now quite confiding. I took a few moments to digiscope this individual. The subspecies C. c. clarionensis is the smallest in North America and is confined to Northern California and Baja. (A. M. Rea 1986. Corvus corax, geographic variation. Pp. 65–66 in The known birds of North and Middle America. Part I. A. R. Phillips, Denver, CO.). A recent study (Omland, K. E., C. L. Tarr, W. I. Boarman, J. M. Marzluff, and R. C. Fleischer. 2000. Cryptic genetic variation and paraphyly in ravens. Proc. Royal Society of London B 267:2475-2482) revealed a deep genetic break between ravens from California and ravens from throughout the rest of North America and the world. California populations were even more distinct from other populations than the Chihuahuan raven (Corvus cryptoleucus) suggesting a potential future split of the California Raven population into a separate species. A pdf of that paper is available online at: http://www.werc.usgs.gov/sandiego /pdfs/omland%20boarman%202000%20royal%20 soc.pdf Olympus D-550z / Nikon FieldScope 3 / 30XWA (hand-held - no adapter).