Hi Tweets,

Wow, I love this list and all of its amazing bird-minded (plus eco-minded), bird-wise members!

I posted my query late this evening about a bird heard but not seen* this weekend at Ridgefield NWR, and received 4 responses within an hour! You people are spectacular! What a great community. :)

So, 3 out of 4 responses suggested the "Wilson's Snipe" as the likely source of the unearthly and unidentified sound. My Peterson CD doesn't have a "Wilson's" snipe, but does have a "Common Snipe". I listened to the "winnowing" sound suggested there, as well as the same sound at this link sent by one Tweeter http://www.birdweb.org/birdweb/bird_details.aspx?value=search&id=183, and feel pretty sure that this is what we were hearing!

Thanks so much to you all for clearing up this puzzling mystery for us! It was certainly a notable and memorable experience, and I just really wanted a good, scientific explanation on which to hang my hat. I love learning, so I wanted to learn and not be so totally in the dark the next time I hear this unique sound. (Okay, I also wanted a scientific explanation so as not to feel so creeped out! :)

As I wrote to one responder, I'm still not entirely sure how to place the answer of "Wilson's/Common Snipe" into the context of hearing a sound that was like they/it were parachute-landing all around us. It was like a whole plane-load of them was flying overhead and being off-loaded to jump and land all around us. I suppose it's possible that a flock of them happened to be incoming to the area nearby when we were walking out to the blind. It's just eerie how incredibly CLOSE they sounded, like one or several might land right behind us on the trail. I swear that their sound was like someone/something making it from a slight distance and getting rapidly closer and only JUST diverting away before JUST making the sound right behind your ear. :P Thus the somewhat creepy feeling of it all. One knowledgeable member told me that their call is amazingly loud and carries well so they might not have been as close as they seemed (obviously they weren't, because we could never seem to spot one!).

I'm happy to be able picture multiple Wilson's/Common Snipes coming in for a landing onto the terrain around us. I love that!

*In my attempt to explain what was beginning to seem like a rather UNearthly phenomenon, I had started to attribute the sound to rather almost any bird that I could spot in the near vicinity of the apparent source location of the sound. So, at least at one point, I wanted to be convinced that it was either Swallows or Yellow-rumped Warblers making the sound. I didn't sincerely believe this, only wanted some explanation. Much later as we were driving around the refuge, I heard the sound again and quickly looked out the car window just in time to see some sort of winged semi-duck-like or otherwise shorebird creature with a seeming long bill come down and disappear into the weeds beyond me. At that point Larry and I felt pretty sure that I'd seen the source of the odd noise. Based on the identification of the sound as a Snipe, and my subsequent views of images of it, now I feel pretty sure that I happened to catch a W/C Snipe coming in for a landing!

Thank you all so much for the rapid and incredibly informed responses! Thanks for solving this odd mystery for me. It's a happy, pleasant relief! :)

~Christy Jobe
Kenmore, WA
christyrj_ at _hotmail_com