Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ames!dftsrv!dev!vrdxhq!edm
From: edm@vrdxhq.verdix.com (Ed Matthews)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: ID this bird  AND  Where is Everyone?
Keywords: bunting    summer birding
Message-ID: <35323@vrdxhq.verdix.com>
Date: 12 Jul 90 11:51:21 GMT
References: <3320@leah.Albany.Edu>
Reply-To: edm@vrdxhq.UUCP (Ed Matthews)
Organization: Verdix Corporation HQ
Lines: 45

In article <3320@leah.Albany.Edu> gmr044@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregg Recer) writes:
In article <35287@vrdxhq.verdix.com> edm@vrdxhq.verdix.com
(Ed Matthews)  I wrote about being stumped by a bird:
 
>>Small passerine, resembling slate junco, only smaller, sleeker, lessround; 
>>half the size of nearby female blue grosbeak;finch/sparrow-like gray beak; 
>>dark eye, no eye-ring, moustache, wingbars or identifying characteristics; 
>>charcoal gray all over withunderside 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.
 
>I don't have my field guide to check but just a guess: how about a
>female indigo bunting?  I recall seeing a female lazuli bunting on a
>recent trip to the west coast.  Very similar to what you describe:
>basically a really non-descript finch-type bird.  Obviously, you don't
>have a luzuli where you are but I think indigo females are quite similar.

Lazuli?  Where?  Call the RBA!  I've been staking out this particular 
location for a couple weeks trying to find the indigo buntings that I'm
certain are there.  I can't call the bird I saw a female indigo without
seeing it paired with a male for a couple reasons:  the female indigo is
typically browner than the bird I saw and has a less notched tail than
the one I saw.  Anyway, this particular pasture is amazingly blue this time
of year:  two families of blue jays will fully-fledged young, eastern blue
birds (I saw a dozen in fifteen minutes), two dozen blue grosbeaks with
juvenal males that from a distance look like indigos.  I'm sure I've seen
male indigos, but can't scope them.  There is one royal blue male grosbeak
(king of the pasture) that has a crest and looks like a blue cardinal --
one of the most spectacularly colored birds I've ever seen.

>    As somebody pointed out, things have been quite dead on this group
>lately.  Mid-summer may not be the most exciting birding time but come
>on folks!

Yeah!  Where is everybody?  Flycatchers are really active here during the
last two hours of daylight.  Surely you guys can find something to look at.
-- 

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