I'm hoping I can describe the call I heard today adequately. It was nothing like anything I'd ever heard. I was walking down the Taconite Trail just north of Side Lake (northern St. Louis County). The snow depth is still around 14" here. I was in a mature jack pine / red pine stand with some aspen and birch present. As I was walking, I heard something calling from a group of pole sized pines. It was a buzzy call that was actually reminiscent of someone repeatedly plucking the spring from an old screen door! Sort of a slow "boing boing boing boing boing" (with the last 2 "boings" being slightly lower pitch. I thought I was crazy, but I heard it repeated intermittently for over a minute, then it seemed to call back a few times in response to my pishing, but it was never visible. Then it stopped and I wasn't able to relocate it. The tempo of the call was slightly slower than the "jibs" of a Red Crossbill (there were a few present throughout the area this morning--also several seen gathering grit on roads in Itasca) but sounded nothing like a crossbill otherwise. Each call reminded me a little of the buzzy whistle (much shorter however) of a Varied Thrush, which I have only heard in recordings. (Do they have a faster, repeated call like what I heard?) I am nearly 100% certain that I did not hear a Brown Creeper, Bohemian Waxwing, or Golden-crowned Kinglet as I am familiar with all of these species and the call was not high enough in pitch and the "vibrato" of the buzz seemed slower. I rarely hear calls in the winter in northern Minnesota that I don't recognize, and this was really strange. Does anyone have any ideas as to what I may have heard????? I can't really imagine it was anything other than a bird.Shawn Conradhttp://users.2z.net/itasca_chippewa_birding/
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