Michael B. Brown wrote:

>I have also acquired a new address (see signature). I chose "Borealis" for
>the Olive-sided Flycatcher. When I was a teenager, my dad pointed one out in
>a Douglas Fir near our Mercer Island home. He told me its call was
>advertising "free beer". Naturally, at that age I was quite impressed. One
>seemed to be calling from the same tree almost every year after that. Now, I
>rarely hear them.

One of the neatest birding experiences I have had occurred last year when
I was doing some work in Amazonian Ecuador. I was walking down this road
near degraded forest and agricultural land when I heard an Alder Flycatcher
singing. At the time, I was all decked out with recording gear so I taped
away. While I was monitoring this Alder Flycatcher singing his head off in
the Amazon a "quick-free-beeeer" started up in the background! It was a
mindblowing little serenade given that the other noises were of parrots,
spinetails and aracaris. I still have the tape of course. In this context
the names Alder Flycatcher and Contopus **borealis** seem a trifle
inapropriate.



Alvaro Jaramillo "You are better off not knowing
Half Moon Bay, CA how sausages and laws are made"
alvaro at quake.net Otto von Bismarck,
but I saw it in a fortune cookie!

http://www.quake.net/~alvaro/index.html