Hiya tweets, I need a hand with bird ID.

My wife was walking home Sunday afternoon, and heard a bird call she'd never heard before, and was able to see only the underside of the bird due to its being fairly high in a tree on a narrow street. The call sounded like zzz zzzzzzzz chuwEE chuwEE chuwEE chuwEE (the zzz sounds were very soft, longer on the second buzz, and the whistled chuwEE sounds were higher pitched on the second syllable). Each time the bird called it was the same, 2 buzzes followed by 4 loudly whistled chuwee sounds, and it repeated the sequence monotonously and continuously for a couple of minutes. It then stopped calling, flew into a lower cedar tree and disappeared.

She saw the bird from below and said it appeared to be roughly sparrow-sized, maybe slightly larger, and was plain white or light gray on the underside:breast, belly and throat. It had a relatively large head, longish, very narrow, sharply pointed bill, and stood quite upright on the branch.

Gina said that it seemed "out of place", like a migrant that lost its way and was calling for others of its own kind, but that could just be anthropomorphism. If anyone has any ideas, we'd sure appreciate it, as it sounds like it'd be a new bird for us for sure. We have Sibleys, Kaufmanns and Audubon guides and some bird CD's, but have had no luck on our own so far. Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Brett A. Wolfe gismybabe at yahoo.com Seattle, WA



---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20021120/98af3655/attachment.htm