Dear Tweeters,
Yesterday I was driving slowly through a construction zone on SR 20, in far-southwestern Sedro-Woolley, between the United General Hospital and the Life Care Center, when a gallinaceous bird flew across the roadway, right over my car. I could not ID this bird. It looked sort of like an outsized version of a female Northern Bobwhite, but I was certain that it was too big for any sort of bobwhite or other quail. It was definitely not a Ruffed Grouse, definitely not a Ring-necked Pheasant, Sooty Grouse, ptarmigan, or Chukar. I don't think it was a Chilean Tinamou, either--that covers most of the native and introduced gallinaceous birds of W Washington. It was so close that I could have hit it with a dart as it flew over, had I been in a convertible. The bird flew south to north, dropping toward some brush near the south end of Holtcamp Road.
This was surely some introduced game bird. It didn't show any chestnut coloration, just a finely vermiculated brown body and wings, with a much paler, almost white-looking face. Again, it was bigger than a quail and smaller than a grouse. My best guess was that it might have been some sort of francolin, but I think most of those have a bit of color in the plumage.
There used to be an old fellow who raised various exotic gallinaceous birds in Sedro-Woolley, but he moved upriver about twenty years ago, and I haven't had to chase down any reports of odd "chickens" there for years. 
Might any Tweeters have a suggestion as to what this bird might have been?
Yours truly,
Gary Bletsch


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