Hi Tweets,

Just to pass on a heads-up.

Couple of friends were checking out the YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT Icteria virens
(very rare in Vancouver BC) that's been hanging around MacDonald Road on Sea
Island in NW Richmond, joined a big group of birders standing around waiting
for the bird to sing. Though one person said they'd heard it briefly
previous, they had no luck in the area it's usually been heard in (it's been
audible from the road near some dead cedars on the E side of the road), so
they moseyed a little further N on MacD Rd toward the boat launch parking lot.

They suddenly heard a series of mockingbird-like repeated notes coming from
cover and immediately assumed this was the chat; within a few minutes,
however, they located the author, a male BLACK-HEADED GROSBEAK Pheucticus
melanocephalus. They watched for several minutes as the bird sang an
unconventional, chat-like song of repeated notes and phrases, then sang
elements of a conventional grosbeak song. In their opinion, it would have
been easy to confuse this song for that of a chat.

(It may be that the grosbeak responds with a conventional song to another
grosbeak but will tailor a mimic-song if feeling threatened by the presence
of a strange, possibly competitive species.)

As this bird was in the direction pointed out by the birder who claimed to
have heard the chat, the instance points up the need for care in identifying
the chat in absence of visual confirmation.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net