Dear Brett and fellow Tweeters. This is Daniel Bastaja posting for Friday,
November 22nd, 2002. I thought I would throw in my two cents worth regarding
the unidentified Capitol Hill bird.

To me the description and song suggest one of the Zonotrichia
sparrows.....either a White-crowned or Golden-crowned. They often sing a bit
in the winter but the song is not the full-throated, consistent note pattern
we are used to in the spring and summer. In the winter, it is generally
softer and the pattern of notes is much more irregular, often jumbled or
truncated. It almost sounds like juveniles practising the song trying to get
it right before the arrival of spring. This practising can sound pretty
strange sometimes. The description of the song with the soft zzzz at the
start and then the more liquid, musical chu-wee, chu-wee.....I have heard
White-crowneds in the winter sound very much like that. I have also seen
them get into an odd note pattern and then just repeat that many times over
similar to Brett's description. Regardless of how strange the half-hearted
winter attempts at singing are though, you can usually detect some of the
White-crowned quality to the notes. With regard to the visual description it
matches a White-crowned almost exactly. Slender, sparrow-sized but slightly
larger, large head, long tail, plain white or light grey everywhere
underneath....breast, belly and throat. What is that if not a White-crowned
Sparrow? It flew into a cedar tree which White-crowneds like in the winter.
The only part of the description that doesn't fit is the bill....long,
narrow, sharply pointed.
Regards,
Daniel Bastaja
e-mail: birdingfaqs at hotmail.com





_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail