Subject: strange bird in Stanley Park
Date: Dec 7 11:19:11 2002
From: Robert Sundstrom - ixoreus at scattercreek.com


Kurt and tweeters,

This is just another guess at the mystery bird's identity, based on the description given: the graduated tail, the rust color, the rich whistles, the chattery call, the moderate sized bill, the towhee size and overall towhee jizz. All of these features would be descriptive of a White-rumped Shama (perhaps a female?), a slender thrush often kept in captivity for its song and looks, and a bird well established on several of the Hawaiian islands, and a species I am very familiar with from leading about 25 birding tours in Hawaii.

Just a guess, however. I imagine the descriptive elements could be attached to quite a few species, and this is just a species that springs to my mind based on familiarity. I hope someone with a camera at hand finds the mystery bird.

Bob Sundstrom

Bob Sundstrom
ixoreus at scattercreek.com
Tenino, WA

----- Original Message -----
From: Kurt Ranta
To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 7:53 PM
Subject: strange bird in Stanley Park



Hello, I regret not reporting this unusual sighting earlier, but I had written it off as an escaped cage bird. My wife and I were running in Stanley Park of Vancouver a couple weeks ago and were stopped by an unusually richl whistled call which I didn't recognize. We located the bird in some brambles up from the seawall path. The light was terrible (we were facing the sun). But we did see it fly a couple times and the tail looked very much like a cuckoo's tail: graduated and white-tipped. That along with the distinctive 4-note call (1st, 3rd, and 4th note of the same high pitch, and the 2nd note a lower pitch) made me quickly realize that it was like no other bird I had seen. It was towhee-sized. We couldn't get a good look at color, but it was fairly bland colored. My wife said that she might have seen some rust color to it. The bill was not over-sized. Behavior wise, it looked a bit like a nervous sparro! w, probably because there were two song sparrows chasing it off. After a minute or two, it flew off out of sight. During the time we saw it, it probably called 3 or 4 times, and when it flew off, it made a nervous chattery call. We took a walk in the same area a couple days later and could not relocate it. Which doesn't suprise me, as the bird was obviously out of place. The bird was originally located right above the seawall walk, immediately underneath the stairway that goes up to the "Teahouse". This will make sense if you know stanley park

I am quite familiar with wintering birds of the area, and this bird was unlike anything I've come across. The strongly graduated tail and the unfamiliar call convince me of that. I reported it to the vancouver hotline promptly, but got no response. I originally wrote the bird off as an escaped caged bird, but after thumbing through some of the more recent editions of the classic bird guides which contain the Asian strays... well who knows, right? Does anybody have any ideas or input. I would love to hear it.

Kurt Ranta
mailto:kckar at earthlink.net
Mt. Vernon, Washington

--- Kurt Ranta
--- kckar at earthlink.net
--- EarthLink: The #1 provider of the Real Internet.

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