Did you consider a female Yellow-headed Blackbird?

Scott Downes
sdownes at u.washington.edu
Seattle WA



On Fri, 3 Apr 1998, Bob Mauritsen wrote:

> Tweeters,
>
> Sorry to bother you with something which has so little information,
> but
> it bugs me that I can't get a better idea from the field guide.
>
> Yesterday I spent much of the afternoon on Forster island and
> nearby. On
> the part north of the freeway, high atop a 40-45' leafless tree near
> the path
> I heard and then saw a bird which seemed from the steep angle at
> which
> I was watching to have a yellow hood. I had 10x binocs, but every
> time
> I moved around to view the bird from behind, it shifted to face me.
> There
> seemed to be a definite horizontal boundary between the bright
> yellow of
> the head and the uniform whitish or light gray-white chest and
> belly. No markings
> at all on breast, belly or sides of belly. There seemed to be a
> small amount
> of black in the eye area, perhaps more toward the front of the eye.
> The
> part of the wings that I could see seemed to be black, or at least
> be black
> on the leading edge. The song was very vaguely like that of a
> housefinch
> but went on for much longer and with none of those trill sounds that
> almost
> sound like the finch is singing while breathing inward. The bird
> was larger
> than a house finch. There was no black under the beak that I could
> see. It
> flew away when I tried to a better view further out. Note that I
> never did see
> the top of the head, so I don't know for sure that it really had a
> hood.
>
> This is not much information to go on, I know. But I thought the
> yellow hood
> and the seemingly definite boundary between the yellow and white
> would make it easy to pick out of the field guide, nevertheless. As
> far as I
> can see, the only candidate bird would be a female Bullock's oriole,
> but would
> a female bird sing like that?
>
> Someday I'll know this stuff better.
>
> Bob Mauritsen
> Bluetooth at csi.com
>
>
>
>
>