I eventually followed up on a tip from Alan Grenon to look for
EVENING GROSSBEAK at 19Ave E and Republican or Mercer Streets on the
East side of Capitol Hill this morning at 10am.

Whilst wandering around on 19th Ave E between Aloha and John I found
lot of RED CROSSBILLS twittering in the tree tops mostly in groups of
5 to 10 in size.

At one point a flock of perhaps 100 flew over emitting the same
contacts calls that I'd heard from the small flocks that I'd IDed. I
was rather surprised to see so many.

Eventually I even found an female EVENING GROSSBEAK on Mercer between
18th and 19th mixed in with a small crossbill flock in a tree. She
appeared to be with a male but I didn't get a positive ID on him
(just same sized/shaped bird with white wing flashes as they flew
away west together).
--
Kevin Purcell
kevinpurcell at pobox.com