Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!dftsrv!dev!vrdxhq!edm
From: edm@vrdxhq.verdix.com (Ed Matthews)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Help me ID this bird
Message-ID: <35287@vrdxhq.verdix.com>
Date: 10 Jul 90 14:12:20 GMT
Organization: Verdix Corporation, Chantilly,  VA
Lines: 17

I was stumped by a bird last night -- don't even have a guess.  Maybe
someone can come up with an idea.  Description:

Small passerine, resembling slate junco, only smaller, sleeker, less round;
half the size of nearby female blue grossbeak; finch/sparrow-like gray beak;
dark eye, no eye-ring, moustache, wing bars or identifying characteristics;
charcoal gray all over with underside slightly paler; notched, single color
tail, more notched than slate junco, about like house finch tail; fully-fledged
and probably not juvenal; hopping and flitting from branch to branch in mixed
cedar/pine/shrub thicket at edge of pasture in northern Virginia; song a long
fairly loud series of tcheek calls at 1/2 to 1 second intervals, not unlike
the chip of a cardinal, but different.
-- 

Ed Matthews                                                edm@verdix.com
Verdix Corporation Headquarters                            (703) 378-7600
Chantilly, Virginia