Hi Tweeters,

Perhaps you can help me with this local ID problem - I finally came up
with a guess, but I'll leave that for later.

I was on a softball field at the UW, and heard this loud nasal chattering,
like some oversized siskins overhead. I located the source of the sound,
which was two birds flying by at treetop height or greater, at a distance.
All I could see was size and shape and behavior. The size was in the
robin range, or maybe a little larger, and the shape was distinctive -
long tailed, like a cuckoo or a male grackle, or an ani. The distinctive
behavior was the tremendous racket - the birds never stopped calling for
the whole time they were flying by. As I said, it reminded me of finchy
noises the at first, though it was much lower pitched. What birds were
these? They were not like any bird I have seen in the east, or out here
since I got here last year.






The only idea I could come up with was that they might be some sort of
psittacine - what are the local parakeets that have been mentioned on
tweeters before?

Chris Hill
Seattle, WA
cehill at u.washington.edu